A blend of poet, historian, painter, illustrator, and anthropologist, Wendy Rose rejects marginalization. Issued under her birth name Bronwen Elizabeth Edwards and the pseudonym Chiron Khanshendel, as well as Rose, her realistic writings, watercolors, and pen-and-ink sketches defy those who relegate native American artisans to a passing fad. As spokesperson for ecology, women, and the dispossessed, she maintains a balanced outlook devoid of bitterness. She is intent on making positive connections, and she uses verse to mark spiritual boundaries.
A native of Oakland, California, of Hopi, Miwok, and Scottish-German ancestry, Rose was born on May 7, 1948, and grew up in a predominantly white environment. After attending Cabrillo College and Contra Costa College, she earned a B.A. and M.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, where she entered a doctoral program while teaching ethnic and native American studies. To account for her support of the Light of Dawn Temple, a San Francisco occult research center, she published a premier volume, Hopi Roadrunner Dancing (1973). She followed with verse in Long Division: A Tribal History (1976), Academic Squaw: Reports to the World from the Ivory Tower (1977), Poetry of the American Indian (1978), Builder Kachina: A Home-Going Cycle (1979), and a Pulitzer Prize nominee, Lost Copper (1980), an anguished statement of the native American blended identity. Departing from the negativity of earlier works, she composed What Happened When the Hopi Hit New York (1982) and The Halfbreed Chronicles and Other Poems (1985), self-illustrated volumes that recapture the beauties of chant and establish her admiration for fellow native authors Leslie Marmon Silko, Paula Gunn Allen, and Joy Harjo.
While coordinating American Indian studies at Fresno City College, Rose edited American Indian Quarterly, a vehicle for her struggle to be known as more than a native American relic. Candor has earned her other positions with the Smithsonian Native Writers' Series, Women's Literature Project of Oxford University Press, Modern Language Association Commission on Languages and Literature of the Americas, and Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines. Her more recent volumes include Going to War with All My Relations: New and Selected Poems (1993), Bone Dance: New and Selected Poems, 1965–1993 (1994), and Now Poof She Is Gone (1994).
