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The Names: A Memoir by N. Scott Momaday. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. 170 pages. The Names is a touching memoir by the half-Kiowa, one quarter Cherokee and French mixed blood author N. Scott Momaday. In this memoir, he describes his experiences growing up in various places: Oklahoma, near Rainy Mountain, Arizona, and New Mexico at the Jemez Pueblo. Momaday describes his mother, Natachee, a woman who surrounded him with books and inspired him with the gift to write, and his father, Huan-toa, a skilled painter whom Momaday would later emulate. Momaday was gifted with the ability to write at an early age, so at mission schools, he had an advantage over other students: "I wwas in that position of great advantage again, that of being alone among my classmates at home in the English language" (127). At the Jemez Pueblo, Momaday is a stranger, although he shares a common Native American ancestry with the Jemez. He describes the Native American philosophy of the timeless quality of nature in deeply poetic terms: "The events of one's life take place, take place. How often have I used this expression, and how often have I stopped to think what it means? Events do indeed take place, they have meaning in relation to the things around them. And a part of my life happened to take place at Jemez. I existed in that landscape, and then my existence was indivisible with it. I placed my shadow there in the hills, my voice in the wind that ran there, in those old mornings and afternoons and evenings" (142). For anyone interested in a view of what it is like to grow up Native American in the 20th century, this is a profoundly poetic portrait of one of America's best writers. | |||
