Pulitzer Prize Fiction Winner
Laughing Boy
by Oliver La Farge
Summary
In the high desert of the Navajo Nation, a young traditional silversmith named Laughing Boy falls in love with Slim Girl, who has been displaced from her people by years in white-run boarding schools. Their attempt to build a life together becomes a lyrical meditation on cultural rupture, assimilation, and the survival of indigenous identity. La Farge's anthropological background lends the novel a careful attention to ceremony, landscape, and language.
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Historical Context & Significance
La Farge was an anthropologist who had lived among the Navajo; his novel was praised as one of the first respectful literary portrayals of Native American life, though it has since been critiqued for its ethnographic romanticization.