Buffalo Woman by Dorothy M Johnson
Whirlwind belonged to the Oglala Sioux, the people of Crazy Horse. Born in 1820 near the Black Hills, she knew prosperity—her father could afford an expensive Buffalo Maiden ceremony—and eventually tragedy. The Indian woman feels profoundly the chill of change: the decimation of the buffalo, the coming of white settlers to the Great Plains, the wars that reduce her people to raggedness. After the Battle of the Little Big Horn and an attack that leaves her band homeless, Grandmother Whirlwind faces her final challenge in joining the band’s journey through snow toward refuge in Canada. With attention to timeless humanity and time-bound history, Dorothy M. Johnson’s novel follows the life of Whirlwind, seeing through her eyes the daily routine and rituals of the Sioux.
""Dorothy MJohnson’s use of the woman’s point of view is a rare contribution to the western. . . . [Buffalo Woman is a] powerful novel presenting the dilemma of the displaced Indian in a white man’s world, written from the Indian point of view . . . [and] characterized by conciseness of prose style and accuracy of detail.""—Judy Alter in Twentieth-Century Western Writers
Johnson, Dorothy: - Playwright and poet Dorothy Johnson has regaled, captivated, and challenged many audiences over the years. Resident of New Salem, Massachusetts, since 1971, Dorothy operated the Common Reader Bookshop there with her partner, Doris Abramson, until their retirement in 2000. Long a bibliophile, she worked with MacMillan publisher in New York City in the 1950s and has, among much wider reading, encountered all of Dickens several times over. She wrote the script and lyrics for musical comedies she directed for New Salem's 1794 Meetinghouse. Composers Andrew Lichtenberg and Steven Schoenberg provided the music. A hallmark of her playwriting oeuvre involves capitalizing on the idiosyncrasies of players mimicking themselves to comic effect. Known for her pungent quick wit and humble, decent heart, Dorothy grew up in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she was born in 1933. Her family left a rented farm in Enfield, Massachusetts, one of the towns drowned to make way for Quabbin Reservoir to serve Greater Boston. Dorothy attended public schools through ninth grade, when she went to Macduffie School for Girls in Springfield, Massachusetts, where she graduated in 1950. She holds a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley and an MA in theatre from Smith College in Northampton. Her work experience, she says with understatement, has involved office work in New York City, shelving books in a library, selling hamburgers, hawking antiques, purveying gift shop merchandise, offering used and sometimes rare books, and teaching at Holyoke Community College and Xavier University in New Orleans. Dorothy began writing the poems in My Heart Remembers with Shepherds in 2019. She writes the Quiet Places column for Uniquely Quabbin magazine.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780803275836 |
| ISBN 10 | 0803275838 |
| Title | Buffalo Woman |
| Author | Dorothy M Johnson |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University of Nebraska Press |
| Year published | 1995-11-30 |
| Number of pages | 248 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |