SOURCE: "Literary Boundary Cultures: The Life Histories of Plenty-Coups, Pretty-Shield, Sam Blowsnake, and Mountain Wolf Woman," in Sending My Heart Back across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography, Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 88-116.

In the excerpt below, Wong discusses the creation of Mountain Wolf Woman's autobiography and the volume's focus on family, education, and marriage.

In 1958, thirty-eight years after Sam Blowsnake wrote his autobiography [Crashing Thunder] in the Winnebago syllabary, his sister Mountain Wolf Woman narrated her life story to her friend, adopted niece, and amanuensis, Nancy O. Lurie. Traveling from Black River Falls, Wisconsin, to Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mountain Wolf Woman stayed with the Luries for five weeks as a visiting relative. During that time, Mountain Wolf Woman spoke her life story in Winnebago into a tape recorder; then [according to Lurie] she "repeated the entire story on tape in English using the Winnebago...