Conservatives didn't want women to vote, didn't want Indians to become citizens. Identity is a recurring theme in your work. Characters such as Junior in Reservation Blues, John Smith in Indian Killer, and the journalist in The Toughest Indian in the World struggle with their experience of what it means to be an Indian, what they are told it means to be an Indian, and how to present themselves as Indians both to whites and other Indians. It's endemic to everybody's experience. I think we're all struggling with our identity.
Literature is all about the search for identity, regardless of the ethnicity.
In The Toughest Indian, the journalist's primary struggle is not ethnic identity, but his sexuality. I don't think he knows any of his identities. One of the points I was trying to make in that story is that being Indian is just part of who we are. I suppose the big difference in Indian literature is that Indians are indigenous to this country, so all non-Indian literature could be seen as immigrant literature. More Atlantic Unbound interviews .