Author: Amanda Burleson
Date: 2005-02-27

Joseph Bruchac

Quotes

Bibliography

By: Amanda Burleson

Joseph and his wife Carol, confounded the Greenfield Literary Center and the Greenfield Review Press. The Greenfield Review Press publishes multicultural books and recordings.
The Greenfield review Press
2 Middle Grove road
Greenfield Center, NY 12833

Joseph Bruchac

Joseph Bruchac “brew-shack” is a Native American children’s author. Bruchac’s interest in writing about Native Americans stems from his own Native American decent. Mr. Bruchac was raised by his maternal grandparents at the base of the Adirondack Mountains in New York. Though Bruchac’s grandfather never admitted his Native American heritage, he taught Joseph they ways of the Abenaki peoples. Through his relationship with his grandfather, Joseph’s connection to his culture was developed.
Mr. Bruchac says that his writing career began by listening to stories that were told at Bowman’s Store, a general store which his grandparents owned. He says that being a listener lead him to reading and then reading lead him to writing.
Joseph Bruchac went on to Cornell University to get a B.A., and once he was married he and his wife moved to Ghana to teach at a secondary school. The book that changed Joseph Bruchac’s life was Things Fall Apart by Achebe. He read this book before leaving for Ghana in 1965. Things Fall Apart is a Nigerian novel about the conflict between colonialism and traditional culture in West Africa. This book along with his experience in Africa, showed Joseph Bruchac many things that were crucial in his development as a Native American writer. “Things Fall Apart showed me how proverbs and traditional storytelling can be woven into the western novel, how English can be molded to reflect other languages and other cultures, how the indigenous view of the world can make itself heard.
Once Bruchac returned to the United States he received his M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse and a PhD in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio.

http://www.greenfieldreview.org/
http://www.josephbruchac.com/
http://www.alibris.com/
http://www.fulcrum-resources.com/html/bruchac.html
http://www.almudo.com/
http://www.classzone.com/novelguides/authors/bruchac.cfm
http://www.darbycreekpublishing.com/bruchac.htm
http://www.darbycreekpr.smartwriters.com/index.2ts?page=bruchac
http://members.aol.com/poison64/nagifs/gifs.html
http://www.nationalbook.org/bookchanged_jbruchac.html
http://www.wordsmith.org/chat/bruchac.html

Abenaki History

Joseph Bruchac is a descendant of the Abenaki “people of the dawn” tribe. The Abenaki tribe is of the Algonquian language family and have lived in what is now the North Eastern United states and South eastern Canada for over 10,000 years. The western band of the Abenaki tribe is the branch that Joseph Bruchac descends from directly. The western branch lived in what is now Vermont, New York, New Hampshire and Maine. Abenaki Indians lived in wig-wams or long houses, raised food, hunted, and fished. They moved from place to place in a seasonal pattern but returned to centralized longhouses for winter. Abenaki’s often traveled in birch bark canoes because of so many rivers and lakes in their region, especially Lake Champlain.
The Abenaki tribe was one of the first native nations to encounter Europeans in North America. By the 1760’s they had fought five wars against the English in order to stop the invasion of their land. They often sided with French in the struggle to protect their lands. The Abenaki’s had the reputation of being fierce warriors in the Seven Years War 1756-1763, otherwise known as the French and Indian War. As they lost more and more land the tribe moved further and further North to Quebec, Canada. Eventually the Abenaki peoples were reduced to small numbers due to wars and disease. New settlers ignored Abenaki rights to land and today only one federally recognized Abenaki community exists. This federally recognized community is located on a reservation off Penobscots of Indian Island, Maine.

Greenfield Review Press

Joseph Bruchac has a diverse writing repertoire. He has written biographies, autobiographies, teacher’s resources, picture books, informational books, folktales, fictional novels, plays, and poetry,.
All of these writings have undertones of Bruchac’s Native American Heritage. Though Bruchac is of Abenaki decent, many of his writings explore other Native American Tribe’s perspectives.

Bruchac’s Writing Range

“My firm belief, is that when perceived properly, when presented and used with sensitivity and balance, ideas of multiculturalism can empower all of our children.”
“A story is a way both of seeing the world and experiencing the world. When you hear a story, you can find yourself in that story. That story is the result of the things that people have seen and heard and understood, often for many generations before you.”
“Yet my identity has been affected less by my middle European ancestry and Christian teachings than by that small part of my blood which is Native American”