Scott Momaday

Scott Momaday is an author that uses his roots to weave enchanting stories that reach into the heart of things that we ordinarily overlook. He uses nature as an instrument, to illustrate the beauty in the simple, nearly forgotten knowledge of the Native American people. His stories are rich with meaning, but in a subtle way that only really makes sense once you have experienced the same type of search for self. They are steeped in the oral traditions of his ancestors to make supremely compelling stories with layers upon layers of culture and knowledge that are easily relatable and understandable.

Momaday was born on February 27, 1934, at the Kiowa and Comanche Indian Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma, to Alfred Momaday, a Kiowa painter, and Natachee Scott, a part-Cherokee woman. From his birth, Momaday lived and played with various Indian tribes across Arizona, not only to the Kiowa traditions of his father's family but to the Navajo, Apache and Pueblo Indian cultures of the Southwest, an invaluable experience that would color his philosophy and writing indelibly. Momaday himself has said "I am an Indian and I believe I'm fortunate to have the heritage I have," and "I grew up in two worlds and straddle both those worlds even now, it has made for confusion and a richness in my life. I've been able to deal with it reasonably well, I think, and I value it."

House Made of Dawn was published in 1968, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969. Its success and acclaim sparked what scholars call the Native American Renaissance, paving the way for other Native American writers to publish works which deal with Native life in the United States.

House Made of Dawn takes its title from a translation of a Navajo song which is part...

... middle of paper ...

... a common theme among the works I read, due in part to Momaday’s own struggle for identity and self. That is what makes Momaday’s work so relatable, he injects his feelings and his experiences into his work. The journeys his characters go on are ones that at some point we all go on ourselves, journeys of self-knowledge, journeys of the heart. Momaday writes about Native American life and Native American struggles, but the true meaning in his work is deeper than that. In fact, one of the most poignant messages I read in his novels was that these crises we go through are not limited to those of persecuted ethnic roots—we all feel them. People are people, we all struggle, we all fall, and we all need a support system to pick ourselves up afterwards. We are all who we are, as the famous chief Sitting Bull has so aptly said, “It is not necessary for Eagles to be Crows.”