My Father's Song

Ortiz is one of the major figures in the Native American Renaissance, and “My Father’s Song” explores some of the themes associated with this literary movement. The Native American Renaissance, though a problematic term, aims to describe a literary period in America after 1960. This new generation of Native American writers began to flourish and publish for wider audiences. Ortiz, along with N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, James Welch, and many others, published across genres. Earlier literature by these authors tended to depict the often harsh reality of the Native American ethnic experience as a marginalized people in America, along with tribal life and questions of identity. Some writers were writing about the Native experience for a non-Native audience, but a more recent wave grappled with the problem of integration into the predominantly white, Western world, finding success away from a tribe, and dealing with subsequent feelings of alienation. Broadly speaking, authors in the movement sought to reclaim Native American heritage through literature, to revisit and share earlier literature from Native American authors, and to renew interest in traditional tribal expression, from oral tales and myths to song, rituals, and ceremonies. Criticism of the term stems from its implication that Native Americans were not engaged in significant cultural work prior to this “rebirth,” thus obscuring millennia of rich Native traditions.