American Gypsy

In American Gypsy, a collection of six plays, Diane Glancy uses a mélange of voices to invoke the myths and realities of modern Native American life. Glancy intermixes poetry and prose to address themes of gender, generational relationships, acculturation, myth, and tensions between Christianity and traditional Native American belief systems. The six plays included, "The Woman Who Was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance," "The Women Who Loved House Trailers," "American Gypsy," "Jump Kiss," "Lesser Wars," and "The Toad (Another Name for the Moon) Should Have a Bite," run the gamut from monologues to multi-character pieces and vary in length from fifteen minutes to over an hour. Glancy concludes the collection with a thought-provoking essay on Native American playwriting Diane Glancy is Professor of English at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota. She has received the Cherokee Medal of Honor from the Cherokee Honor Society. She is also an award-winning author of poetry, short stories, and plays. Her works include War Cries, a collection of plays, and Firesticks and The Voice That Was in Travel, both short story collections published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Her collection of essays, Claiming Breath, won the North American Indian Prose Award and an American Book Award.