Today, the Modern Language Association of America announced LeAnne Howe as the winner of the first ever MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages for her book Choctalking on Other Realities! Next month, Howe will be presented with this prize during the annual MLA convention in Vancouver. The selection committee praised Choctalking on Other Realities, stating: “In Choctalking on Other Realities, LeAnne Howe integrates high theory with travel narrative, personal reflection, humor, and analysis to craft a formally innovative work of anticolonial literary and cultural criticism that teaches its audiences about the inner workings of Indigenous epistemologies. As the inaugural winner of this new prize, Howe’s book sets a high standard by offering a field-defining study that is generative in its narrative performance of tribally based aesthetic and theoretical sophistication. Similar to N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Storyteller, Choctalking on Other Realities promises to instruct and incite scholars of Native American literatures for decades to come.”
The prize is one of sixteen awards given to writers in various disciplines. Visit the MLA’s website for the full list of prize winners. Congratulations on this award, LeAnne!