The Way of Kinship: An Anthology of Native Siberian Literature is the first anthology of its kind in English. Drawn from seven distinct ethnic groups of Siberia, this body of work contains prose fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction which chronicle traditional Siberian cultures threatened by contemporary industrialization and introduce readers to current literary movements in Native Siberian literature. “The compilers looked for authors and pieces vitally necessary in an overview for an English-speaking audience, selections that have already become classics...works that are aesthetically valid....The goal was to capture the flavor, the scope, and most of the essence of Native Siberian writing” (xx).
The territories that are the topics of the stories cover the entire expanse of Siberia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Chukotka Peninsula in the east. These territories have been the ancient home of about twenty native groups belonging to several linguistic families. Seven ethnic groups—Khanty, Taiga Nenets, Evenk, Yukagir, Nivkh, Udegeh, and Chukchee—are represented in the prose and poetry by the leading Native Siberian writers and in drawings by two Khanty artists.
The anthology begins with a foreword by Native American writer N. Scott Momaday and an introduction by Russian scholar Alexander Vaschenko. Each section of the book provides a short biography of the author/artist, contextualizing the works that follow. “A Note on Translation” by Claude Clayton Smith and “Suggestions for Further Readings” are also valuable supplements to this body of work.
Alexander Vaschenko draws attention in his introduction to the volume to the fascinating traditions the ethnic literatures represent, “traditions increasingly alienated in the postcolonial era” (xiv). In the anthology, the reader will encounter recordings of native oral texts that speak of the sacredness of Mother Earth as humanity’s shared home, the unity of all living beings, and the mythic power of the spoken word. Other narratives relate myths and legends, invocations and ritual songs, fairy tales and puzzles, and provide poetic descriptions of the natives’ natural habitats. Several pieces recall the fascinating Bear Feast ritual, whose songs Momaday relates to the oral traditions of the Anglo-Saxons and the Navajo. Several pieces in the volume, in attempts to articulate the complexities of today, weave together native traditional mythologies and new contemporary content. They speak of ecological issues, question the wholesale advances of industrialization threatening both the environment and livelihoods of the natives, and draw attention to the governmental neglect of ethnic minorities’ rights. Beauty and sadness, awe and tragedy, and hope and anxiety are presented in the writings and visual arts of the anthology.
Momaday writes in the foreword: “The writings here, while altogether modern in one sense, are based on a literature, albeit oral, that has existed for thousands of years. They are the reflections of people who have lived long on the earth, on their own terms, in harmony with the powers of nature....These stories, poems, songs give us a way, a sacred way, into a world that we ought to know for its own sake. It is our own world, after all” (xi). This quote explains the choice of the title for the volume, The Way of Kinship. In fact, the word “kin” and its derivatives (kinship, kinsmen), as well as semantically related ones (clan, clansmen, family, relative(s), ancestors, ancestral, etc.) abound in the narratives, signaling to the reader that we all, like Captain Amundsen and the ship’s cook Kakot in Yuri Rytkheu’s story “Kakot’s Numbers,” are members “of the human family” (228).
The Way of Kinship will provide a good resource for courses in comparative literature, ethnic diversity, ethnic literatures, cultural understanding, cultural anthropology, and environmental studies. Many cultural interconnections among indigenous literatures make the volume an excellent supplement to courses in Native American literature. Any general reader interested in ethnic literatures or new aesthetic experiences will find the content of this unique anthology fascinating.
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[Review length: 637 words • Review posted on September 21, 2011]