ABSTRACT
In her review of Power, Amy Greenwood Baria refers to both Power and Solar Storms as ‘coming of age’ fiction. The term is accurate, but somehow sounds slightly dismissive. True, both novels feature adolescent, first person narrators, who do indeed ‘come of age’ by the end of the story, but more strikingly both narrator-protagonists have been the victims of abuse and bear the scars, both literal and figurative, of childhood traumas. They are both female adolescents with attachment disorders; and on first and subsequent readings I felt that these novels were written with the authority of experience. My readerly sensibilities were confirmed by the publication of The Woman Who Watches Over the World. That ‘Native Memoir’ reveals that childhood abuse and neglect are central to Linda Hogan’s experience, in her own childhood and adolescence, and also through the process of adopting and mothering two Native American daughters, both of whom were victims of severe neglect and abuse prior to their adoption. There is a sense in which Hogan has broken a taboo of silence around these issues, by writing such an honest memoir, and by writing Solar Storms and Power as adult fiction. Contemporary children’s fiction often deals with difficult social problems that the protagonist suffers and learns to overcome. Yet, once this becomes the plot of adult fiction the narrative inevitably is politicized in a number of ways. In this chapter I compare these two novels, in particular by focusing on the ways in which the narration and the text of each are formed by and express the sensitive issues of parental abuse and the resultant childhood disorders. I also consider the proposition that the narratives are written to offer solutions or ‘cures’ for a situation that is arguably endemic in the contemporary Native American population.
