Healing through Storytelling: Linda Hogan's The Woman Who Watches Over the World

이야기를 통한 치유: 린다 호건의 『세상을 지켜보는 여자: 한 원주민의 회고록』

In Woman Watches over the World, Linda Hogan explores the broken identity of herself and her family, the issue of the poverty and the identity crisis, the alcoholism, prevalent in the Native American community and their silenced history. Previous studies have claimed that her memoir contributes to the restoration of Native American identity and history by accusing the violence of white culture, and seeks to recognize a dialogue between native culture and white mainstream culture as well. However they seem to overlook the complicated relations among story, identity, body and nature, to which Hogan as a multi-binded storyteller resorts as a way to break the silence of herself and her tribe for healing. Her own story, as a way to break the silence, becomes the formative drive to reveal the silenced history of her own tribe to lead the young generation to the future. She also understands the formative function of the story, which becomes the vehicle for embodying and connecting themselves to nature. To her, healing lies in the restoration of sympathetic relationship with nature. History, as a type of story, can be made up or mistold just like a story. There may be a blind spot where one can not assess what is true. In spite of the vision of the parallel worlds of the two cultures she presents, there seems to be no immediate solution to the discrimination against the Native American, poverty, identity crisis, and environmental problems which the Native American community faces. However, it can be said that her memoir serves as a rudder by presenting a direction to not only the Native American but also to readers in other cultures in its quest for practical possibilities for the future.