Rituals to cope with change in women’s lives: Judith Minty’s Dancing the Fault

In Dancing the Fault, a book of concise poems published in 1991, Native American writer Judith Minty focuses on the theme of change, especially changes in family relationships as the children grow up and the parents age. These changes create dichotomies and tension, which require creativity to resolve. She describes rituals that her family and friends have evolved to cope with life’s challenges and to build a bridge between human consciousness and nature. The images in Dancing the Fault often derive from Native American beliefs about the interpenetration of the human and natural worlds. I will draw on current anthropological approaches to ritual to illuminate Minty’s poems.