Experience in an undergraduate literature class while at Richard Stockton State College of New Jersey turned Patrice Hollrah, director of the UNLV Writing Center, on to the writings of Native American women. Her interest deepened when she came to UNLV and studied the genre under the direction of English professor P. Jane Hafen, whose own work about Native American writers was chronicled in this column in fall 2002.

In The Old Lady Trill, Hollrah examines the female characters in the works of prominent Native American writers Zitakla-Sa, Leslie Marmon Silko, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexie. Why did she select the works of these particular authors?

"I was immediately drawn to the literature of Native American women writers because it makes me laugh and cry," says Hollrah. "I later learned that my visceral response was more than just an emotional reaction to an imaginative textual creation. These literatures move beyond the emotional and intellectual because they deal with issues that affect real contemporary native peoples who engage daily in acts of continuance and survival."

The first two chapters – featuring Marmon Silko's "Lullaby" and Zitkala-Sa's autobiographical essays – are survival stories with strong female subjects. "When I started reading Native American literature, I discovered there are many strong female characters and I wanted to understand why," Hollrah says.

Her work offers more than textual analysis. She interviewed several of the authors to gather personal feedback for her studies.