Skins and Bones

Paula Gunn Allen, Laguna Pueblo/Sioux/Scots/Lebanese poet, philosopher, scholar, and teacher, was born in Cubero, New Mexico, in 1939. She received her doctorate from the University of New Mexico in 1976; her dissertation evolved into a major work of cultural criticism, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Two volumes of her poetry, Skins and Bones and Life Is a Fatal Disease, were published by West End Press. She completed the manuscript for this book a week before her death on May 29, 2008 in Fort Bragg, California.