Bridges Between Me: Liminality, Authenticity, and Re/integration in American Indian Literature

With both its inherent alienation and freedom, the experience of liminality, or the occupation of transitional spaces, is in many ways universally human. However, by nature of their bicultural liminality and the oppressive and pervasive demand for what Paula Gunn Allen terms "Indianness" American Indian authors must also confront and negotiate questions of authenticity. In so doing, many have taken the opportunity to subvert those demands, to juxtapose their actual multifaceted identities against them, to make meaning from the contrast, and to create from that re/integrated space. This thesis elucidates these points as an introduction to the body of poems that follow. The poems, often instruments of my own liminality, explore the broad themes of place, family, and identity.Thesis not available per author's requestOriginally set to release after 03-Nov-2013; contacted by author on 02-Jan-2018 for permanent restriction, Kimberl