Diane Glancy, Pushing the Bear

Rachel B. Griffis (Sterling College)

Ed. by Padraig Kirwan, Goldsmiths College, University of London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.6: Indigenous Writing and Culture of North America - United States.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Sarah Henzi (Simon Fraser University), Padraig Kirwan (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1996 - 1996

Places

United States (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears

(1996) may be Diane Glancy’s most known and frequently-taught novel. With multiple narrators, she presents a fictional community’s experience of the Trail of Tears, in which the U.S. government forced Cherokee and Choctaw from the southeast to walk nine hundred miles to Oklahoma during the winter of 1838-39, resulting in thousands of deaths. The novel portrays the wide-reaching implications of this historical tragedy, including its communal, familial, linguistic, cultural, religious, emotional, material, and political consequences. To explore various kinds of loss, Glancy juxtaposes family drama with political and cultural conflict while blending first-person narrative with letters, lists, journals, periodicals, and other genres. As…

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1859 words

Citation: Griffis, Rachel B.. "Pushing the Bear". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 May 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38917, accessed 24 April 2024.]

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