#sovereignerotics

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 actually finished reading my first book in years that wasn't for work (one of my roles is as Sensitivity Editor), and that still took me over a year. #Zenzele was a much-needed breath of my other ancestral lands. Now I've begun to read #SovereignErotics and I have vowed to ONLY read integrated works by Black and other indigenous people going forward. Settler media has done its best to destroy everything we are, #whitefantasy has overtaken all of the stories we used to hand down to one another. No more. I will endeavor to reclaim the creative mental landscapes we have been denied. #BlackBooksMatter #NativesAreStillHere

I actually finished a book, #Zenzele, even though it took me a year. And I've started reading a new one, #SovereignErotics, and I'm pleased. Overall, outside of some of @cuilpress books, I will ONLY endeavor to read works by Black and other indigenous people. I #caunnot read settler crap any longer; it has long sought to kill my spirit. No more. I will only heed my ancestors and kin. <3 we've been apart too long. #BlackBooksMatter #NativesAreStillHere