A Study of Longfellow and Akuwuwu's Native American Writing from Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Although American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Chinese Yi ethnic poet Akuwuwu are in different eras and cultural backgrounds, both of them express deep humanistic care for Native American culture in the Song of Hiawatha and Coyote Traces. This paper firstly discusses some shared views on the Native American by the two poets, such as religious beliefs, planting culture and handicraft. Besides those similarities, this paper also elaborates some differences embodied in their poems, such as the characterization of typical Native American individual and their different understandings of Native Americans' attitudes towards foreign culture. Through a comparative study of the similarities and differences of the Native American writings by the two poets, this paper finds that Longfellow, given his times, looked at American Indians from a WASP perspective, whereas Akuwuwu, given his ethnic minority background, observed American Indians from an ethnic minority's perspective. By analysis of the reasons for their similar and different Native American writings, this paper advocates the exchanges of heterogeneous cultures based on a world cultural consciousness from an objective and equal attitude.