The Double-Weave of Self and Other: Ethnographic Acts and Autobiographical Occasions in Marilou Awiakta's 'Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom'

In the opening pages of Marilou Awiakta's "Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom," the author offers a metacommentary on her delightfully hybrid text, likening it to a "double-woven basket (Cherokee-style)." The image resonates on many levels with the author's tribal traditions and thus serves to foreshadow the text's wealth of material on Cherokee culture and history, but readers soon discover that Awiakta actually integrates the design of the double-woven basket into the very form of her text. In this article, the author's reading of "Selu" builds on a recognition and appreciation of the form of the text by examining a less explicit but, he argues that the double-weave basket structure serves as a metaphor for the text's complex autobiographical dimensions. The double-weave design of traditional Cherokee basketry is replicated not only in Awiakta's affirmation of both her Celtic-Appalachian and Eastern Band Cherokee roots, but also in her simultaneous expression of a collective tribal identity and an individualistic artistic identity. The author talks about forming autobiography and shaping selfhood, as well as the story of Little Deer and the path to Selu. (Contains 20 notes.)