The current (November/December 2007) and previous (September/October 2007) issues of World Literature Today both include materials of possible interest to those concerned with the cultural richness and complexity of Oklahoma. While WLT is not an open access publication, several contributions from each issue are made available OA on the magazine’s website. The cover theme of the current issue is Women and War, but it also includes a “Oklahoma Centennial Tribute” section that includes interviews and creative writing by a number of relevant writers. The introduction to this section as well as the interview with, and poems by, Joy Harjo are available online.
The theme of the earlier issue was Endangered Languages. Among the contributors to this issues with Oklahoma concerns were N. Scott Momaday, Gus Palmer, Jr., and our SNOMNH collaborator Mary S. Linn. Mary’s paper surveyed the state of native languages in Oklahoma. I also contributed an article on “The Paradoxical Power of Endangerment: Traditional Native American Music and Dance in Eastern Oklahoma.” Because WLT is published as a magazine (available at newsstands now!), it works within pretty tight word length requirements. To provide readers with my sources and to flesh the story out a bit, I composed a companion bibliographic essay to go with the magazine article. The editors were kind enough to post both of these work back to back on the WLT website where they can be found here.
While it takes the whole world as its concern, it is good and appropriate that WLT (which is published by and at the University of Oklahoma) attends to matters in its own backyard.
