SOURCE: "Contemporary Innovations of Oral Traditions: N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko," in Sending My Heart Back across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1992, pp. 153-99.

In the following excerpt, Wong analyzes Momaday's emphasis on "orality" and its influence on the discussion of ancestral and racial heritage, communal self, and individual identity in The Way to Rainy Mountain.

Momaday's belief in the transforming capabilities of the imagination, in the synthesizing potential of memory, in the identity-inducing possibilities of the land, and in the power, beauty, and grace of the word finds its way into The Way to Rainy Mountain. The first of his two autobiographies, The Way to Rainy Mountain is the more experimental. Many critics, including Momaday himself, have commented on its unique structure and purpose.

Claiming that it defies generic classification, Robert L. Berner refers to The Way...