Review by D.L. Birchfield
Aniyunwiya contains prose by 23 contemporary writers of Cherokee ancestry. They are: Carrol Arnett/Gogisgi, Rilla Askew, Marilou Awiakta, Betty Louise Bell, Charles Brashear, E.K. Caldwell, Robert J. Conley, Karen Coody Cooper, Robert Gish, Diane Glancy, Rayna Green, Catron Grieves, Raven Hail, Geary Hobson, Cynthia Kasee, Wilma Mankiller, Ron Rogers, Ralph Salisbury, Jean Starr, Winn Starr, Glen Twist, Eddie Webb, and Ron Welburn. Though the editor, Joseph Bruchac, is of Abenaki ancestry, rather than Cherokee, he has been a recipient of the Cherokee Nation Prose Award. This anthology is yet another fine work resulting from a call for submissions that went out at the historic 1992 conference at the University of Oklahoma, Returning The Gift: A Festival of North American Native Writers, for which Bruchac served as chair and which drew nearly 400 Native literary writers from throughout the upper half of the Western Hemisphere.