Erica's Reader Project

In this essay,in the beginning, I noticed masculinity performed in a way that we usually never see. In media, we usually don’t see men holding back from their sexual desires, especially when a woman also wants to engage in sexual activity. I feel that this was a great representation of masculinity because it shows that all men aren’t sex deviants. It also shows the social stigmas that men like this face to face like being called a “pussy” because he didn’t want to take advantage of her or was too scared to do that to her. Then towards the end I noticed that the woman wasn’t a cisgender woman and that this poem was more feeling guilty that they were attracted to this person. I feel like this poem is great because a lot of men do feel bad for being attracted to men or women that aren’t cisgender.

From this poem I noticed a lot of pressure for the author to conform to traditional ways of performing femininity. She shows how it was mostly while she was in school she was pressured to perform in a feminine way, while her family seemed to be okay or didn’t see anything wrong in the way she behaved. Also I feel that since this poem is about being a child, I think that her behaving in a “masculine” way is because she was always around boys and her brothers. I’ve noticed in the public school system that there is always a pressure for children to perform in hetero normative ways. I have memories of being a kid myself, and I’m the only girl grandchild on my dads side of the family, so I would be surrounded by boys all the time. My family thought I was going to end up being a “tomboy” and I was at that time, but I grew out of it eventually. Personally I feel that this poem highlights the ways we are pressure to perform our sex and gender at young ages.

This is also a piece that I feel I related to the most out of this book. That is because when I came out to my brother as bisexual, we were also in the car when I did it. I wasn’t expecting to do it, like the author, but I did it because it seemed like it was a now or never situation. I was fortunate enough for my younger brother to be very understanding and loving after I told him. Since I do relate to this poem I thought it was very moving that their mother told them they loved them and that they would continue to take care of them and love them despite not necessarily being happy about her daughter’s identity. I thought this was a validating poem because when speaking about coming out to family members, especially parents, people tend to discuss the negatives and how their family disapproves. This poem doesn’t do that, it shows that sometimes it is safe to come out and I think this is a necessary poem because it validates being scared and it validates coming out and shows it is okay. Although their mother wasn’t approving in the beginning by stating that she wanted grandchildren as if people that are outside of a heterosexual relationship cannot have children.

This piece was very relatable to me. I feel this way because as a woman of color, I experience people who feel as though they have some sort of expertise on what it is to be a woman, black, or the intersections of both of those identities. I’m always faced with people thinking some of the things people in my group do is tradition rather than what we have to do to survive in life. I relate this poem to a lecture I had in my ETST 444 class, and how people of color still feel the impacts of the experiences that their ancestors had to endure. I find this to be true, because I know I personally experience this and have anxiety about things I will likely never go through, but it was apart of the survival of my ancestors. Also I particularly enjoy when she states, “I am not real, to choose and identity is to put on a costume, playing make believe. I don’t want to make you believe anything, you have already figured it out yourself.” I enjoyed this part because it relates to how race and ethnicity are social constructs, but with those social constructs people already have a preconceived judgement about who you are based on what you look like or identify with.

This is a very peculiar piece in my opinion. The format of is it like an index associated with years, ages, etc. It also seems as though it could speak for anyone in this group and it also give the author’s personal touch and the experiences their ancestors had to face which would contribute to their identity. I’ve noticed that a lot of the categories intertwine for example under “Depression, 12-28” it refers the reader to look under other categories like Bipolar disorder, disability, and madness. To me, this is the author’s way of saying these two categories build off of each other and cause more problems and that's why they refer to themselves as “mad”. I also noticed the historical connections like under the “Cemeteries” section it says “see golf courses, trail of tears, middle passage”. I thought this was interesting because it shows how Native cemeteries aren’t respected and they’re always around us we just don’t pay attention to them necessarily because of colonization. Additionally, the “Middle Passage” section of this refers to the middle passage as a cemetery as a whole because of the massive amounts of native deaths at this time. At first this was a challenging piece to read, but once I got the message from it, I was very moved by the formatting and the story it told without explicitly telling a story.

Qwo-Li Driskill’s piece was very moving and revolutionary to me. I enjoyed how they discussed multiple Native identities. My interpretation of this poem was that it is about heritage and true Native identity and loving that identity and the person that comes with it. This poem, like the others in Part two, is very intimate because it is very sensual and romantic while having very impactful symbolism in it’s intimacy. For example “Remove your wooden shield so I can kiss your Apache sternum, taste in your sweat the iron of Spain that never conquered us”, this symbolizes loving their identity, their heritage, and how they will never be conquered because Natives are often seen as a conquered or weaker people. This poem shows pride in their identity that is often forgotten about or overlooked and brings it to light in a positive manner. This is something I personally am not used to in literature because I’m usually exposed to white heteronormative literature, so this piece being about proud of one’s identity was a positive change. Also this poem shows how, with love, they can continue to rise, be strong, and proud of who they are and the people who look like them around them. I thought this poem was very touching, and I’ve never been exposed to literature like this before so it was nice to have literature that opened my eyes to something I rarely acknowledge.

I particularly liked this poem because it is very touching. I enjoyed the intimacy of this poem. It really encompasses being two spirit and native. I loved how it showed a lot of native culture throughout by giving detail about the dances and food for example. Jaynie put the reader in their shoes and made it possible for anyone to be able to relate or feel a deep emotional connection to the poem. Jaynie never explicitly details about their gender, which I like because it keeps gender outside of the binary and allows for fluidity. Also get the sense that the author is hiding their identity, but they still love regardless of the backlash they may or may not face because of this identity. Overall I really loved the amount of love and intimacy that is felt throughout this piece.

This poem is what I consider to be the most powerful and moving of part one. This poem illustrates the centuries of oppression that Natives have faced since colonization. It also gives brief insight of how Natives are connected to nature and how they feel that colonization has affected nature as well. I got this when Kim said, “We don’t get to tell the trees how they feel about war.” I also connect this to how the Natives feelings about war was never considered and they were just taken advantage of against their will. They were never allowed and still aren’t allowed to express how they feel about the oppression that they have faced throughout history. Also I enjoyed how this poem puts the colonizers in the position of the Natives. Kim describes how natives are perceived in multiple ways like: a symbol, prisoner of war, war trophy, and justification. My favorite part of this poem is the last few lines when Kim says, “How about this: Help me pull the bullets from the trees. Learn my language. I’ll learn your history.” I particularly enjoyed this because the relationship between the dominant and subordinate societies is usually the dominant group taking while the subordinate group does all of the giving. By making the dominant group learn something about Natives in return for the natives learning the history that is often forced upon them, I think it is a powerful way to reclaim a sense of self and confidence in their marginalized identity.

In the very beginning of this essay, I thought that Michael was looking at a pregnant teenager instead of his mother. Once I figured out that he was talking about his mother while she was pregnant with him, I felt that it was foreshadowing that something happened to her that would cause him not to necessarily know his mother or remember her. Without directly stating it, Michael was able to translate that the family that adopted him was a white family. When Kobby says, “Of course I wasn’t related to um;they were pure blond and good” I noticed the internalized racism that he had ingrained. He without question knew he wasn’t related to his adoptive family because they were “blond and good” and this shows how people of color are taught that if they are not white or apart of the dominant society they are not good or they are considered deviant. Also when Michael shares what his adopted mother said when confessing to him that he was adopted was problematic as well and displays the idea of the “white savior complex”. He says, “...She aint your mommy; I’m your mommy ‘cause I wanted you so bad. I chose you; she birthed you is all. They were poor anyway, at least now you got a swimmin’ pool”. His mother saying this is telling him that she “saved” him and gave him a better life. This also discounts the sacrifice his mother made by giving him up for adoption because she couldn’t provide for him and makes him feel as though his biological mother didn’t care for him or love him because she gave him up for adoption. It also shows that she feels as though she saved him because she states that his biological family was poor and tells him to be happy because his new family has money. I liked this essay because it was very intriguing.

This piece encompasses being Native and lesbian (or as the author puts it, “dyke”). I particularly thought it was interesting that the author decided to reclaim the word dyke. This word has been used as a derogatory term for lesbians, so the reclamation of the slur gives the author more power, in my opinion. Also, the comparison of being native to queer was very eye opening to me, because it shows that if you have a marginalized identity the oppression tends to be the same across the board. A part that resonates with me is when Allen says, “...we never go away even if we’re always leaving because the only home is each other they’ve occupied all the rest colonized it”an idea about ourselves is all we own…” This part resonates with me because I feel that this is true for all marginalized identities that have to face oppression daily. I feel that as a marginalized person when around other marginalized identities I feel that we all connect on a deeper level because our identities make up who we are and how we behave in everything we do. Over all I really enjoyed this piece and I think it was a great way to start part one.