American indigenous literature in the eyes of the Islamic university students

Rahayu, Mundi ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1089-2551 (2023) American indigenous literature in the eyes of the Islamic university students. Presented at The 20th AsiaTEFL-68th TEFLIN-5th iNELTAL Conference (ASIATEFL 2022), 5 Aug 2022, Malang, Indonesia.

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Abstract

This paper aims at discussing Islamic university students’ response toward an American Indigenous literary work, by applying “reader response theories” in a literary studies class. I analyzed students’ response to the American Indigenous literary work. Rosenblatt (1938) noted that the quality of literature reflects human life and argued that readers’ response to a text depends upon their cultural background and life experience, and their contextual reality, and others. She highlights the uniqueness of individual readers, as the consequences of their histories, belief, values, and context, which shapes their understanding of the text. The text selected in this project is a short story written by Sherman Alexie entitled “What You Pawn I Will Redeem” (in the collection of short stories “Ten Little Indian”, 2003). The story narrates the experiences of an Indian man named Jackson who has become a homeless in a town of Seattle, and he had to take great effort to get back the regalia of his late grandmother in a shop. The selected work has American Indigenous setting, as the writer himself is an Indian Spokane and the narration in the text deals with the daily life of Indian people in American city. The students’ responses are analyzed by culturally thematic analysis and there are three topics that interest students in discussing the work. They are the issues of regalia, the ideas of homelessness, and the drinking habits of the Indian people.

Item Type:	Conference (Paper)
Keywords:	American Indigenous literature; literary class; readers’ response
Subjects:	20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2005 Literary Studies > 200508 Other Literatures in English
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities > Department of English Language and Letters
Depositing User:	Dr Mundi Rahayu
Date Deposited:	23 May 2023 09:25

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