Early Life
Gerald Vizenor’s father was murdered in an unsolved homicide when he was less than two years old. He was raised by his Anishinaabe grandmother, his Swedish American mother, and a succession of uncles in Minneapolis and the White Earth Reservation. Following the death of his informal stepfather, who had been his primary caregiver, Vizenor lied about his age to enter the Minnesota National Guard in 1950 at age 15. Honorably discharged before his unit went to Korea, Vizenor joined the army two years later, serving in Japan as the nation was still reeling from the impact of nuclear attack. This period would inspire his interest in haiku, and much later his 2004 "kabuki novel" Hiroshima Bugi.
Returning to America in 1953, Vizenor took advantage of G.I. Bill funding to start a degree at New York University: this was followed by additional postgraduate study at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota, where he also undertook graduate teaching. During this period he married and had a son.
Read more about this topic: Gerald Vizenor
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The science, the art, the jurisprudence, the chief political and social theories, of the modern world have grown out of Greece and Rome—not by favor of, but in the teeth of, the fundamental teachings of early Christianity, to which science, art, and any serious occupation with the things of this world were alike despicable.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)