My Grandmother was a Storyteller; She knew her way around Words. She never learned to read and write, but somehow She knew the good of reading and wr… - N. Scott Momaday

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My Grandmother was a Storyteller;
She knew her way around Words.
She never learned to read and write, but somehow
She knew the good of reading and writing;
She had learned how to Listen and Delight.
She had learned that in Words and in Language,
and there only,
She could have whole and consummate Being.
You see for Her, Words were Medicine.
They were Magic and Invisible.
They came from Nothing into Sound and Meaning.
They were beyond price.
They could neither be bought nor sold, and
She never threw Words away.
She told me Stories and
She taught me how to Listen.
I was a Child, and I Listened.

English
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About N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday (February 27, 1934 – January 24, 2024) was a Kiowa novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. His novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, and is considered the first major work of the Native American Renaissance. His follow-up work The Way to Rainy Mountain blended folklore with memoir. Momaday received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 for his work's celebration and preservation of indigenous oral and art traditions. He held twenty honorary degrees from colleges and universities and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Navarre Scott Momaday
Alternative Names: Navarre Scott Mammedaty
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Additional quotes by N. Scott Momaday

The mortar fire had stopped. ...The silence had awakened him—and the low, even mutter of the machine that was coming. ...His vision cleared and he saw the countless leaves dip and sail across the splinters of light. The machine... was coming. ...The sound of the machine brimmed at the ridge ...whole and deafening. His mouth fell open upon the cold, wet leaves, and he began to shake violently. ...Then, through the falling leaves, he saw the machine. It rose up behind the hill, black and massive, looming there in front of the sun, He saw it swell, deepen, and take shape on the skyline, as if it were some upheaval of earth. ...For a moment it seemed apart from the land ...Then it came crashing down to the grade, slow as a waterfall, thunderous, surpassing impact, nestling almost into the splash and boil of debris. He was shaking violently, and the machine bore down upon him, came close, and passed him by. A wind arose and ran along the slope, scattering the leaves.

I looked southward into the plain; there a caravan of covered wagons reached as far as the eye could see. These were the s... I had never seen such a pageant; it was as if the whole proud people, the Diné, had been concentrated into one endless migration. There was a great dignity to them... And when they set up camp in the streets, they were perfectly at home, their dogs about them. They made coffee and fried bread and roasted mutton on their open fires.

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