Title
Englishman, Your Color is Deceitful: Unsettling the North Woods in Janet Lewis’s The Invasion
Document Type
Essay
Annotation
Compares Hemingway’s treatment of the Anishinaabe people in “Indian Camp” with former Oak Park classmate Janet Lewis’s depiction in her 1932 novel, The Invasion, arguing that while Hemingway ultimately erases the presence of the indigenous peoples of northern Michigan, Lewis calls for the recognition of Anishinaabe nationhood. Spry contends that Hemingway’s portrayal of the noble, yet primitive, Anishinaabeg obscures the brutal impact of Euro-American domination of Anishinaabe territory that resulted in indigenous dispossession and impoverishment. Spry concludes that devoid of its context of colonization, the story requires the reader only to commiserate with the disappearance of the Natives, thus rendering reading an act of public consumption.
Published in
Our War Paint is Writers’ Ink: Anishinaabe Literary Transnationalism
Date
2018
Pages
65-99
Citation
Spry, Adam. “Englishman, Your Color is Deceitful: Unsettling the North Woods in Janet Lewis’s The Invasion.” In Our War Paint is Writers’ Ink: Anishinaabe Literary Transnationalism, 65-99. Albany: SU of New York P, 2018.