Pocahontas as the Great American Indian Novel

Clips from Disney's Pocahontas and Sherman Alexie's "How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" via Seymour Polatkin in THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING:

Selected excerpts:
All of the Indians must have tragic features:
tragic noses, eyes, and arms.
Their hands and fingers must be tragic
when they reach for tragic food.
If the hero is an Indian woman, she is beautiful.
She must be slender and in love with a white man.
If the Indian woman loves a white man, then he has to be so white that we can see the blue veins running through his skin like rivers. When the Indian woman steps out of her dress, the white man gasps at the endless beauty of her brown skin. She should be compared to nature:
brown hills, mountains, fertile valleys, dewy grass, wind, and clear water. Indians must see visions. White people can have the same visions if they are in love with Indians. If a white person loves an Indian then the white person is Indian by proximity. White people must carry an Indian deep inside themselves.

In the Great American Indian novel, when it is finally written,
all of the white people will be Indians and all of the Indians will be ghosts.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• mashup
• cultural appropriation
• sherman alexie
• pocahontas