Blue Dawn, Red Earth: New Native American Storytellers

Historically, Native American storytelling has been an oral tradition, but this eclectic collection of 30 short stories by Native Americans is a promising addition to the tribes' growing written literature. ``Words and stories free you so that you might know your own long shadows,'' says Agnes Yellowknee, a tribal librarian in the short story Trafzer created to serve as introduction. With varying degrees of skill, the contributors here describe those shadows-shadows of witches, tricksters, spirits, ghosts or of Native Americans dealing with sometimes gritty contemporary life. The stories range from Gerald Vizenor's ""Oshkiwiinag: Heartlines on the Trickster Express,"" about a dentist whose office is a railroad car, to Anita Endrezze's ``Darlene and the Dead Man,'' in which two sisters have a humorous encounter with a man anxious to quit this life so he can be reborn as a horse. Gloria Bird's ``Rocking in the Pink Light'' eloquently describes a mother's feelings toward her newborn son, while Richard Green's ``A Jingle for Silvy'' and Jason Edwards's ``Dreamland'' are moving tributes to friendship lost and found. Except for Vizenor and a few others, the authors are emerging talents who have been published in small and literary magazines. (Feb.)