Description
When John Joseph Mathews began his career as a writer, he was one of only a small number of Native American authors writing for a national audience. Today he is widely recognized as a founder and shaper of twentieth-century Native American literature. Twenty Thousand Mornings is Mathews's intimate chronicle of his formative years.
Twenty Thousand Mornings is full of rich, witty, and poignant descriptions of daily life in the Osage Nation when Kansas was 'exotic' and 'romantic' and international travel meant going to 'the States.' Mathews takes us into a world where boys and girls play shinny, study 'jography' with the Hussar-like schoolteacher Mrs. Tucker, and flee tornados. We ascend with him into the air above Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, where he learned to fly for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War I, and wonder at his casual failure to appear on time at Oxford. Twenty Thousand Mornings, and Susan Kalter's brilliantly researched, painstakingly detailed introduction , will reshape what we think of John Joseph Mathews, the American Indian autobiography tradition, and Native identities and politics before the American Indian literary renaissance."" - James H. Cox, author of Muting White Noise: Native American and European Novel Traditions
John Joseph Mathews (1895-1979), a mixed-blood Osage, was the author of Wah'Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road;Talking to the Moon; Sundown; Life and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W. Marland;and Twenty Thousand Mornings: An Autobiography.
Susan Kalter is editor of Twenty Thousand Mornings, an autobiography by John Joseph Mathews, and Professor of American Literature and Native American Studies at Illinois State University.
Charles H. Red Corn (1936-2017) was an independent writer living in Norman, Oklahoma. He is a member of the Tzi-zhu-wash-ta-ghi Clan (Peace Clan) of the Osage Tribe.