LS 5903 MULTICULTURAL LITERATURE

A. Smith, Cynthia Leitich. JINGLE DANCER. New York: Morrow Junior, 2000. Illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright and Ying-Hwa Hu.

B. PLOT SUMMARY

We find Jenna, our main character, daydreaming with the memory of her Grandmother Wolfe dancing the jingle dance at the last powwow. Later talking to her Grandmother she is told that she can dance the jingle dance in a troupe of young girls. Jenna’s excitement is very high. She has to be creative about how to get enough cone shaped jingles for her skirt before the next powwow. An Indian girl’s skirt must have 4 rows of jingles but Grandmother tells her they will not have time to mail order and get them back in time for the next powwow. Jenna watches a videotape of Grandma Wolfe doing the jingle dance over and over while practicing her own jingle. Jenna is distressed that even if she can dance her dress will not be able to sing without the special jingles. Jenna visits Indian women that live nearby: Great-aunt Sis, Mrs. Scott, and her cousin Elizabeth. Each gives her 1 row of jingles to sew onto her dress. On her journey back to Grandmother Wolfe’s house Jenna decides to ask her for a row of jingles to borrow. Jenna and her Grandmother spend a week of evenings sewing on her jingles. Jenna does a beautiful jingle dance with other young Native American girls. All the ladies that Jenna borrowed jingles for her dress from were unable to dance at the next powwow so Jenna serves as the family and neighborhood representative. It makes Jenna happy and her family and neighbors very proud.

C. CRITICAL ANALYSIS (INCLUDING CULTURAL MARKERS)

Jingle Dancer is a beautiful book. One can almost hear and feel the rhythms of the dance as Jenna learns to become a Jingle Dancer like her Grandmother. The illustrations look extremely authentic; the hair styles of braids, dark hair and eyes of the characters, the costume/regalia of Grandmother and Jenna, two male Indians watching the dance have on two different types of feathered head gear.

The emphasis on family, tradition, and storytelling that are so important to Native Americans is witnessed throughout the book. Great-aunt Sis lives right down the road, a neighbor named Mrs. Scott is close by, and her cousin Elizabeth
is within walking distance as well. The food in the story is authentic as the author explains in his detailed notes at the end of the book about fry bread and Indian tacos.

I think one of the very best features of the story is showing the full circle of a modern Indian’s daily life. Cousin Elizabeth is a successful attorney and she has a big case due. Elizabeth asks Jenna if she will dance for her and Jenna promises. Mrs. Scott will be busy selling Indian tacos and fry bread at the powwow so she too asks Jenna to dance in her stead. Great-aunt Sis is looking forward to being present at the powwow but she asks Jenna to dance for her because her legs “don’t work so well anymore.” Sharing is evident throughout the story. Even Jenna’s beaded moccasins had belonged to Grandmother Wolfe when she was a girl. The homes are in suburbia, not on a reservation and the pictures of a dishwasher in the kitchen and street full of subdivision homes with garages in front are typical middle class America. I thought that showing a school child and an attorney who had a rather typical life many days put great importance on their family and extended family during special Indian days is very important. To show modern day Native Americans that have pay homage to the past and pass down its traditions while embracing typical middle class life is very healthy and realistic. Within any culture or ethnic group there are things that the group does that are like other groups and there are some special traditions that each culture, tribe, and neighborhood share. Showing Jenna in jeans and sneakers and helping in the kitchen and making her costume are representative of the 2 facets of her life. Jenna is also an unselfish girl. She doesn’t want to take but 1 row of jingles from each of her loved ones because she doesn’t want their skirts to loose their voice and be unable to sing.

The telling of time each day is spoken in lyrical terms, as the passing of time being both miraculous and ordinary to Jenna and her family. The text includes time and space phrases that include, “as Moon kissed Sun good night, as Sun fetched morning, as Sun arrived at midcircle, as Sun caught a glimpse of Moon.”

The last two pages of the book are extensive author notes and a glossary of 4 terms repeated in the story. Smith explains that in the story Jenna was a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and is also of Ojibway (Chippewa/Anishinabe) descent. Jenna lives in a contemporary intertribal community with her family in Oklahoma and the powwow is intertribal as well. The traditional home of the Ojibway is near the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and northward into Canada. Ojibway women were the originators of jingle dancing. Smith explains the story of a bat playing baseball as told to Jenna by Great-aunt Sis is a traditional Muscogee story. The unique jingles make a sound like, “tink tink, tink tink” where many say sounds like rain falling on a tin roof. The author goes on to tell the importance of the number four in the story as being sacred to many Native Americans as it reminds them of the four seasons, the four directions, the four stages of life, and four colors of man. The story seems perfectly linked to history and tradition. The joy of Jenna as she dances and the joy and pride her family takes at birthing or initiating a new jingle dancer are evident from the tone of the book and the detailed glowing illustrations.

D. REVIEW EXCERPTS

Kirkus Reviews praise the resourcefulness of Jenna in finding a way to come up with jingles and goes on to say, “The watercolor illustrations clearly and realistically depict what is happening in the story. The layout of the book is straightforward—mostly doublepage spreads that extend all the way to the edges of the paper. Jenna lives in what looks like a nice suburban house, the others seem solidly middleclass, and cousin Elizabeth is a lawyer. The author is deliberately showing us, it would seem, that all Native Americans are not poor or live on rundown reservations. A useful portrayal of an important cultural event in a Creek girl's year.

Reviewer Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA writes in School Library Journal, “This picture book will not only satisfy a need for materials on Native American customs, but will also be a welcome addition to stories about traditions passed down by the women of a culture

Reviews accessed from:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780688162412&itm=1

E. CONNECTIONS

Another family story about Native American traditions is Joseph Bruchac’s FIRST STRAWBERRIES: A CHEROKEE STORY

Smith has a multitude of stories about other young Native Americans. One such is RAIN IS NOT MY INDIAN NAME