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Quote by Paula Gunn Allen

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Off the Reservation: Reflections on Boundary-busting Border-crossing Loose Canons

This book delves into the theme of boundary-busting, exploring the lives and perspectives of those who challenge conventional limits in their personal and professional endeavors. It offers insights into the challenges and rewards of crossing borders and breaking free from societal norms. more

Author

Paula Gunn Allen
Paula Gunn Allen

Paula Gunn Allen was an American poet known for her profound understanding and engagement with Native American culture. Her poetry blends Native American mythology with modern poetic techniques, showcasing rich imagination and profound emotion. more

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“What the Indians are saying is that they are recognizing the right of wilderness to be wilderness. Wilderness is not an extension of human need or of human justification. It is itself and it is inviolate, itself. This does not mean that, therefore, we become separated from it, because we don't. We stay connected if, once in our lives, we learn exactly what that connection is between our heart, our womb, our mind, and wilderness. And when each of us has her wilderness within her, we can be together in a balanced kind of way. The forever, we have that within us.”

“Some feminist critics debate whether we take our meaning and sense of self from language and in that process become phallocentric ourselves, or if there is a use of language that is, or can be, feminine. Some, like myself, think that language is itself neither male nor female; it is creatively expansive enough to be of use to those who have the wit and art to wrest from it their own significance. Even the dread patriarchs have not found a way to 'own' language any more than they have found a way to 'own' earth (though many seem to believe that both are possible).”

“Breath is life, and the intermingling of breaths is the purpose of good living. This is in essence the great principle on which all productive living must rest, for relationships among all the beings of the universe must be fulfilled; in this way each individual life may also be fulfilled.”