Bennett is a doctoral candidate at the University of California at Santa Barbara and has published essays on various postcolonial and Native American authors In academic Journals. In the following essay, he analyzes how Michael Dorris's A Yellow Raft in Blue Water demonstrates the complexity of history by interweaving the stories of three Native American women.

Michael Dorris's A Yellow Raft in Blue Water develops an intricate plot structure that weaves together the lives of three Native American women. Instead of using an all-knowing narrator to tell their stories from a single, consistent perspective, however, Dorris has each character narrate one section of the story from her own biased perspective. Consequently, the novel's three main characters all assume dual functions as combined character narrators. While this multiplication of character narrators may initially seem to be a minor part of the plot, a careful reader will recognize that...