Righting the Histories, Writing the Stories

Insisting that history must be understood as a series of subjective interpretations of events, Choctaw writer LeAnne Howe changes canonized histories, rewriting and narrating those events to propose reconsidered Choctaw subjectivities. Employing Raymond Fogelson’s notion of “pseudo-events” to explore contested interpretations of and responses to history, Howe characterizes her approach as “an ethical Native literary praxis [where the] Native writer remains in conversation with the past and the present to create a future” (“Blind Bread” 338). Howe’s process of righting history reflects and creates tribal imaginations that enrich the present with an understanding of the numerous pasts and informed imaginings of possible futures.