Forged in Memory: Cultural Resilience and Material Metaphors in Indigenous American Literature

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how contemporary Indigenous American novels use material metaphors to express cultural resilience, memory, and identity. Drawing on Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman , Brandon Hobson's The Removed , and Kelli Jo Ford's Crooked Hallelujah , the analysis investigates how authors employ the imagery of forging, alloying, braiding, and other material transformations as symbolic reflections of Indigenous endurance under colonial and postcolonial pressures. These literary works engage in acts of cultural engineering, creating narrative alloys from generational trauma, communal traditions, and decolonial hope. Just as materials undergo stress and transformation to emerge stronger, Indigenous characters in these novels endure historical trauma to reclaim identity and agency. By aligning Indigenous storytelling with metaphors rooted in metallurgical and material processes, this paper offers an interdisciplinary approach that bridges literature and material science, suggesting that stories are engineered forms of cultural survival.