Sifters: Native American Women's Lives (Viewpoints on American Culture) - Softcover

Theda Perdue is Professor of History at the University of North Carolina. She is the author of Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 (1998) and The Cherokee Removal (1995).

"A masterful collection. Clearly and concisely leads the reader through the varied and changing environments which these women faced, and whets the appitite for further inquiry into this fascinating subject. Any student of Native American life will benefit from reading this book."--Indigenous Nations Studies Journal

"A very useful adjunct to an American history survey course. A welcome addition to the rapidly growing body of literature on Native American women."--Western Historical Quarterly

"The way in which the individual authors within this volume have sifted these stories from the available evidence 'serves to personalize and feminize the story of Native America.' Consequently, reading about the fourteen women described in this book should appeal to both scholars and the general public. The editor and authors are to be particularly commended for the lively writing style that characterizes each of the bio-histories in Sifters. It will serve as stimulating reading for students across a variety of disciplines: Indian history, United States history, and Women's Studies."--Biography

"In these carefully and intriguingly rendered bio-histories of Native women, Sifters accomplishes just what its title implies. Sifters separates the life-sustaining kernels of historical truth about these women from the nutritionless functional chaff usually provided an audience unaware of its inadequate diet. In their re-reading of these lives--of women we thought we knew, women we've genuinely misapprehended, and women we've needed to know-the book's authors also re-read and reframe significant moments in and ideas about Native history, American history."--Rayna Green, Smithsonian Institution

"The biographies presented in Sifters are equally compelling and complex, each providing glimpses into the worlds in which Native women have made choices about their lives in the past 500 years...An important contribution to the growing scholarship on Native American women and would be an excellent selection for use in classes in Native American and Women's history."--H-Net

"Sifters is a wonderful collection of stories that would be useful to any teacher of U.S. history."--The History Teacher

"Taken as a whole this book presents a well reasoned, well-researched account of a selected group of women that meets historians' and academicians' needs for information regarding specific American Indian women and their interactions with the larger socio-historical period as well as the consequences of their existence in that larger framework."--J. Anne Calhoun, University of New Mexico

"Sifters remains a valuable contribution to our understanding of both the continuity and diversity marking the lives of American Indian women at crucial persiods in history."--Florida Historical Quarterly