Becoming Kin

Anyone else reading this one?  Or want to read/listen to it with me?

I pulled Patty Krawec’s Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future off the shelf at Chequamegon Books a few weeks ago and then downloaded the audiobook so I could listen on my commute to work.  

Here are a few quotes:

“Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz talks about the process of 'unforgetting.' The divisions between us are only possible because we have forgotten our history, forgotten our creation stories. Forgotten how to articulate the knowledge that is held in unspoken ways. Unforgetting is the process of reclaiming that knowledge—of moving these truths that our society holds silently out to where we can articulate them and examine them. Then we can see if they really are a center worth revolving around, worth the emotional response they engender” (18).

“Those who are part of the society that created the problem become the ones who think they can solve it.  So we must move from recognizing the fact of our relationship to actually existing together in reciprocal relationships….Rather than cutting off our roots because we are ashamed or afraid of what we will find, we can learn our history.  We can reimagine the relationships we have inherited, and we can take up our responsibilities to each other” (19).

“Settlers and migrants and the forcibly displanted get worried when Native people start talking about Land Back. What about their house? Where will they go? Unable to imagine any scenario other than what settler colonialism unleased on us, people assume that Land Back means evictions, relocations, and eliminations. In some cases, that might be appropriate... And although we are often, and I think reasonably, looking for change in ownership, at its core, Land Back means profoundly changing our relationship with land.”

“'Ultimately what we inherit are relationships and our beliefs about them,' writes Aurora Levins Morales. 'We can’t alter the actions of our ancestors, but we can decide what to do with the social relations they left us.' In order to understand these relationships, we need to listen to the histories that we were not told so that we can begin to remember the things buried beneath the histories we were.”

“We are in a flood event, and we have the potential to create something new.  But first we need to swim deep down through the waters of history, and that is hard….to rebuild our relationships with land and with each other and then mobilize those relationships to create something new” (21).

Before We Were Trans

It's been a long time since I've had the time and calm to read a book cover to cover in just a few days.  (And a really long time since I've made a post about a book on this blog.)  Maybe both can happen more regularly in 2023 and beyond.  Theresa sent me a pic of the cover of Kit Heyam's Before We Were Trans a few weeks ago.  I looked for a quick/affordable way to access it and ended up tacking it onto our Walmart order.  It arrived the day my overseas friends were leaving, during these few weeks I have in between ending a position at one local college and starting a new position at the other.  

Along with time and calm to read, I've been yearning for history that includes queers.  Before We Were Trans is a nice summary and commentary on both trans and history conversations in general.  I highlighted a Leslie Feinberg quote that Heyam shares in the Introduction: "we should aspire...to be the best fighters against each other's oppression, and in doing so, build links of solidarity and trust that will forge an invincible movement against all forms of injustice and inequality" (18).  I was introduced to Feinberg in the aisles of the Oberlin College library and was warmed to circle back to hir here.  I also love this wiki excerpt that I came across now when I googled for the correct pronouns to use when writing about Feinberg: 

Pronoun usage[edit]

Feinberg stated in a 2006 interview that her pronouns varied depending on context:

For me, pronouns are always placed within context. I am female-bodied, I am a butch lesbian, a transgender lesbian—referring to me as "she/her" is appropriate, particularly in a non-trans setting in which referring to me as "he" would appear to resolve the social contradiction between my birth sex and gender expression and render my transgender expression invisible. I like the gender neutral pronoun "ze/hir" because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you're about to meet or you've just met. And in an all trans setting, referring to me as "he/him" honors my gender expression in the same way that referring to my sister drag queens as "she/her" does.

— Leslie Feinberg, 2006^[3][22]

Feinberg's widow wrote in her statement regarding Feinberg's death that Feinberg did not really care which pronouns a person used to address her: "She preferred to use the pronouns she/zie and her/hir for herself, but also said: 'I care which pronoun is used, but people have been respectful to me with the wrong pronoun and disrespectful with the right one. It matters whether someone is using the pronoun as a bigot, or if they are trying to demonstrate respect.'"^[5]

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A couple quotes from Heyam's "Author's note" of Before We Were Trans:

"In writing this book, I was keen to do something different: to write a trans history that made space for complex and messy gendered experiences, and that had care and ethics at its heart, prioritizing the dignity and humanity of people in the past and the present" (29). 

"I've chosen to use they/them pronouns to refer to the majority of the people in this book...avoiding presumption of gender...and...emphasizing the multiplicity and plurality of these people's genders" (29-30). 

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I want to do more of this in my own life--acknowledge and allow for the complexity and mess in all lives, including my own, prioritize respect and kindness, and use they/them pronouns.   These are not new values, and yet aren't always as easy to practice as it seems they should be-- to allow mess, to find kind and calm ways to respond when feeling disrespected or stressed, to use they as the default when that hasn't been the habit.  It will take time and collective intention.  

It was helpful to read a book that used they/them pronouns in the way I want to use them more--not to erase someone's gender, but to avoid assumption and allow for evolution.

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An email thread from last March in response to a friend's text:

IMO, using/acknowledging someone else's preferred pronouns is what is most important.  ("Thanks for asking; it's always okay to ask" a transgender employee at the farm told me several years back.)

I see the trend of including your pronouns in your introductions with your email signature as a safety pin. ("In general, people wear safety pins as "a symbol of solidarity" with those who are marginalized. It's an albeit superficial way to say those people are "safe" with the pin wearer. Whether that display of solidarity is enough these days is another issue.")  I do think including your pronouns in your introduction or signature can help people know you are an ally and open the door for them to feel safe sharing their true gender/pronouns with you.  I also think that action makes an assumption about the importance of pronouns to all queer people.  Personally, I'm pretty indifferent about my pronouns, but I am comfortable in the body I was born with and have never needed to ask to be seen and spoken of differently.  Similarly, I have heard Native people express complicated thoughts/feelings around land acknowledgements.

Maybe I'll turn this email thread into a blogpost someday.  You are not the first person to come to me with these questions, so it would be helpful to be able to answer with a link. I share my gender/pronouns when asked, but don't have them in my tagline because they are evolving and sacred and deserving of context.  

reply: This! This is how I feel too. Like, it's complicated! I don't have/want a tagline either, but I can see why other people do and respect that as well. Lately I've been feeling pressure to have one - I worry that by not having one I am refusing to show my support. But now that I think about it, I'm sure I can add a small rainbow emoji and that will do well enough.

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Like, it's complicated  

The people I met in Before We Were Trans I didn't always like.  The lives of Njinga and Ahebi in particular stick with me, the traumas they faced, their resistance of and collaboration with Europeans.  There were relations they helped/saved and relations that suffered/died under their leadership.   They were complicated people with complicated lives, living in incredibly complicated times.  Their stories put the dramas of our present day into perspective -AND- all of us are capable of helping or harming the lives around us and probably do some of both.  Including RuPaul, who Heyam did not show any love for in this book.  Throughout the book, Heyman will occasionally include social media commentary.  Sometimes I thought it provided interesting context, other times I found it annoying and incomplete, in particular the commentary on the reality TV show RuPaul's Drag Race (which I really enjoy watching).  Beyond what Heyam shares on p. 96-97 you can read more about the dislike between Carmen Carrera and RuPaul here or watch some episodes of Drag Race if you feel like taking a side.  At the very least, I recommend reading this article on the 10 Trans Queens That Made History On 'RuPaul's Drag Race' in the U.S..  Ru might not be popular or liked by all trans people, but I’ve seen real love between Ru and the openly trans queens of the more recent seasons.  In history, in reality TV, in this blogpost, in community, there will always be people who rub each other wrong, and that's okay.  Mii-go maanoo --it's okay, let it be-- is an Ojibwe phrase my friend Clarissa Bressette taught me last winter and that I try to channel.

In the Epilogue of Before We Were Trans, Heyam shares a love scene from a favorite novel and then comments: "This true and complete appreciation of the unfamiliar gendered experience of another: this is the future I want, both for our society and for our way of doing history" (229).  This is part of what I love about watching Drag Race and other drag reality shows, like We're Here and Queen of the Universe--  I am not someone who is interested in wearing make-up or wigs or fancy clothes, in acting or singing or dancing on stage, but I love getting to know these people who do it so well and sharing one big beautiful messy community with them all.  

The Master Butchers Singing Club

by Louise Erdrich

I've been a fan of Louise Erdrich's writing since college when I picked up Love Medicine. Mom and Dad gave me The Master Butchers Singing Club for Christmas when it came out in 2003, but for some reason I never got around to reading it. Even though in the time since I've read many of her other novels and all of her most recent ones. When Jen and I were in Minneapolis last September I saw that they were going to make a play of the novel and perform it at the Guthrie. I thought it would be fun to read it finally and then go and see the adaptation for stage. I've spent the last couple weeks reading it while sitting in the window seat our new place with the autumn light falling across the pages. So nice. Beautiful writing as always--the characters and descriptions... Some of my thoughts as I read: First, How could they possibly make a Louise Erdrich book into a play? How can you stage the beautiful small moments she captures in her descriptions? And secondly, I wish it was possible to have a butcher shop in town like the butcher shops of the past, where they slaughter out back, and there is an art and craft to the whole process, but current regulations prevent this. I understand why regulations have come into existance, a guarentee, a safety net, but I think something is lost. In response, we learn to raise and butcher our own meat, but even this isn't the same. I'm notaligic for the small community in which each person is so specifically trained and experienced in a single craft. We have aspects of it up here: master coffee roasters, master mead makers, master blueberry farmers :) ... but right now I'm missing my master butcher. I also missed seeing the play at the Guthrie as I wasn't able to make it back down to the cities during the run, but I'm glad it least it promted me to read... The books always better anyway, right?

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I just finished Erdrich's novel, Shadow Tag. Hard to read at times with a central relationship that is painfully complicated, but also just so well written. It was easy to imagine the characters expensive Minneapolis home on an unnamed lake after walking the perimeter of Lake of the Isles on our last trip down to the cities a few weeks ago (and even easier to imagine the vacation home on Madeline Island where the story ends). I couldn't help but wonder how much Erdrich drew on her marriage to Michael Dorris while writing this novel, but I also liked what this Washington Post reviewer had to say: "Erdrich has done what so many writers can't or won't do in this age of self-exposure: transform her own wrenching experience into a captivating work of fiction that says far more about the universal tragedy of spoiled love than it reveals about her private life."

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

by Salman Rushdie

Since spring and sun I've been craving a good book and a place I can sit outside in the morning and drink my coffee, eat a bagel, and read. I've had my nose in and out of a couple different books and tried sitting on our shady steps, laying back in Jen's crazy creek, against a canoe, or in my car with the windows rolled down, but until this week I had yet to really feel comfortable or to be absorbed in what I'm reading, to feel I could sit and read all day. Then on Friday Jen and I drove up our driveway after a week away on the lake and see two beautiful red volkswagen bucket seats perched in the sun of our yard. And inside the cabin, a book on the table with a note inside: "Magdalen: Here is my copy of my favorite book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. Love, Kate" A Demorest delivery!! The next morning I brew some Demorest coffee and move outside. Everything feels right again. Of course it only took me two days to finish her book (which i loved! so good. so kate.) but now I need another. Suggestions?

Coop: a Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting

by Michael Perry (2009)

Michael meanders all over and often uses words that are beyond my vocabulary and yet he always manages to keep my attention. He has such respect for his parents and the rural life he grew up with and he struggles (as I and many others do) to retain their values and choices. His biggest struggle though out the book is that he is trying to do too much. He is always behind on his writing and often has others do the building or butchering that he imagined he would be doing. When he brings up the idea of getting sheep, his wife replies,"I have this vision of you in Des Moines, talking about writing and raising sheep--meanwhile, I'm running through the brush with a howling six-month-old under one arm and dragging a bawling seven-year-old behind me with the other arm while we try to get the sheep back inside a hole in the cobbled-up fence" (214). Reading about Michael Perry being stretched too thin was timely for me. I had been feeling the same and in the course of time it took me to finish this book, I made a decision to cut back on some of my obligations in order to spend more time writing and more time on the farm. I am also reminded how fortunate I am that my farming can be a source of income for me versus a distraction from money-making commitments as it is for Perry.

And my favorite quote, as he watches old farmers give their condolences to his brother at his nephew's funeral: "it strikes me again how much we miss if we rely wholly on poets to parse the tender center of the human heart" (273).

Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

by Kent Nerburn

This book arrived in the mail a month ago just as I had reached a break point in my writing and was looking to be consumed by a good read. Cory had received it as a gift and was almost finished reading it when she went online and bought me a copy as well. So many of my favorite books have come to me as recommendations from my friends and this book is another. The book starts with a request, from Dan, a 78 year old Lakota man to Kent, a 40 year old white writer: "I want you to help me write a book. I want to get this all down... What I have in my mind." As the book evolves, we do hear Dan's poignant philosophies on Indian history and relations between Indian and white people, but these philosophies are framed by another story, the present-tense story of the relationship between Dan and Kent and the story of how this book comes to be. The best advice to Kent comes early on in the book when Dan's friend Grover tells Kent to "write it all" not just the speeches and ultimately the book feels balanced and real and honest because he shows Dan as a complicated character and himself as a complicated character. It may be easier to leave the complexities out, but it is the complexities that drew me into the story and kept it real.

Behind You

I've been on a Jacqueline Woodson marathon for the past couple months--ordering all her books through the libraries interloan. YA novels, they are the perfect length to spend a morning with or start before bed and then stay up late to read the whole way through. Last night I was up until two with Behind You. Fifteen year old Jeremiah is mistakenly shot by cops as he's running home from his girlfriend's house through central park. The chapters rotate narrators: Miah's girlfriend Ellie, his best friend Carlton, his teammate Kennedy, and his parents who haven't talked to each other since his dad Norman moved across the street and broke his mom Nelia's heart. Before Miah dies the characters are connected to each other through him, but now that he is gone, they seek each other out in order to feel connected again. My favorite was this passage written at the end of the book in the voice of Miah's mom. It is a year after Miah has passed.

Some days there is Ellie in my kitchen, the yellow-gold light spilling over us as we talk. Some evenings there is Norman on my stoop, telling me about his life, listening to me talk about mine--friends now, the past of us together not as painful as it once was. And on Saturdays there is Carlton, carrying my grocery bags--when I say, Sing, Carlton, he does, and his voice takes me back to another time, a lighter time, a freer time.

And each day there is at least one perfect moment--the way the sun moves around the living room, roasted potatoes with lots of rosemary and oil, a new baby wrapped up in blue, a child laughing.

The snow blows and blows. I turn a way from my window, make my way upstairs to my study. When I turn my lamp on, so much beautiful light fills the room.