Historical Reparation, Emotional Justice: The Navajo Long Walk in Evangeline Parsons Yazzie’s Her Land, Her Love

Here's the abstract:

While numerous romance novels by white authors featuring Native American characters are published in the US every year, those crafted by American Indian writers are notably scarce. Historical romances, especially, are rare among Indigenous authors due to the challenges in reconciling optimistic resolutions with the historical unresolved grief of Native Americans. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie disrupts this trend with Her Land, Her Love (2014), a historical romance which emanates from traditional stories of the Navajo Long Walk (1864). Refraining from offering a facile resolution to the profound suffering inflicted by this traumatic event, Yazzie utilises historical romance as a means of revision and reparation. The novel critically engages with mainstream romance and the captivity narrative in combination with historical accounts based on the oral tradition to humanise the Navajo, legitimise their grief, discard prevalent stereotypes and denounce ongoing injustice. Yazzie also redefines love as a multifaceted constellation of relationships, including family, community and land, thus underscoring the fundamental Native value of relationality. In the absence of racial justice, the novel offers a form of emotional justice, compelling readers to confront the lasting impact of historical trauma on contemporary Native Americans and prompting reflection on analogous injustices in the modern world.