The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft by Jane Johnston Schoolcraft

The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft Reviews

• 
  Ashley Marie

  Beautiful writing. If you're at all interested in poetry or history, this is an excellent book. The introduction and appendices are extensive, as are the endnotes to each piece. Poetry, short stories and Ojibwe/Chippewa legends, songs, and other small fragments are all collected in this book.
• 
  Mary

  “By the time of her death, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft had already made her mark on American Literature. It’s just that no one realized it.” ~ Bidwell Hollow
  
  To A FRIEND ASLEEP
  
  Awake my friend! the morning's fine,
  Waste not in sleep the day divine,
  Nature is clad in best array,
  The woods, the fields, the flowers are gay;
  The sun is up, and speeds his march,
  O'er heaven's high aerial arch,
  His golden beams with lustre fall,
  On lake and river, cot and hall;
  The dews are sparkling on each spray,
  The birds are chirping sweet and gay,
  The violet shows its beauteous head,
  Within its narrow, figured bed;
  The air is pure, the earth bedight,
  With trees and flowers, life and light,
  All - all inspires a joyful gleam,
  More pleasing than a fairy dream.
  Awake ! the sweet refreshing scene,
  Invites us forth to tread the green,
  With joyful hearts, and pious lays,
  To join the glorious Maker's praise,
  The wond'rous works the paschal lamb,
  The holy, high, and just I Am.
  
  *Bame-wa-wa-ge-zhik-a-quay
  [*Jane Johnston Schoolcraft]
  1800–1842
  
  When I read “To A Friend Asleep” as a tender goodbye in Dennis Cuesta’s book “Stuck in Manistique” I knew I wanted to learn more about Jane Johnston Schoolcraft.
  
  The English translation of her Ojibwe birth name *Bame-wa-wa-ge-zhik-a-quay is ~ Woman of the Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky.
  
  Editor Robert Dale Parker’s in-depth research and commentary in this extraordinary book of The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft is that of a literary scholar. In other words, he knows his stuff! His writings are a bit over my head, yet I was fascinated and gained new insights into the life and work of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft.
  
  • the first Native American literary writer
  • the first known Native American woman writer
  • the first known Native American poet
  • the first known poet to write poems in a Native American language
  • The woman who inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha”
  • The woman who wrote down Ojibwe legends such as The Corn Story (The Origin of Corn) and translated them into English
  • And as is quite common in the history of American Women absolutely NOT the first woman whose husband took all the credit
  
  I deeply appreciate Robert Dale Parker’s respect for Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s literary accomplishments. He has brought her the long overdue attention she deserves.
  
  Live readings of The Poetry of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft can be found on YouTube
• 
  Sarah Rigg

  I was especially interested a few years back in adding to my "to read" list authors who are not only Native American but are from the Great Lakes region specifically, since that's where I live and it's the Native culture I'm most familiar with. This book is a gem in that regard: the complete writings of the first known American Indian literary writer, who was raised in Sault Ste. Marie.
  
  JJS was the daughter of an American Indian - specifically Ojibwe - mother and an Irish-American father, married to Henry Schoolcraft, an early Michigan politician. She's writing in the early 1800s, approximately around the same time the Bronte sisters were writing their novels, maybe a little earlier. Robert Dale Parker provides an 80-ish page introduction that includes a mini-biography of JJS and her family and some analysis of her place in literary history.
  
  To be honest, I liked the mini-biography and the folk stories she translated from Ojibwe better than most of her poetry. A lot of the verse is rhyming doggerel, though I really liked a handful of her poems, including "To the Pine Tree" and a couple poems she wrote about her son William who died when he was a toddler. Also, it's not every day you run across a poem written to console a family who has lost a son to cannibalism! This was an interesting chapter in history and I'm really glad I read it.
• 
  Bianca

  Beautiful stories and poetry that has been ignored for far too long. It is surprising to read such eloquent literature that is a mix of many worlds. I recommend this to anyone who wants to see US history and the Native American history through a new and very underrepresented perspective.
• 
  Laura

  It is so exciting to read poems that spent so much time hidden in time.
• 
  Amanda

  The editor went a bit overboard on the feminist theory in the introduction and short biography of Schoolcraft's life, but I really enjoyed seeing a little bit of what life was like. It was so wild to think about the community and the time period and Schoolcraft reading "The Merchant of Venice". Her poetry is interesting. There really isn't that much of it though.
• 
  Allyson

  "To the Pine Tree"
• 
  Jennifer

  Really excellent introduction to the works of a previously little-known poet. This gave me a lot to build on for a lesson on Schoolcraft from the Norton Anthology (which also draws from this book).