Narrating the American West: New Forms of Historical Memory By Jo ...

Foreword

What stories are being told about the American West? What do these stories tell us about the region’s history? In this probing new work of critical analysis, Jordana Finnegan, herself a westerner, is aware of the shortcomings of older western stories in which white men heroically subjugate open space. But Finnegan thinks harder than most westerners about the “new western” narratives that may appear to challenge the older stories. It is true that women now tell stories about the West. It is also true that men tell stories that reveal the failures of cherished western myths. Athough Finnegan appreciates the sometimes revisionist impulses of the newer narratives, her careful readings of them alongside those by Native Americans and Chicanas expose how the “new western” narratives continue to erase fundamental historical realities. Narrating the American West challenges us to recognize that even the best of the new narratives reproduce the relations of colonialism upon which the American West continues to be built.