Realizing Fantastic Trickster Liberations in Gerald Vizenor's Griever: An American Monkey King in China (Critical Essay‪)‬

Introduction After a career spanning more than three decades, Native American artist and activist Gerald Vizenor (Chippewa-Ojibway) has come to be recognized as a writer committed to issues of aboriginal subjectivity, sovereignty, and survivance. He is only infrequently thought of as a fantasy writer, this despite the fact that elements of the fantastic, from shape shifting to time travel, are present in many of his early works. The fantastical is important insofar as it supports the author's larger political vision, as can be found in Vizenor's first novel, Darkness in St. Louis Bearheart, which portrays a band of Native American travelers on a "survivance pilgrimage" across a post-apocalyptic America stricken with violence and evil following "the end of gasoline and civilization" (Vizenor and Lee 96).