'It's not a matter of choice'

“Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.” – N. Scott Momaday

 

Native American Momaday, a Kiowa was a novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet and winner of both the Pulitzer Prize (for his novel House Made of Dawn) and National Medal of Arts.  While “House” has been called “A Classic,” he is perhaps best known for the novel/memoir/folklore work The Way to Rainy Mountain.

 

Momaday grew up on Reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, and earned degrees from the University of New Mexico Stanford, where he also began his writing career, focusing first on poetry.  

 

Also a renowned teacher and speaker, he was one of the nation’s first Native American academics and created a curriculum based on American Indian literature and mythology.   In addition to his national honors, he was awarded some two dozen honorary degrees and was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Selected for the Native American Hall of Fame in 2018, Momaday died in 2024.

 

 “I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain,” Momaday said.   “None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable.”