Subtitled A Medicine Woman's Sourcebook, Paula Gunn Allen's Grandmothers of the Light guides the reader into the "void"--the Great Mystery--where the power of female thought is essential to creativity. This assertion of Native American myths concerning the origin and processes of life, a metaphorical return to the womb, is for Allen, an affirmation of gender and cultural identity, a reclamation of personal and cultural self-awareness which results in transforming energy. "She finds that in the void there is energy, and it is an energy that is self-aware." Evidence of this awareness is apparent in Allen's reinstatement of female significance into Native American myths and rituals, which she describes in "Kochinnenako in Academe" as a "feminist-tribal" exploration of gynocentric principles. Despite its, at times, didactic and contradictory qualities, Grandmothers is a significant book providing insight into a personal and empowering transformation and suggests the many complications which arise with identity formation and colliding cultures. Allen's writing evidences the impact of this collision.

This article was reprinted in a 2005 anthology: Contemporary Literary Criticism

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