Betty Louise Bell (born November 23, 1949, in

Davis, Oklahoma Davis is a city in Garvin and Murray counties in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The population was 2,683 at the 2010 census. History Davis is named after Samuel H. Davis, who moved to Washita in what was then Indian Territory in 1887. At the tim ...

) is an American author and educator. She is a scholar and fiction writer of Cherokee ancestry. She earned her PhD in 1985 from

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Works

Bell published an autobiographical novel '' Faces in the Moon'' in 1994 in which an abused "mixed-blood Cherokee" protagonist, named Lucie, has no access to nostalgic stereotypes about

Native Americans in the United States Native Americans, also known as American Indians, First Americans, Indigenous Americans, and other terms, are the Indigenous peoples of the mainland United States ( Indigenous peoples of Hawaii, Alaska and territories of the United State ...

but still finds an identity. In the protagonists mind, the contemporary stereotype is that of poverty and

ghettoization A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...

, but the protagonist is asked by white friends: "What's it like being Indian".

Career

Bell is a former director of the Native American Studies Program and former assistant professor of American culture, English, and Women's Studies at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. Her areas of scholarly interest include Native American literature, Women's Studies, 19th-century American literature, and creative writing. Bell has published critical articles on Native American Literature that emphasize the political and personal aspects of Native American identity.Bataille, Gretchen M. and Laurie Lisa, Ed. Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland, 1993

Academic publications

# ''A Red Girl's Reasoning: Native American Women Writers and the Twentieth Century'' # ''Reading Red: Feminism in Native America'' (Editor) # ''Norton Anthology of Native America Literatures'' (Coeditor)

References

1949 births American women novelists 20th-century American novelists Living people American people who self-identify as being of Cherokee descent Ohio State University alumni University of Michigan faculty 20th-century American women writers Novelists from Michigan People from Davis, Oklahoma American women academics 21st-century American women {{US-writer-stub