N. Scott Momaday Books In Order

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N. Scott Momaday is a literary fiction novelist and poet who was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. He was born to a Kiowan Indian and a mother of Cherokee and European roots.
For much of his childhood, he lived in the Jemez, Apache, and Navajo Pueblo reservations in the Southwest, where his parents worked as teachers.

When he was older, he went to the University of New Mexico, where he got his bachelor’s degree, and then to Stanford University for his master’s and doctorate.
“House of Dawn” his 1968 published work was the winner of the Pulitzer and made his name as one of the most promising voices in literary fiction in the US.

His subsequent works have come to be known for their power and richness that result from blending classical European forms and Native American oral traditions.
Momaday’s works include more than a dozen works of children’s stories, poetry, prose, and plays.

In addition to the Pulitzer, he has been the recipient of several honors including 12 honorary degrees, a National Medal of Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy of American Poets Prize.
Outside of that, he works at the University of Arizona, where he has been a Regents Professor of Humanities since 1982.

The author N. Scott Momaday spent the first year of his life on the Indian reservation, which is the same place his father was born and raised.

When he was just a year old, his parents moved to Arizona where his father worked as a painter while his mother wrote children’s books.

While he was growing up, he was exposed to the many traditions of the Kiowa Indians in addition to those of the other Indian tribes such as the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo Indian cultures in the Southwest.

From very early on, he got very interested in literature and was deep into poetry. As a teenager, he went to the University of New Mexico and following graduation, he spent a year teaching at the Jicarila Apache reservation.
After about a year, he went to Stanford where he won a creative writing fellowship. Working under the guidance of Yvor Winters the critic and poet, he got his English literature doctoral degree in 1963.

Thereafter, he was offered a teaching position at the University of California, where he taught for several years. For his doctoral dissertation, he annotated and edited The Complete Poems of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, the 19th-century poet.

In 2007, N. Scott Momaday was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush for his work and writings which preserve and celebrate Native American oral tradition and art.
In 2011, he published a collection of his verse titled “Again the Far Morning.”

Momaday currently lives with his family in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he teaches at the University of New Mexico as a visiting professor focusing on Native American oral tradition and creative writing.
In 2017, he was the central subject to N. Scott Momaday a documentary film that was on American Masters on PBS.

N. Scott Momaday’s novel “House Made of Dawn” is a work that chronicles the journey of Abel the GI who has come back home from the Second World War.
He has made his home in Walatowa in Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico but soon begins to feel that home is not home anymore.

All he needs is a push from the federal administration, which intends to terminate all reservations and he leaves and heads to the city. But in the city, he feels even more uncomfortable, most probably as a result of his PTSD.
This is a condition that would not have a diagnosis until after the war in Vietnam and it is particularly terrible for Native American GIs.

The story begins with Abel returning home from the war and describes several aspects of his life following the chaotic hell of the Second World War. He will later contrast it with his life in California, where he seems even more out of place and more lost.
The author tells his story from the perspectives of different actors, all with very different takes on the situation. There is the European view, the Europeanized-Native view, and the Native-Native view all of which are held by different individuals.

N. Scott Momaday’s “The Way to Rainy Mountain” looks into the misfortune of Kiowan children who were unlucky enough to be sent to White boarding schools.

The administration believed that they could bleach every native American trait from them and instead substitute them with European traits.

The kids lost their Kiowan religion and language and ended up only with fragmentary knowledge of the old days of the tribe. It was a time when the Kiowa were a proud and strong people and completely independent in action and life.
The author relates these fragments in her novel that include small pieces of tradition that he picked up from history and family members with a complete and coherent description now buried and lost in graves all over southwestern Oklahoma.
He starts with the origin myth of the Kiowa and how they emerged from a hollow log and onto the Great Southern Plains, where they lived for centuries.

He tells of Kiowan legends including historical notes alongside fragments of memories from his childhood, most of which he learned from his grandmother.

“Earth Keeper” by N. Scott Momaday is a dazzling work in which the author recalls the many stories passed through the generations, as it illuminates the world as a sacrosanct place of abundance and wonder.
The novel is at once a warning and a celebration, in addition to being an impassioned defense of all that the planet may lose.

Born among the Kiowa in Lawton, Oklahoma, and having spent his childhood in the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo reservations in the Southwest, he has a good understanding of these areas of the Earth.

In this novel, Momaday reflects on the influence of the land on his people as he is convicted of how much they love and belong to the American land. At its core, it is an offering to the earth and a declaration of belonging.
In this wondrous and wise work, Momaday shares memories and stories throughout his life and includes stories that show a profound reverence and connection to the land and the natural world.

The author offers both a warning and homage, as he shows the earth as a sacred palace of beauty and wonder, a source of healing and strength that needs to be protected and honored before it is too late.
He simply and eloquently reminds us of the importance of being keepers of the earth.