Linda Hogan, “Heritage,” UA 284-286.
Reader: Laura Jones
Respondent: Noelle Camp

Linda Hogan

She was born into a military family and so she was not raised around her extended Native American family (which was the Chickasaw from Oklahoma). She now lives in Colorado and teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  She has written several novels and books of poetry. She also has also published several essays about environmental issues, which she is very involved with. She has been a wildlife rehabilitation volunteer, has been hired as a consultant to show the American Indian point of view concerning the Endangered Species Act and has organized a conference of Alaskan tribal leaders to discuss the problems of endangered animal and plant species.

Objectives:

Objective 1d, the “Color Code”: Hogan uses skin color in a couple of areas in the poem.

Objective 3b, Native American Indian alternative narrative “Loss and Survival”: The poem is about her family and the loss of what once was in her culture.

Interpretation:

Hogan is thinking about her family and why she is who she is. She sees the traits she has and where they are in her family. There is also a sense of loss in the poem. She writes about crops and fields that have been destroyed.

 Apparently, she has white skin and most of her family has darker skin. She writes that her whiteness is shame.

Hogan is remembering who her family is and the secrets that they carried throughout the years.

Literary Term:

Simile: Comparing two things using like or as. Hogan writes, “From my uncle the whittled wood that rattles like bones and is white and smells like all our old houses”

Questions:

1. Why do you think she wrote this poem?
2. Why does she write so much more about her grandmother than her mother, father, grandfather or uncle?