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Written from a contemporary Cherokee, Queer, and mixed-race
experience, Walking with Ghosts: Poems confronts the legacy of
land-theft, genocide, and forced removal of Cherokees from their
homelands while simultaneously resisting ongoing attacks on both
Indigenous and Gay/ Lesbian/ Bisexual /Transgender (GLBT)
communities. The debut work of Qwo-Li Driskill, a young Cherokee
poet also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ancestries,
these poems move across Cherokee history. From the infamous Trail
of Tears and the Allotment Act to the Indian boarding school system
and contemporary manifestations of racism, these poems reach into
Cherokee collective memory asking its readers to not only remember
the history of colonization, but also the survival and continuance
of Indigenous Nations. With this collection Driskill, who
identifies as Queer as well as Two-Spirit (a contemporary term used
in North American Indigenous communities to describe diverse sexual
and gender identities) becomes one of only a few of American Indian
Queer/Two-Spirit male writers in print. Refusing to compromise
identities, Driskill also grapples with the impact of hate crimes
on GLBT communities, multiracial and multi-tribal identity, the
AIDS crisis, psychic trauma, and war. Yet the poems in this
collection are rooted in a sense of love and the power of words to
heal the legacies of colonization and other forms of violence.
Cherokee love poems weave into eulogies to the dead while ghosts
draw the living into a place of wholeness. Tender, startling,
confrontational and erotic, this book honors the dead and brings
the survivors back home.
Two-Spirit people, identified by many different tribally specific
names and standings within their communities, have been living,
loving, and creating art since time immemorial. It wasn't until the
1970s, however, that contemporary queer Native literature gained
any public notice. Even now, only a handful of books address it
specifically, most notably the 1988 collection "Living the Spirit:
A Gay American Indian Anthology." Since that book's publication
twenty-three years ago, there has not been another collection
published that focuses explicitly on the writing and art of
Indigenous Two-Spirit and Queer people.
This landmark collection strives to reflect the complexity of
identities within Native Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender,
Queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2) communities. Gathering together the
work of established writers and talented new voices, this anthology
spans genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essay) and themes
(memory, history, sexuality, indigeneity, friendship, family, love,
and loss) and represents a watershed moment in Native American and
Indigenous literatures, Queer studies, and the intersections
between the two.
Collaboratively, the pieces in "Sovereign Erotics" demonstrate not
only the radical diversity among the voices of today's Indigenous
GLBTQ2 writers but also the beauty, strength, and resilience of
Indigenous GLBTQ2 people in the twenty-first century.
Contributors: Indira Allegra, Louise Esme Cruz, Paula Gunn Allen,
Qwo-Li Driskill, Laura Furlan, Janice Gould, Carrie House, Daniel
Heath Justice, Maurice Kenny, Michael Koby, M. Carmen Lane, Jaynie
Lara, Chip Livingston, Luna Maia, Janet McAdams, Deborah Miranda,
Daniel David Moses, D. M. O'Brien, Malea Powell, Cheryl Savageau,
Kim Shuck, Sarah Tsigeyu Sharp, James Thomas Stevens, Dan Taulapapa
McMullin, William Raymond Taylor, Joel Waters, and Craig Womack
In Cherokee Asegi udanto refers to people who either fall outside
of men's and women's roles or who mix men's and women's roles.
Asegi, which translates as ""strange,"" is also used by some
Cherokees as a term similar to ""Queer."" For author Qwo-Li
Driskill, asegi provides a means by which to reread Cherokee
history in order to listen for those stories rendered ""strange""
by colonial heteropatriarchy. As the first full-length work of
scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous Queer or
Two-Spirit critique, Asegi Stories examines gender and sexuality in
Cherokee cultural memory, how they shape the present, and how they
can influence the future. The theoretical and methodological
underpinnings of Asegi Stories derive from activist, artistic, and
intellectual genealogies, referred to as ""dissent lines"" by Maori
scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Driskill intertwines Cherokee and
other Indigenous traditions, women of color feminisms, grassroots
activisms, Queer and Trans studies and politics, rhetoric, Native
studies, and decolonial politics. Drawing from oral histories and
archival documents in order to articulate Cherokee-centered
Two-Spirit critiques, Driskill contributes to the larger
intertribal movements for social justice.
"This book is an imagining." So begins this collection examining
critical, Indigenous-centered approaches to understanding gay,
lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and Two-Spirit (GLBTQ2)
lives and communities and the creative implications of queer theory
in Native studies. This book is not so much a manifesto as it is a
dialogue--a "writing in conversation"--among a luminous group of
scholar-activists revisiting the history of gay and lesbian studies
in Indigenous communities while forging a path for
Indigenouscentered theories and methodologies.
The bold opening to "Queer Indigenous Studies" invites new
dialogues in Native American and Indigenous studies about the
directions and implications of queer Indigenous studies. The
collection notably engages Indigenous GLBTQ2 movements as alliances
that also call for allies beyond their bounds, which the co-editors
and contributors model by crossing their varied identities,
including Native, trans, straight, non-Native, feminist,
Two-Spirit, mixed blood, and queer, to name just a few.
Rooted in the Indigenous Americas and the Pacific, and drawing on
disciplines ranging from literature to anthropology, contributors
to "Queer Indigenous Studies" call Indigenous GLBTQ2 movements and
allies to center an analysis that critiques the relationship
between colonialism and heteropatriarchy. By answering critical
turns in Indigenous scholarship that center Indigenous
epistemologies and methodologies, contributors join in reshaping
Native studies, queer studies, transgender studies, and Indigenous
feminisms.
Based on the reality that queer Indigenous people "experience
multilayered oppression that profoundly impacts our safety, health,
and survival," this book is at once an imagining and an invitation
to the reader to join in the discussion of decolonizing queer
Indigenous research and theory and, by doing so, to partake in
allied resistance working toward positive change.
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