I really want to see Sweet Summer Pow Wow. I watched the trailer and I love that it looks like it is filmed/set in the interior. In my opinion, the interior of BC is one of the most beautiful places in the world and I am surprised that it doesn't appear in film more often. This is not yet available on streaming services and I missed it's brief appearance in Vancouver theatres, so I guess I will just have to wait to see it. My favourite part of the trailer is when he says "you can do anything you want to... even go to Vancouver." According to this movie trailer, I am living the dream...
Anyhow, today's book is Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature edited by Driskall, Daniel Heath Justice, Deborah Miranda, and Lisa Tatonetti.
This book is a collection of creative works by Indigenous LGBTQ2S writers.
The book begins with an essay, Introduction: Writing in the Present. In the introduction, the editors state that, "Sovereign Erotics is both a marker of a particular historical moment and an extension of a long history in which Native writers are also activists and scholars working to develop critical understandings and social movements." (Driskall, Justice, Miranda & Tatonetti, 2011, p.7). The authors also discuss the history of the term Two-Spirit and it's many uses, as well as reasons why some people choose not to use it (p.5-6).
As a scholar, I always like to learn about how a project came about. I think that when scholars explain how they went about a project, it demystifies scholarship and builds capacity. The editors share that, "The call for Sovereign Erotics first circulated in summer of 2008. Folks were invited to submit work in an open submission process" and the editors circulated the call among their contacts." (Driskall, Justice, Miranda & Tatonetti, p.8). The editors note that they really wanted to invite Beth Brant to participate but they could not find her.
I really believe in the power of story as a pedagogical approach. I also find it interesting when fiction is paired with non-fictional elements, including historical text, in order to boost the pedagogical function of story. And so I thought that the format of Deborah Miranda's short story Coyote Takes a Trip was interesting. In the story, Coyote is on a bus and notices a woman noticing him. He is exhilarated when he realizes that she is a Joya. Unfortunately, he notices too late, and the bus is already driving away from him so he cannot connect with her, but he is enlivened by their brief interaction nonetheless. The story includes non-fiction text boxes alongside the story which contain historical quotes about Joyas. So it is both fiction and non-fiction.
The book contains a wide range of texts which cover a wide range of topics. One story which I found endearing was Craig Womack's King of the Tie-Snakes, which is an excerpt from the novel Drowning in Fire. The protagonist Josh, is a youth who has a crush on another boy, Jimmy. Josh is trying to be one of the boys, participating in a competitive physical challenge, when things go awry, and Jimmy must save him. I found Josh to be a well-written and very endearing character and I might read the novel Drowning in the Fire someday, as I have not read it yet.
Something that I appreciated about some of the short fiction was that it contained poetic elements in both language and form. Take for example, Malea Powell's Real Indians, "what I hear when I'm here is the sound of us not dying or disappearing, just eating and talking and laughing and driving/remembering who we are." (Powell, 2011, p.58).
I've actually read this book before, but I returned to it because of something Joanne Barker said in the introduction to Critically Sovereign. According to Barker, some conversations within feminism relate to discussing gender as "separating anatomical sex (determinism) and social gender (constructionism)". However, Baker says queerness contains "the promise of a radical alterity of gender identity (performed) and a body-psyche utopia of sexual desire and pleasure." (Baker, 2017, p.13). I was curious about this body-psyche utopia, and part of my motivation for re-reading this book was to see if I could better understand what Baker was talking about. However, as I read, I just kind of got lost in the writing, and forgot about the goal of looking for illustrations of the body-psyche utopia. And that's fine. Sometimes the point of reading creative works is to read creative works. Now that I am not currently working on any publication related to literature, I can just read and enjoy reading with no end in mind. I will be keeping the body-psyche utopia in mind in the future though.
Barker, J. (2017). Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. Duke University Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment