When the mainstream doesn’t carve out space for their work, writers must take the situation to their own hands, creating their own platforms, even their own communities of dedicated readers. Over at Electric Literature, Adrian L. Jawort discusses the process of compiling two anthologies of contemporary Native American and Indigenous writing:
The anthologies are about how we view the world as we know it and share it to other indigenous peoples through the lens of our own creative control; not what perhaps some so-called Big Five New York publisher or outside editor assumes the Native experience should read like because maybe they’ve previously read Louise Erdrich, other Alexie works, or an aforementioned Native American Renaissance-era book from decades ago and deduced that Native American literature representation had already been fulfilled.
