Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature

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. 

Driskall, Justice, Miranda & Tatonetti. (2011). Introduction: Writing in the Present. In Q. Driskall, D.H. Justice, D. Miranda & L. Tatonetti (Eds), Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (pp.1-17). Tuscon, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. 

Miranda, D. (2011). Coyote Takes a Trip. In Q. Driskall, D.H. Justice, D. Miranda & L. Tatonetti (Eds), Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (pp.59-65). Tuscon, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. 

Powell, M. (2011). Real Indians. In Q. Driskall, D.H. Justice, D. Miranda & L. Tatonetti (Eds), Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (pp.57-58). Tuscon, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. 

Womack, C. (2011). The King of the Tide Snakes. In Q. Driskall, D.H. Justice, D. Miranda & L. Tatonetti (Eds), Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two-Spirit Literature (pp.30-47). Tuscon, Arizona: University of Arizona Press. 

The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature

I went to Eyes of the Beast at SFU's downtown theatre. What drew me to the show was the fact that my cousin is on the poster. She's the person in the middle rocking her Tsilhqot'in Radio hoodie! It turns out she only had about 30 seconds of speaking time but still glad I went. 

Eyes of the Beast promotional poster

The format was definitely unique. There were things hanging from the roof and images were projected onto the things. The show was a compilation of narratives from people who survived the heat dome in Victoria and Vancouver, the Lytton fire, and the Princeton flood. The narrative would begin with a projected image of the person talking, and then an actor would embody them and take over the delivery of their message. So it was like a movie which then became a play again and again. It was definitely more visceral than if it had just been a documentary. The narrative told from the perspective of the principal at Stein Valley Nlakapamux School was heart wrenching. She talked about evacuating the school. I was particularly moved when she talked about how days after being evacuated they did a circle and brought together the people who evacuated, and how the children were emotional because they hadn't seen each other since the day of the evacuation. 

I think that when a lot of people think about climate disaster, first they think about life and death, and then after that they think of the material impact. The narrative format brought home the emotional impact. One of the narratives was told from the perspective of a man who's home burnt down, but then he wasn't allowed to look at it and there was private security patrolling the area. So he snuck into town at night and crawled into his yard. As he described laying down among his planters that had nothing but ash in them, I wondered "how can we approach climate disaster through a trauma informed lens? Ideally we would prevent disasters, but if a disaster does happen, how can the response to the disaster mitigate (or at least not exacerbate) the PTSD from the disaster?"

The show was structured in a unique way. After the film/theatre section, then there was an audience talk back portion, and then there was a policy maker in the audience who reflected on what he had heard. We didn't stay for that portion because we had also gone to the Museum of Vancouver's opening of their exhibit The Work of Repair: Redress & Repatriation earlier in the evening, so I was kind of tired and wanted to go home. Even though I didn't stay for it, I think the concept of having a policy maker in the room to witness is a good concept. 

Book display at Museum of Vancouver

Anyhow, today's book is The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature, edited by Deborah L. Madsen. It was published in 2016 which is almost ten years ago, believe it or not. It's a collection of essays by many authors. There is an acknowledgement section in which various authors thank various people. In this section the author expresses gratitude to many scholars of Indigenous Studies who supported the project including Philip Deloria, Sam McKegney, and anonymous reviewers. The introduction, written by the editor, grapples with the words "Native," "American," and "Literature." Some introductions include summaries of the sections of the book or introduce each essay in the book. This book is massive (41 essays) and so introducing each piece would have been unwieldy. I did wonder when reading the introduction - were each of these essays written specifically for this book, or were any of them sourced from elsewhere? I read about half of the essays, prioritizing works written by Indigenous people and then after that just reading willy nilly based on whatever title stood out to me. The ones that I read seemed as though they were stand alone pieces (as opposed to being excerpts taken from a variety of larger texts).

The editor begins the introduction with this punchy quote: "When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, 'Ours.'" (Vine Deloria Jr. in Madsen, 2016, p. 1). In the introduction, the editor states the intention of the book as follows: 

The tribes of Native North America continue to constitute distinct social and cultural communities, each of which has been shaped in particular ways by the impact of European colonization. the interplay between the indigenous cultures that endure and these colonial impacts form a framework of allusions and references that characterize Native American literary texts. These allusions may not be familiar to non-Native readers, or indeed to Native readers whose heritage differs from that represented in a specific literary text. This is what the present Companion seeks to provide: a comprehensive yet manageable introduction to the contexts essential to reading Native American Literature." (Madsen, 2016, p. 2). 

Based on the chapters that I read, I think the book did a good job fulfilling this goal. The essays were written on a variety of topics, such as historical events (Marshall decisions), specific regions (e.g. Pacific including Samoa, the Compact of Free Association Countries, and Guahan), specific demographics (e.g. feminism), specific genres (e.g. short fiction). I thought Tova Cooper's essay on Assimilative Schools and Native American Literature was particularly relevant, reading as someone who works in the field of education. The geographical diversity of authors was interesting, as the collection includes scholars from the US and Canada, a well as Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, the UK, and Taiwan. 

A notably difference about this work in comparison to a lot of texts that I have read recently is that there is not very much situating of self at the beginning of the work. I'm not sure if that's reflective of the time it was written, or of the field of literary studies, or the way that the call to authors was framed. All of the essays were excellent, so this is not a criticism. It is just something that I enjoy and often expect and thus something that I missed when reading this work. 

We had a Pride Party at work, and so, in celebration of Pride I will highlight Alicia Cox's chapter "Recovering a Sovereign Erotic: Two-Spirit Writers 'Reclaim a Name for Ourselves.'"

Alicia Cox is a queer feminist of Cherokee and European heritage and a professor at University of California. Her essay begins by noting the challenge of queer Indigenous people, as their queerness is marginalized within Indigenous studies and their Indigeneity is marginalized within queer studies. She provides a brief overview on the way that settler colonialism has oppressed Native American queer people within their own communities, and harmed third gender traditions. She says Native American studies and queer theory is "a critical intersection." She says "contemporary Two-Spirit people have been at a loss for role models who might show then how to live their identities in culturally relevant ways." (Cox, 2016, p. 88).  And then she highlights for the reader a number texts written by queer Native American authors, including: 

• The 2004 issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies - Nationality, Sexuality, Indigeneity: Rethinking that State at the Intersection of Native American and Queer Studies 
• Daniel Heath Justice's "Notes toward a Theory of Anomaly" which asserts that the Cherokee Nations position against same sex marriage was a violation of Cherokee traditional philosophy 
• Miranda's  "Extermination of the Joyas: Gendercide in Spanish California" which looks at the special role that third gender Joyas played in society. the colonial violence against Joyas, and attempts to recover the Joyas tradition 
• Miranda's Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir 
• Chrystos' poem "O Honeysuckle Woman"
• And the rabbit in Craig Womak's Red on Red

Overall, I think this book is a good book to have on your shelf if you read a lot of Indigenous literature. As it is literally a companion, I think if one were using this in a teaching context, it would be best to actually pair the essays with literature itself. For example, Bad Cree would go well with the essay "Indigenous Uncanniness: Windigo Revisited and Popular Culture." The essay could be read on its own, but the experience of reading the essay would be enhanced by pairing it with actual literature. 

A notable feature of the book is its "Further Reading" section which lists about 300 additional suggested readings. 

Cox, A. (2016). Recovering a Sovereign Erotic: Two-Spirit Writers "Reclaim a Name for Ourselves." In D. L. Masden (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature (pp. 84-94). New York, New York: Routledge. 

Madsen, D. L. (2016). Introduction. In D. L. Masden (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature (pp. 1-12). New York, New York: Routledge.