Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology

[sophinisba]

13. Living the Spirit: A Gay American Indian Anthology, compiled by Gay American Indians; Will Roscoe, coordinating editor, 1988

I was excited to come across this book because I've read very little by Native authors and I thought this would make a neat introduction and help me find some authors I'd like to read more of. It was a little bit disappointing to me in that respect because it had less fiction than I'd expected and the more generalizing non-fiction selections felt very dated to me. Still I really liked that it was almost all written by gay and lesbian American Indians, whereas other books I've seen about Two Spirit people are by white anthropologists. (My understanding is that Roscoe is white and did a lot of the editing on this but very little of the writing, and he worked with activists from the San Francisco-based group Gay American Indians.) It has a mix of non-fiction, fiction, poetry, and art by women and men from a lot of different tribes from different parts of the US and Canada.

The first big section is called "Artists, Healers, and Providers: The Berdache Heritage". This section had mostly academic-style essays about cross-gender roles in pre-colonial societies. The introduction and some of the other pieces had talked about how knowledge of these roles is inspiring for contemporary lesbian and gay Indians because it shows that their traditional societies had a respected place for them and it was the colonizers and missionaries that created a culture of discrimination. I had some trouble getting through this section because the style made it feel a lot like homework, and also because I was uncomfortable with some of the terminology and the idea of connecting these traditional roles with gay and lesbian identities while ignoring transgenderism. Which, you know, is totally understandable for people writing in the mid-80s, but it just made me wish I were reading something more recent and more critical. So, really, this was good as incentive for me to start looking for more writing about this history from a Native perspective.

Anyway, in order to get through it all I started reading out of order and I really enjoyed the second section, which is called "Gay American Indians Today: Living the Spirit" and has a nice mix of a lot of different kinds of writing. My favorite piece was presented as an excerpt from the novel Raven's Road by Paula Gunn Allen, but I haven't been able to find any information about a finished novel by this title. Do any of you know what happened with that? I've put Allen's essay collection Off the Reservation on my to-read list. I also really liked a "A Long Story" by Beth Brant, which made a parallel between a mother having her children taken away to be "civilized" at a boarding school in the 1890s and another woman in the 1970s who loses custody of her daughter because she's in a lesbian relationship. And though I tend not to love poetry, "Today Was a Bad Day Like TB" by Chrystos (not specifically about the lesbian experience but about appropriation of Native art) totally kicked ass.

Comments

[misadventurelad.livejournal.com]

I have that book! It was required for my college major. :)

[sophinisba]

That's cool! I took an anthropology class a few years ago where we read and talked a fair amount about the so-called berdache, but I think all our readings on the topic were written by white people.

[ladyjax.livejournal.com]

I used to have a copy of this years ago. I wonder if I still have it stashed away.

[sophinisba]

If you find it, check out the poem on page 180 and the cartoon on 181. :)

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I've seen Chrystos read - she's pretty amazing. I haven't been following her stuff though, thank you for reminding me about her!

[sophinisba]

That sounds awesome. I love seeing great poets do their thing live.

[bulliciosa.livejournal.com]

Sounds awesome.

Thanks for the review. Adding this to my list.

[sophinisba]

Yay!

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

I read "A Long Story" in an anthology of lesbian fiction years ago -- it's very powerful.

[sophinisba]

I really want to read more of her fiction.