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Literature in English, North America

Theses/Dissertations

2015

All NMU Master's Theses

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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Return And Recovery: The Influence Of Place On Blues Murder Ballads And Laguna Ceremony Cycles, Tyler J. Dettloff Aug 2015

Return And Recovery: The Influence Of Place On Blues Murder Ballads And Laguna Ceremony Cycles, Tyler J. Dettloff

All NMU Master's Theses

The relationships between place, narrative, memory, and identity are integral in many oral traditions. This project considers place as actively shaping Sterling’s identity in Laguna author Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead and R.L. Burnside’s rendition of the popular murder ballad “Stack O’Lee and Billy Lyons.” Ethical and personal views of land and place offers a method for individual and cultural survivance. Comparing these two separate “return and recovery” narratives offer a clear illustration of how land impacts identity.

Sterling’s home in Laguna Pueblo falls victim to the extraction industry and bares a scar that results in Sterling’s …