POWER by Linda Hogan, reviewed by Su Zi

  

The hungry reader can be a seeker, a welcoming mind to ways of perception that sometimes influence our daily realities, a person for whom certain works may be their touchstone in life. Perhaps the discovery of a work fulfills the dream of being soul-feeding. Sometimes, the hungry reader will discover a work and also discover many works by this writer; to what wonderment we might find whole canons, whole Wikipedia lists of a previously, perhaps minimally, explored genres. Such might be how a reader receives Linda Hogan’s Power (Norton, 1998). Hogan has a resume of books, awards and residencies that position her merit, and is included in low-level search responses for Native American Writers, as well as an extensive list by Wikipedia of Native American Women writers.

The influence of the first people of any area is often present in place names, sometimes family names. In the general culture, beyond the fight against slurs, there’s the horror of appropriation and embarrassing grammar. Sometimes, beyond woo-woo and performative uses of leafy incense, dead bird parts and other totem objects, there might come the perception of this other way of being, this other way of life beyond that of the dominant culture. For multi-cultural people, the presence of personal culture in their  life can be a frictive experience, and reviews of Power tend to emphasize that aspect of the novel, along with the coming-of-age modernization of the hero’s journey. A literature course that includes this work might also include a list of two dozen binary considerations as essays topics; the novel hoists these with ease –- for our ways of being include dates versus seasons and how we view the land. 

While Hogan’s novel has a plot based on true events, and a symbolic array of characters, the considerations of the work extend into a view of environmentalism that Hogan handles with a deft use of elegiac language: “It’s the way she lives in the place where Cuban lizards climb trees and plants look enough like gold in the deep shade and slant of afternoon sun that the Spanish believed there were riches here, in this place that is now darkening with storm and smelling of rain”( 17). In the best hurricane sequence since Zora, the novel proceeds to lay out the multiple symbols, characters and events that propel the narrative. Of note is the re-occurrent and apparitional appearance of four women who are ‘walking slightly above the ground as if they are gliding and have no feet”(24). These women appear, together or singly, throughout the novel, and they are both literal and symbolic figures of ancestry, of a way of being at odds with the culture of cars and casinos.

Lest the reader fear for their air conditioning, Hogan almost spoonfeeds this ancient world perception to the reader, as it is everpresent in a manner that is deemed lyrical or beautiful on dust jacket blurbs. Perhaps an academic would note this as setting, but Hogan’s work endeavors to give voice to nature, to force the reader to perceive how it would be to live with that awareness: “The frogs are loud this morning”(102) or when visiting the town “A few trees stand, alien and foreign, in a ground that not long ago was all theirs. The ground belonged to them and the marsh birds and the possum. I believe they are surprised to be alive at all, those lonely trees, and nothing in the world acknowledges them”(115). The sense of the living world, of life forms beyond our own having birth on our shared earth is more than mere plot mechanics, it is a perception steeped onto every page.

With the effects of climate crisis being now daily news, Power’s now nearly quarter century of existence as a publication highlights aspects of our awareness that are overdue for overhaul. It might be that the reader has recently come to some speculation about how we experience time, and maybe how the land upon which we live begs us to reconsider our ways of being, if we would only listen.

Linda Hogan has had awards and fellowships. from The Lannan Foundation, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the NEA, and was one of three finalists for a Pulitzer when John Updike received it. It was her first novel; MEAN SPIRIT. Her other books have also received awards or nominations. She has a fellowship from the Native Arts Foundation. She also received the 2016 PEN THOREAU AWARD, an honor also awarded to EO Wilson and Peter Matthieson. Her novel PEOPLE OF THE WHALE has been very popular in Taiwan and China, POWER is set in Florida, with a focus on the Florida panther. It has been used with both adult and younger audiences. SOLAR STORMS includes both the James Bay HydroQuebec project in the far north, and is also about adoption in Native communities. DWELLINGS has been a best seller in Japan and done well in U.S. Her new and selected book of poetry, DARK. SWEET. is now available, and she has just finished a new novel, THE MERCY LIARS, not yet in print. Hogan is respected for her work in Indigenous knowledge, Native Science and wildlife rehabilitation as well as her writing that includes ecosystem research. She has a new book of poems, A HISTORY OF KINDNESS coming out from Torrey House Press in April 2020, and a book of essays on relationships with animals and their place in her wilderness region, in Native life, and as fellow travelers with us in an increasingly difficult world. This will be published by Beacon in Fall of 2020. The Radiant Lives of Animals.