IN-PERSON: The Elderwise classroom at the Vineyard Church
Text: Harper Perennial paperback, ISBN, 978-0-06-290995-4
An American Classic: N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968)
Acclaimed author N(avarre) Scott Momaday first received national and international attention in 1968 with his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, House Made of Dawn. Chair of the Pulitzer jury committee, P. Albert Duhamel, wrote: “Our first choice [for the 1969 Fiction Prize] is N. Scott Momaday’s ‘House Made of Dawn,’ because of its eloquence and intensity of feeling, its freshness of vision and subject, its immediacy of theme,” and because it signals “the arrival on the American literary scene of a matured, sophisticated literary artist from the original Americans.” Considered “the first major work of the Native American Renaissance,” House Made of Dawn is set in Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, and Los Angeles, California, focusing on the experiences of Native World War II veteran, Abel. Our first session includes discussion of the novel, and at our second we will view and discuss a video interview titled A Conversation with N. Scott Momaday—Writer’s Symposium by the Sea 2023. Kevin Eyster is Professor Emeritus at Madonna University, where he continues to teach as an adjunct in the Department of Humanities.
