Employing the Local : A Penobscot Modern in the Federal Writers' Project
Dublin Core
Title
Employing the Local : A Penobscot Modern in the Federal Writers' Project
Description
Essay exploring the 1930s Federal Writers' Project interview of Indian Island, Maine, resident and canoe maker, Henry Mitchell, transcribed by Old Town native, Robert Grady. Arguments favoring the particularly modern quality of the dually-authored interview, as compared to outside depictions of Native Americans in the local Maine literatures of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. How early 20th-century Old Town business and local government perpetuated the construction of stereotyped and antiquated Penobscot cultural categories and descriptions - aesthetically, linguistically, or in terms of work and leisure. How the literary output of the Federal Writers' Project played into this sort of identity construction on a more diverse, national scale, and in what ways singular FWP interactions like those between Grady and Mitchell challenged both the national project and the local cultural categories it sometimes reinforced. What the Mitchell/Grady interview owes to the relationship out of which it was born, Grady's other interviews mostly conducted with Franco Americans in Old Town.
Creator
Senier, Siobhan
Date
2002
Rights
Copyright © 2002 The New England Quarterly, Inc.
Language
en
Type
Journal Article
Coverage
1930s; Indian Island, Maine; Old Town, Maine; New England
Contribution Form
Zotero
DOI
10.2307/1559784
ISSN
0028-4866
Date
2002
Issue
3
Pages
355-387
Publication Title
The New England Quarterly
Volume
75