(1996) may be Diane Glancy’s most known and frequently-taught novel. With multiple narrators, she presents a fictional community’s experience of the Trail of Tears, in which the U.S. government forced Cherokee and Choctaw from the southeast to walk nine hundred miles to Oklahoma during the winter of 1838-39, resulting in thousands of deaths. The novel portrays the wide-reaching implications of this historical tragedy, including its communal, familial, linguistic, cultural, religious, emotional, material, and political consequences. To explore various kinds of loss, Glancy juxtaposes family drama with political and cultural conflict while blending first-person narrative with letters, lists, journals, periodicals, and other genres. As…
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Citation: Griffis, Rachel B.. "Pushing the Bear". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 May 2019 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38917, accessed 21 November 2024.]
