Hope to Haiti – An Update

My current total funds raised are: $161 $211 $402

The amount left until I reach my goal: $4,839 $4,789 $4,598

Donations can be made here!

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Misha Collins just tweeted to say that some of the proceeds from this fundraiser will be going to Japan and the earthquakes/tsunami relief effort there.

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SO, that means that your donations are helping the world in three ways:

1. RandomAct.Org has funding available for more random acts of kindness.
2. Jacmel, Haiti gets a new community center and fish farm.
3. Japan receives some relief after the devastating earthquakes and tsunami.

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I care a great deal about the Random Act Organization. It’s just the kind of non-profit I would like to set up myself in the future. One that spreads kindness and love.

I also want more than anything to go to Haiti this summer with this organization and help build these projects in Jacmel that these donations are helping fund. I want to donate my time and hard work to this community. And I cannot do that unless I raise the remaining $4,598.

And I think we all want to help Japan in any way we can right now as the country struggles in the wake of the devastation caused by the earthquakes and the tsunami.

Please, help me help Haiti. Please help me help Japan. And please help me help RandomAct.Org continue to fund these random acts of kindness.

All you need to do is donate and/or spread the link around for me.

After all, we could all use more kindness in our lives. <3

Donations can be made here!

Hope to Haiti – Help me raise $5,000 for RandomAct.Org, so I can go to Haiti this summer with them and rebuild!

Hello, interwebs!

Yesterday, Misha Collins posted a video on his twitter asking people to accompany him to Haiti this summer to help rebuild. The country is still being pieced back together after the earthquake.

I know Japan is at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts right now. Japan needs our help. there’s NO doubt about that. But Misha is right. We can’t forget Haiti. The Haitians still need our help, too.

If I raise $5,000 for RandomAct non-profit within the next 100 days before 40 other people, I get to spend June 20-26 in Haiti helping rebuild a community with Matt Cohen and Misha Collins. (All funds go to RandomAct.Org. If I am one of the 40 people who gets to travel with them in June, all travel costs will come out of my pocket.)

Even if I don’t reach my goal and I can’t go with them, the money we raise is still needed and it is going to a very good place.

Let’s do this! Let’s make a difference!

Here is my page: http://www.crowdrise.com/hopetohaiti1/fundraiser/SpontaneousAnne

If you can’t donate yourself, please, spread the word! Even if you can donate, please, spread the word! I need all the help I can get. More importantly, Haiti still needs all the help it can get!

Thank you!!! <33333333

Love,

Spontaneous Anne

Collage from RandomActs. Text added by me.

So You’re Writing A Novel – Tip #1

I’m introducing a little advice segment at this point in NaNoWriMo, so I can share tips about my experience of writing my first novel (while I write it) with future generations of novelists out there. Because, 1) it’s a fabulous procrastination technique, 2) it may amuse you, and 3) it might actually be helpful to someone.

Of course, the following tips are just things I’ve found helpful or unhelpful throughout my process, which doesn’t necessarily mean they will work for you. But since this is my blog, I’m going to tell you all about them whether you find them helpful or not.

So, here we go:

So You’re Writing A Novel – Tip #1

Pick someone to be your sounding board. They will be the one person you share the entirety of your first draft with as you write it.

If you are like me and you love to write but have writer’s ADHD and lose interest relatively easily (“Hey, the thing’s already written in my head, I don’t need to write it in a Word doc!” <- says my brain often) then I cannot stress this tip enough. I will explain why.

Before November 1st, I had done a surprising amount of planning for my novel (a surprising amount for me anyway, since my traditional method for outlining stories is Get Plotbunny, Pick Character Names, Write Whatever Comes to Mind).

By the middle of October, I had a list of characters, names, what they looked like, their talents, their jobs, their relationships to one another, and a couple of notes on their backgrounds even. And by the end of October, I also had a novel cover.

Now, the novel cover was a distressing detail for me. I was concerned with finding a picture of NYC I could use for my novel that wouldn’t constitute copyright infringement, so I needed to either take the photo myself (not likely to happen even though I live in NYC since I’m too busy trying to pass my first semester of law school while also writing a novel… because I’m insane), or I needed to find a friend willing to share a photo they took with me (since I definitely can’t track down any photographers online to get their permission if I’m too busy to take the photo myself).

Luckily, I have awesome friends. (I swear this is relevant to today’s tip.)

What a sexy picture!!

high_flyer87 happened to have a perfect picture for me to use for my novel cover, and, in exchange for allowing me to use it, I swore she would receive all insider knowledge of this thing while I wrote it.

Confession time: I hadn’t been planning on sharing this novel in it’s entirety with anyone while I wrote it. I know how fickle my brain can be and I know from past experiences how annoyed people can get when you start a story and never finish it for them. So, I didn’t want to risk annoying anyone if I ended up quitting. Especially since this is the biggest writing endeavor I’ve ever taken on.

That having been said, pointing to high_flyer87 and saying “You will need to be my personal cheerleader for this project” and having her reply “I’m there for you, babe” (I used quotes but those were not our exact words: I am not quite that demanding and she is not Uncle Joey from Full House) was the smartest thing I could have done when planning this project.

Having someone to share what I’ve written with keeps me writing.

I know, I know, I just got through saying I am notorious for beginning a story, showing it to people, then abandoning it.

HOWEVER, there is a very big difference between sharing your story and having someone act as your sounding board while you work on your story and sharing a story so people can read it strictly for their enjoyment while you’re still writing it.

The biggest difference is I’m not sharing my story to entertain high_flyer87. I know full well my story is in its roughest form right now, and so does she. If she happens to be entertained by it, that’s icing, but the main purpose of her reading is so she can tell me what’s working, what isn’t, ask about what’s going on, tell me what she thinks is happening, let me know how she perceives my characters, while also letting me know if they suck or if she thinks they’re cool.

And while she does all that, she’s keeping me interested in my own story so I don’t want to abandon it. So I continue to feel the need to tell it. All while assuring me I have the ability to finish this thing.

Here, let me repeat that for you all:

I’m not sharing my story to entertain high_flyer87. I know full well my story is in its roughest form right now, and so does she. If she happens to be entertained by it, that’s icing, but the main purpose of her reading is so she can tell me what’s working, what isn’t, ask about what’s going on, tell me what she thinks is happening, let me know how she perceives my characters, while also letting me know if they suck or if she thinks they’re cool.

And while she does all that, she’s keeping me interested in my own story so I don’t want to abandon it. So I continue to feel the need to tell it. All while assuring me I have the ability to finish this thing.

Can you see how vital it would be to have someone in this role if you are like me?

I am behind the target wordcount by a couple of days right now, but I still have surpassed the 14K mark and that in and of itself is a major accomplishment for me – this is the longest work in progress I have ever had – and I would not be making it past this point if I didn’t have high_flyer87 telling me my story needs to be written. I wanted to throw in the towel tonight.

But, because I know she’s right, I will continue to run myself ragged and fight to reach that 50K goal even while I prepare for finals and search for summer law internships to apply for.

These characters and these stories matter and they deserve to be told. Without high_flyer87 reminding me of that from the insider perspective of being the only person who knows the characters aside from me, I would lose sight of that and never stand a chance of finishing by the November 30th deadline.

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(( I would be incredibly remiss if I did not offer extra super bonus love to the following friends who refused to let me quit writing tonight: thisfishflies (who has shamelessly bribed me with presents to keep writing), pikasafire (for her constant, kind encouragement), hllangel (who reminded me the alternative to writing was studying Constitutional Law), and igrab (for yelling at me not to give up because she wants to read the finished product)!!! <3333333333 ))

Quentin Paper Musings – Update 2

The subtitle for this blog post may as well be “Riki Wilchins is AMAZING!”

As I continue to work on my Advanced Project (I’m at that pesky “let’s put all those hours of research together into one paper” stage), I’ve come to the point in my writing when I need to start talking about Riki Wilchins.

Riki Wilchins can be a very controversial character. Not only is she MtF, which is enough to cause uproar from some people, but she’s controversial amongst members of the trans* community as well. I rather think she’s a bit of a genius. Then again, I also have more than a bit of love for Judith Butler who is also not everybody’s cup of tea.

I won’t be discussing Wilchins here so much as I will be quoting the hell out of her. I’m using her essays within GENDERqUEER: Voices From Beyond The Sexual Binary within my Quentin paper and I need to start sorting through the enthusiastic highlighting I did to decide which quotes make the cut and which don’t.

According to theorist Judith Butler, gender refers not to something we are but to something we do, which, through extended repetition and because of vigorous suppression of all exceptions, achieves the appearance of a sort of coherent psychic substance.

In this view, there is no doer behind the deed, no gendered identity behind the acts that we say result from it. The acts are all there is, and it is the strict regulation of these acts within the binary–females must produce feminine behaviors and males masculine–that produces the appearance of two cohesive and universal genders.

Thus, I don’t pull on certain clothes in the morning or style my hair a particular way because of something within me. I do these things acts in a manner consistent with either masculine or feminine norms because to do otherwise would render me socially unintelligible. People wouldn’t know what I was or how to treat me, and I would be the target of a great deal of hostility… If my gender is a doing that has to be redone each day just like I pull on those clothes each morning, that would help explain why sometimes my gender “fails”: Even though I’ve felt like a man (and then later like a woman), people didn’t always recognize me as such. Even I couldn’t always recognize myself as such…

If gender is a doing and a reading of that doing, a call-and-response that must be continually done and redone, then it is also unstable, and there are ways I can disrupt it. Maybe universal and binary genders are not so inevitable after all. (24)

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Gender is a system of meanings and symbols–and the rules, privileges, and punishments pertaining to their use–for power and sexuality: masculinity and femininity, strength and vulnerability, action and passivity, dominance and weakness.

To gender something simply means investing it with one of two meanings.

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If gender is a system of meanings, then, in a book of the same name, what is meant by “genderqueer”? For one thing, it brings back together those two things that have been wrongly separated: gender and gayness.

For Butler, “successful” genders are those that cite other earlier examples. Thus we learn to become men and women and to be recognized as such by copying other examples. In popular thought, men and women are considered examples of “real” genders, and drag, transsexuals, and butch/femme couples are considered copies. Thus drag is to copy ans woman is to real. Drag imitates real life.

But if Butler is right, if gender is always an artifice that copies something else, then all gender is a reuse of familiar stereotypes according to the rules for their use. All gender is drag. And those that fail, that are read as “queer,” are simply those that break the rules. Thus neither a Streisand drag queen doing “Barbra” nor Barbra herself doing “woman” is any more or less real. There is no real gender to which they might be compared. Both use commons symbols to achieve a visual meaning. The drag queen appears “false” because we don’t grant her access to the symbols. (28)

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Genderqueers are people for whom some link in the feeling/expression/being-perceived fails. (28)

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Beyond measurable facts, knowledge about bodies is something we create. We go looking for it, and we fashion it in ways that respond to cultural needs and aims. We create the idea of binary genders because it marks something we want to track and control about bodies’ appearance and behavior. We create gender identity disorders (GIDs) because we want to control sex and discourage the desire to change the body’s sexual characteristics. We create the knowledge of sexual orientation and study it exhaustively because we want to know and control the individual’s capacity to contribute to reproduction. (36)

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There is  huge and ongoing current critique of Western knowledge–sometimes called “postmodernism”–that is questioning what we know, how we know it, and what effect it has on those we know it about. And of all the things we know, indeed feel we must know, none is more fundamental than our own bodies. If that knowledge is showing cracks, then what else might be faulty as well? It is this nexus–the models of how we think and the problems posed by bodies that don’t fit that model–that has led to the explosion of interest in genderqueerness and “gender studies…

What matters is that the way in which we think–and especially the way we “think the body”–has too often become an off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all approach. One that favors that which is universal, known, stable, and similar. But my experience of my body and my place in the world was exactly the opposite: mobile, private, small, often unique, and usually unknown. These are places familiar to many people on knowledge’s margins where many of us wish to go. And these stories, standing just beyond a sexual binary, point a way. (38)

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Some cultures accommodate, even exalt, difference. Yet in the West we pursue unity, we believe in singularity, we worship not only our God but final Truths. If it’s not true somewhere, then it’s not really true. There is no room for what is private or unique. To seek the Truth–always a capital T–is to seek what is universal and perfect. (39)

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By creating notions of realness and dividing bodies along a binary of real/false, bodies like mine are kept disempowered… Realness is not only about naturalness and the distinction between the groin you were born with and the one you bought yourself for Christmas. If gender is about language and meaning, then Realness is also about ownership, about who is allowed to use what meanings legitimately. (41-2)

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When we pick up complex things–like desire or gender–with primitive mental tools like binaries, we lose nuance and multiplicity. Binaries don’t give us much information. But then, they’re not supposed to.

Quick: What is the meaning of mascuinity? Mannish, not feminine, right? What about straight? That means not being gay.

There’s really not much meaning or information circulating here, because with only two possibilities, meaning is confined to what something is not. As a form of thinking, binaries prevent other kinds of information from emerging. That is why no other genders ever appear. Binaries are the black holes of knowledge. Nothing is allowed to escape, so we get the same answers every time…

At this point is should surprise no one that binaries are about power, a form of doing politics through language. Binaries create the smallest possible hierarchy of one thing over another. They are not really about two things, but only one. (43)

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Words work well for things we can repeat, that we hold in common. What is unique or private is lost to language. But gender is a system of meanings that shape our experience of bodies. Genderqueerness is by definition unique, private, and profoundly different. That’s what makes it “queer.” When we force all people to answer to a single language that excludes their experience of themselves in the world, we not only increase their pain and marginalization, we make them accomplices in their own erasure.

It is bad enough to render them silent, even worse to make them speak a lie, worse yet if speaking the lie erases them. (46)

That’s enough for now. Back to writing the paper. <3

Quentin Paper Musings- Update 1

(This is gonna be short.)

Firstly, I think it might be wise to adopt gender-neutral pronouns for Quentin from here on out.

Now, I realized something last night, while watching an interview with Judith Butler on youtube (the audio doesn’t sync to the video, so I recommend just listening to it without watching). For our purposes, the important part begins about 4:40 and ends around 6:40.

In my original formulating of my ideas concerning Quentin’s genderqueerness, I had it in my head that Quentin may actually be MtF trans*. That is, I believed I would end up proving that Quentin is not in love with Caddy incestuously, but rather that ze wants to be Caddy. I am now almost convinced this is not the case. At least not presented within the text.

I still believe Quentin wishes ze could be Caddy, but ze comes across as much more envious of Caddy’s gender fluidity rather than Caddy’s femininity. Quentin is already a very effeminate character in hir own right. Hir problem is not that ze cannot present as female and he wishes ze could. No. Quentin’s problem is that ze wants to present as strictly male, which ze cannot do. Ze tries desperately to fix hir gender performance as 100% male, but ze is unable to successfully pass. At least, in hir own eyes, ze is not successfully passing.

It seems to me, much like those boys Butler described who committed murder, that Quentin is lashing out at hirself for failing to perform hir masculinity properly: ze can’t fight (ze faints, as ze describes it, like a girl, when ze tries to fight Dalton Ames) and ze can’t lose hir virginity. Quentin does not fit into either extreme of the gender binary and ze feels so threatened by hir inability to label hirself, or to fit into the label ze was assigned at birth, that Quentin must take hir own life.

What is ze trying to do though? Protect the male | female binary from hirself?

Collaborating with Shakespeare

I had to watch a video of a lecture and summarize it for my Shakespeare class this week to post on the class blog, and I thought the lecture was so interesting that I should share it here:

Henderson, Diana. 16 Nov. 2006. “Collaborations with the Past: Reshaping Shakespeare Across Time and Media.” MIT World. Web. 24 Mar. 2010. Video retrieved from here.

The video hosted on MIT World’s site, is of the lecture, “Collaborations with the Past: Reshaping Shakespeare Across Time and Media,” given by Diana Henderson on the MIT campus about her book by the same title. Henderson starts out her lecture discussing the different meanings of the word collaboration. Basically, she explains that what other scholars have termed as appropriation of the past, she claims is more correctly termed as collaboration with the past. To Henderson, appropriation is a power struggle—one where ownership is claimed—that she does not like, nor does she find it fitting.

Henderson started this project looking at the Renaissance period in general and how the present has adapted the past, but she says “Shakespeare creeps in,” and the book became a study of Shakespeare. Henderson herself admits that “Shakespeare sells” was certainly one of her reasons for allowing her study to narrow in focus to just him, but she also believes Shakespeare has been “collaborated with” in many different ways in modern times.

In the book, Henderson discusses four plays from the four main genres of Shakespeare: Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, and Romances. She devoted the first chapter to Sir Walter Scott’s Kenilworth in relation to Othello, the second chapter to Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (and discussions of Jane Eyre) in relation to Cymbeline, the third to Taming of the Shrew in film (Franco Zefirelli), and the fourth to Henry V in film (Kenneth Branagh). Douglas Lanier states on the back cover of the book,

Engagingly written, impeccably researched, and theoretically sophisticated, Collaborations with the Past is essential reading for those interested in tracing how and why various cultural producers have struggled to lay claim to Shakespeare. Diana E. Henderson’s close readings attend in often breathtaking detail not only to literary and cinematographic subtleties of the specific works under discussion but also to the various historical contexts within which these uses of Shakespeare function. This is ‘deep reading’ at its very finest.

Henderson’s lecture culminates with a Top Ten List, reminiscent of David Letterman, about why “Shakespeare Remains Top Dog”:

10. Shakespeare was always popular; he wrote in a popular medium for a broad audience base.

9. Shakespeare wrote in a variety of forms and genres: comical, tragical, historical, comical-pastoral, pastoral-tragical, comical-pastoral-tragical…

8. Shakespeare never used one story when he could use five: he loved syncretism.

7. Shakespeare created characters who make us feel good even when they are bad. We like that.

6. Shakespeare used the elusive form of drama, in which we seldom have a single narrator: he let us ponder morality rather than preaching to us.

5. Text lasts. Shakespeare was in the right place at the right time: print culture was emerging.

4. Acting is always present tense. Shakespeare chose the right medium to create presence form the past.

3. “Shakespeare” (if not Shakespeare) was always a cosmopolitan European—or at least the German Romantics thought so.

2. Shakespeare was really good with words—and in English.

1. Shakespeare wrote in a multimedia form in a way that can be RESHAPED across media.

During the Q&A discussion following the lecture, Henderson is asked to expand on her meaning of collaboration and Shakespeare and she says that many people read Othello and swear the title character is white, not black, because of the lines he is given and delivers. She says, of course, this is a racist view, but she attributes it to Scott’s Kenilworth and the fact that all of Othello’s lines are delivered by a white man in that appropriation (my word, since Henderson doesn’t like the term) of the story. She suggests this idea that we read Shakespeare through the various lenses with which we encounter him. My understanding of her argument is that the texts work together to influence one another—she makes it clear that her focus is not on whether or not Shakespeare is collaborating with present texts, but on the way present texts collaborate with Shakespeare. Collaboration, it would seem, requires a mutual give-and-take between two or more parties, and even with Shakespeare long since dead, present day artists and authors are still working with him.

Henderson brings up an interesting point to back up these claims: she recalls a story of a theatre director she knows who is directing a play by Marlowe. Whenever this director talks about the production process he always says “I love working with Marlowe,” as if Marlowe is alive and actually directing production with him. There is way then in which Shakespeare’s plays are taken and worked with; a collaboration without Shakespeare’s actual, present day input. The next commenter elaborates that this seems to suggest that Shakespeare’s works are never finished, and this is how collaboration can take place with a dead author. He [meaning Shakespeare] passes the control of the text. Henderson says “His ideas are still effecting how we think” even now, long after Shakespeare’s death. I think my favorite part of this whole idea is really that there is a timelessness to Shakespeare and his ideas in general that doesn’t make it necessary for us to look at each of his plays and figure out how each individual story is relevant to our present—instead, we can accept that Shakespeare’s general ideas are relevant and make the individual plays relevant by studying them through a particular lens.

Advanced Project Jam Session- Introduction

I should probably clue everyone in since not all of you necessarily know what I’m talking about here:

My name’s Anne, I’m an English MA student in my last semester of my program at the College of Saint Rose, and I am writing my Advanced Project- the hashing out of which will be the point of these posts for the remainder of the semester.

What’s an Advanced Project? Well, it’s a 25 page research paper a year in the making that is required in order for me to graduate with my MA degree. Now, it just so happens that my MA program is two years (full-time), and I actually entered graduate school knowing I was going to be writing my Advanced Project on William Faulkner’s character, Quentin Compson. I didn’t know what I would write about him, but I knew I wanted/needed this paper to be all about Quentin.

So, my second semester here, I took 20th Century American Lit with Dave Rice and wrote my final paper for that class on Caddy’s “gender performance” (a term coined by Judith Butler in her book Gender Trouble). In that paper, I argued against the general belief of critics, as well as the characters of the brothers themselves in The Sound and The Fury, that Caddy’s downfall is at fault for the family’s downfall. I believed at the time that it was actually her brothers’ expectations and desires for how Caddy should perform her gender that led to her downfall, causing the family’s downfall- so Jason, Benjy, and Quentin’s expectations and demands of Caddy were so impossible to live up to that they set Caddy up for failure. Thus, it is the brothers’ own faults that the family fell to ruin.

I still think that is a very good argument. But I wasn’t completely satisfied with my reading of Quentin’s character when making that argument. As I finished that paper and subsequently that semester, I was struck by an idea/goal for my Advanced Project which I immediately went to Professor Rice with.

(The Advanced Project, on top of being a 25 page paper, is kind of like an independent study. It counts as a class which must be taken at the end of your graduate education, and you independently research the paper under the watchful eye of a mentor and with the helpful guidance of a research consultant- both professors who guide you through and oversee your paper.)

So, last semester was spent writing up the proposal for the paper, and this semester, the paper is being written. Professor Rice has awesomely been acting as my mentor, and I have a plan and a little over a month to get a finished, polished, pristine paper written and submitted.

What was my point describing all of that exposition?

Well, it’s this:

In my Advanced Project, I set out to prove that Quentin Compson, based upon Faulkner’s descriptions of Quentin’s thoughts and actions in both The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, is genderqueer.

This is much more complex than merely proving that Quentin’s unrealistic expectations of Caddy caused her downfall. I have always felt much too sympathetic toward Quentin to really think that ill of him. He has been described to me as a narcissist and as mentally/emotionally ill. Those descriptions have never quite sat right with me, and not just because I have deep, abiding affection for Quentin. Those descriptions just seem too shallow for Quentin- I believe there are much deeper things at work.

With the help of Judith Butler, Riki Wilchins, and a number of other critics, I’m working to prove Quentin’s struggle is one with gender- the struggle of being caught between binaries, having been born into a very heteronormative society and culture that does nothing but restrict poor Quentin, until he cannot stand to exist in it any longer.

As I continue to work out my argument more intensively over the next few weeks, I’ll update here with more thoughts and ideas. For now, I need to get back to writing this paper.

Masculinity, Homosexuality, and Native American Society.

Last week we discussed Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony in class, and our reading for this coming week is Carving Hawk, a book of poetry by Maurice Kenny. Normally, I wouldn’t talk about this coming week’s reading before class, but I can’t resist. I’m formulating ideas.

While reading Kenny’s poetry, I was particularly struck by “Winkte” on page 83 (which, if you know me, will not surprise you in the least). The poem discusses the existence of homosexual men in Native society:

We are special to the Sioux!

They gave us respect for strange powers

Of looking into the sun, the night.

They paid us with horses not derision.

To the Cheyenne we were no curiosity.

We were friends or wives of brave warriors

Who hunted for our cooking pots,

Who protected our tipis from Pawnee.

…

The Crow and Ponca offered deerskin

When the decision to avoid the warpath was made.

And we were accepted into the fur robes

Of a young warrior, and lay by his flesh

And knew his mouth and warm groin;

Or we married (a second wife) the chief

And if we fulfilled our duties, he smiled

And gave us the grandchildren to care for.

Male homosexuality was taken in stride in Native society. This makes me think of the two-spirit people that Dr. Rice brought up in class (who I keep bringing up). There seems to be this “go with the flow” mentality about sexuality and even gender. Like Kau-Au-Ointy from Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain, who I blogged about last week, variations from the traditional gender performance is accommodated, it seems. I noticed it in relation to Silko’s Ceremony as well: Tayo spend a lot of the novel crying. Now, this kind of emotional display would be considered unmanly in our society, and yet, Harley only ever seems concerned for Tayo and his breakdowns, and never disapproving. Sure, Tayo is seen as damaged after the war, but he is never considered less of a man for displaying his emotions (not any way I picked up on anyway). In fact, it seems as if Tayo’s ceremony puts his emotions into greater perspective, giving them more depth of meaning. Instead of reacting suddenly and violently to things going on in his life, it is as if he learns to experience the emotion more fully and embrace it- something that seems, by our standards, to be traditionally less male.

Again, I’m still turning the ideas around in my head- trying to work out a paper from them.

Women, Gender, and Kiowa Society

This week’s reading was N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain and it was, by far, my favorite thing read so far this semester. Please forgive me if this is less than cohesive. I’m still wrapping my head around the thoughts and ideas I had in response to this book and the following section in particular.

The section that really struck me most was Chapter XVII, page 58-59, detailing the treatment of “bad women” and badly treated women in conjunction with Momaday’s Great-Grandmother’s non-traditionalness:

Mommedaty’s grandmother, Kau-au-ointy, was a Mexican captive, taken from her homeland when she was a child of eight or ten years. I never knew her, but I have been to her grave at Rainy Mountain.

KAU-AU-OINTY

BORN 1834

DIED 1929

AT REST

She raised a lot of eyebrows, they say, for she would not play the part of a Kiowa woman. From slavery she rose up to become a figure of the tribe. She owned a great herd of cattle, and she could ride as well as any man. She had blue eyes. (59)

It amazes me how accepting the Kiowa’s were/are, and I feel like it shouldn’t.

Sure, they raised their eyebrows at Kau-Au-Ointy’s unconventional actions and origins in the tribe, but they didn’t stop Kau-Au-Ointy from rising amongst their ranks, or from fluidly performing masculine gender roles that surpassed the expectations held for traditional femaleness. I’m so used to our Puritan-fueled, strict gender binary, that I am continuously surprised by the Native American acceptance of fluidity. Be it two-spirits or women who simply do not conform to societal expectations, Native Americans have shown truly inspiring levels of acceptance.

When I first read the story about the bad woman who deceived her blind husband, I will confess I had a slight feminist freak-out. With all the reading I’ve been doing lately about genderqueerness and the general intolerance it’s usually met with, I overreacted to the story. Reading it again definitely puts it into perspective- most traitors to Native American/Kiowa traditions and society were exiled, not just the women; the Kiowa women experienced hard lives only made harder when the men where “bad men” and the women true; the Kiowa tribe was much more accepting of fluidity of gender than our current non-native American society is.

A lot of my initial indignation over my misinterpretation of chapter XVII had to do with present day mixed-blood Kiowa women and how they could possibly identify themselves. Over time, societal expectations change regarding how the female and male gender binary should be performed. If Kau-Au-Ointy was raising eyebrows back when she was alive, what would present day mixed-blood Kiowa women garner in response to the change in gender performances as well as the increasingly “Western” assimilation that has occurred across Native American culture? I was worried that this change in gender expectations as well as assimilation would only increase the number of “bad women” labeled. While I cannot know for sure, understanding the stories better now makes me think that there would be much more acceptance for fluidity than I am used to in our non-native society. There is more of a possibility that mixed-blood Kiowa women would be accepted into the ranks than I originally thought, which, quite frankly, warms my heart and makes me envious that I’m not Kiowa myself.

Archilde: Caught in the Racial In-Between

As my classmates know, I missed class this week, so forgive me if this was discussed already.

For this past week’s Native American Lit class, we read D’Arcy McNickle’s novel, The Surrounded. In reading the beginning of the novel, I was really struck by the prejudice/hatred felt by Archilde’s Spanish father, Max, toward his Native American mother, and vice versa. What remains even more striking, however, is Archilde’s apparent contempt upon returning to the Flathead Reservation not only aimed toward his mother’s and siblings’ suggestions that he remain and embrace his Indian heritage, but also aimed at his father and his white, bigoted mentality. Archilde seems to not only be torn between both warring sides, as the novel’s description would have you believe, but he also seems interested in refusing them both equally. Or maybe he’s just content to refuse his lineage/family. The fact that he is drawn back to the reservation, after creating a life elsewhere does seem reinforce his indecision over which warring half of his heritage he should embrace. However, his initial resistance toward both halves of himself seems to play up the idea that he is lost afloat, caught between both histories, unwilling to really identify or embrace either.

When Archilde first returns to the reservation, he has no intention of staying long-term: however, the indecision he feels over his warring heritage seems to keep him trapped, simultaneously drawn to and repelled by the reservation life, until he eventually leaves once again. However, Archilde does return to the reservation, embracing his dying mother. Even then, he does not cast of, what Brigit Hans in her article “Re-Vision: An Early Version of The Surrounded” describes as the “viewpoint… of an educated white man” (195). He understands, intellectually, his Native American people, however, he has really sunk his claws in the white man’s world, making him unable to truly grasp his Indian heritage. This strikes me as ironic, seeing as Archilde seemed to really love his mother, while he seemed to almost completely dislike his father.

It seems that Archilde, even once he chooses to live in the white world, will never feel fully content or happy with either world. In fact, it seems to me that he could only be truly happy if he could live outside both worlds.