It's unmistakable, that strangely calm air and sky that signals big
change ahead: earthquake weather. These are familiar signs to
Janice Gould, a poet, a lesbian, and a mixed-blood California
Indian of Koyangk, uwi Maidu descent. Her sense of isolation is
intense, her search for identity is relentless, and her words can
take one's breath away. Sometimes accepting, sometimes full of
anger, Gould's work is rare, filtered through the feelings,
thoughts, and experiences of a lesbian of Indian heritage. Over and
over again, she speaks as an outsider looking in at the lives of
others--through a doorway, out of a car window, or from the
shambles of a broken relationship. Showing a steady courage in the
midst of this alienation, her words are also stark testimony to the
struggle of an individual caught in social and emotional contexts
defined by others. In Earthquake Weather, as in an evolving
friendship, Gould opens herself to the reader in stages. "I did not
know how lonely I was / till we began to talk," she writes in an
opening section, setting the introspective tone of what's to come.
She begins with a focus on those universal truths that both bind us
and isolate us from each other: the pain of loss, the finality of
death, our longing to see beneath the surface of things. Next, the
poet turns to her growing-up years during the Vietnam War and the
civil rights movement. She describes a family in turmoil and an
Indian heritage that, oddly, was one of the factors that made her
feel most disconnected from other people. And she writes poignantly
about her increasing alienation from prescribed sexual roles.
"What's wrong with me? / Where do I belong? Why / am I here? Why
can t I / hold on?" Finally, as in a trusting friendship, Gould
offers the reader vivid word portraits of relationships in her
life--women she has loved and who have loved her. Erotic and deeply
personal, these poems serve as both a reconciliation and
affirmation of her individuality. "Yet would you deny / that
between women desire exists / that in our friendship a delicate /
and erotic strand of fire unites us?" The poems in this book, says
critic Toby Langen, are most powerful for their "courageous drawing
on experience and feelings." They will speak to many general
readers as well as anyone interested in questions of gender and
identity, including students of literature, lesbian/women's
studies, social/cultural studies, or American Indian studies.
General
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