The People Who Stayed

The two-hundred-year-old myth of the "vanishing" American Indian still holds some credence in the American Southeast, the region from which tens of thousands of Indians were relocated after passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Yet, as the editors of this volume amply demonstrate, a significant Indian population remained behind after those massive relocations. The first anthology to focus on the literary work of Native Americans who trace their ancestry to "people who stayed" in southeastern states after 1830, The People Who Stayed represents every state and every genre, including short stories, excerpts from novels, poetry, essays, plays, and even Web postings. Although most works are contemporary, the volume covers the entire post-removal era. Some of the contributors are well known, while others have only recently emerged as important literary voices.

Geary Hobson is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma, author of the novel The Last of the Ofos, and editor of The Remembered Earth: An Anthology of Contemporary Native American Literature. Janet McAdams is Robert P. Hubbard Professor of Poetry and Associate Professor of English at Kenyon at College, Gambier, Ohio, and the author of the Island of Lost Luggage and Feral. Kathryn Walkiewicz is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.