Littlecrow-Russell’s poetry book wins award

“The Secret Powers of Naming,” a poetry collection by Sara Littlecrow-Russell, director of the Center for Educational Policy Advocacy, has been named one of 10 winners of the annual Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards.

Sponsored by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, the book awards honor works that advance human rights by analyzing the causes of intolerance and discrimination.

“The Secret Powers of Naming” is Littlecrow-Russell’s first published collection. Her work has been published in a number of journals, including the Massachusetts Review, American Indian Quarterly and U.S. Latino Review. Her poem “Wounded Knees” was a national semifinalist for the Discovery/The Nation prize in 2003.

Littlecrow-Russell’s poetry emerges from the ancient and sacred tradition of storytelling, where legends were told not just to entertain but also to teach. The power of the storyteller is the power of naming – to establish a relationship, a connection, a sense of meaning. Each of the poems in “The Secret Powers of Naming” explores how names imposed by outsiders both collide with and merge with the identities that Native Americans create for themselves.

The book was published last year by the University of Arizona Press.

December 17, 2007.

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