Blood/Memory in N. Scott Momaday’s ＂The Names: A Memoir＂ and Linda Hogan’s ＂The Woman Who Watches over the World: A Native Memoir＂

Drawing on N. Scott Momaday's ”The Names: A Memoir” and Linda Hogan's ”The Woman Who Watches over the World: A Native Memoir” as comparative texts, this essay dissects the dynamics of indigenous memories as they are retrieved and formulated through critical encounters of disparate bloodlines and cultural legacies, in effect, through the blurring of boundaries between the indigenous and the alien. Momaday provocatively juxtaposes blood with memory and, in so doing, significantly transforms the ”taxonomy of delegitimation through genetic mixing into an authenticating genealogy of stories and story-telling.” Both Momaday and Hogan write back on colonial discourse by re-inscribing the othered Native American memory and history into genetic codes that are carried through and passed down from generation to generation. The genetic constitution preserves memory in the body. Whereas the government's designation of American Indian ”blood quantum” problematizes Native American identities, ”blood memory” holds tight on Native American bloodlines, and by naming the genetic ties to specific Indian nations, particularly to illustrious ancestry, Native American authors recuperate an integrated Native self. They count on memory to be their genes of survival, of ”survivance.”