I have been sick with Covid, for the second time. This time it was more cough heavy, though I still had lots of aches and pains, and I had a fever for a bit, and some sweats, but its been two weeks and I’m back to normal, mostly.
I have been wanting to write here, but then a bomb and a bomb and another bomb. I have been wanting to write, and I can’t bring myself to feel, or I feel too much and then I shut myself down, watching Star Trek Discovery (again), watching something else, anything else. Is this what the kids call disassociation?
I don’t know. I have had a hard time thinking and writing. Over the past couple months, I have struggled to find words that mean something in this moment. What does the moment need? And then I remember that I do not have the tools to rise to this moment, or I am not the one who needs to be writing about it. I need to be sharing and resharing, reminding others of the genocide of the Palestinian people. Reminding people that the Israeli state is perpetuating that genocide. Reminding people that this death is done with the support of the US, funding and arms and discourse. I think about this, too, and it never feels enough.
There is a humility in that realization—coming to accept that though you have feelings, they are not the most important ones. Coming to accept the fact of genocide, not its reasons or its justifications, but its occurrence. Its materiality.
I wanted to write more about these feelings, but this is about all I can muster right now.
Over the past few months some of my writing has come out. I’ll list it below, but most of it is collaborative, on the less academic end of the spectrum, but precisely because of that, fulfilling and important.
K’eguro Macharia and I were in dialogue in October about modernism and diaspora, from each of our respective positionalities.
A quote from K’eguro:
I'm stuck, now, on the evidence and non-evidence of rupture, rupture, that working from the inside—a blood vessel. The red eyes. The bleeding nose. The bleeding ear. The disorientation. The confusion. The collapse. What breaks from the inside, though the cause moves in from the outside. Or becomes internalized. To die from a broken heart because a sacred space has been violated. Rupture. So, not a breaking. Not even a scarring. A gathering in of broken relation. An attempt to hold pieces together. Or simply to hold them. Long enough for a heart to move in some way, to find an arhythm that can sustain curiosity, motion, gesture, long enough to pass on an iteration of love that binds and abides. To refuse rupture as destruction.
Jodi Byrd and I were in dialogue in GLQ [open access] about ICWA, the Dobbs decision, queerness and Indigeneity. We discussed a lot! But I wanted to share one thing about Qwo-Li Driskill, a scholar and poet, who has claimed Cherokee identity, but who is not Cherokee. I say:
For example, the bio that Qwo-Li uses in their works changes over time. And that's fine in the abstract, but it changes in really problematic ways. In Queer Indigenous Studies (Driskill, Finley, et al. 2011: 239) they are listed as “a Cherokee queer/Two-Spirit writer, scholar, and performer,” and in Sovereign Erotics (Driskill, Justice, et al. 2011: 216) they are listed as “a non-citizen Cherokee Asegi/Two-Spirit/Queer activist, writer, and performer,” and then in Asegi Stories, Qwo-Li (Driskill 2016: 7) describes themself as “a noncitizen, diasporic Cherokee Two-Spirit person” in the introduction. Over the course of these three different texts, published over a span of five years, there are three different bios. And also, Qwo-Li is a name they gave themself, as far as I understand, because we don't have a naming ceremony like other nations do, and it makes people think they are Cherokee. But we have to be real, they are not enrolled. Their claims to Cherokee citizenship have been challenged by Cherokee genealogists, but what gets me is there is no such thing as a “noncitizen” Cherokee. Cherokee Nation says there is no such category, and I'm sure the other two Cherokee tribes would not accept that either. But if you buy Asegi Stories today, looking for the authoritative volume on Cherokee queerness, you would assume that Qwo-Li is Cherokee, but they aren't. It really is terrible because they have taken up so much space, and continue to occupy space as an authority on Two-Spirit identity, but they are not Cherokee. I think we have sort of tiptoed around that, or whispered it to other Cherokees for a while now, but the fact of the matter is we can't keep thinking that Asegi Stories tells the story of Cherokee queerness.
I participated in an oral history project, conducted by the SBU Library, on the racial unrest of 2020, which has just come out as well. Mona Ramonetti interviewed me, and here is one thing that perhaps is good to remember.
A quote from me [forgive the “ums” lol, this is a transcript]:
I experienced a lot of, um, frustration, and, I internalized a lot of sadness. Um, I internalized and kept inside a lot of grief. Um, I found it hard to, express this kind of underlying sense of, um being ill at ease in the world for, many different reasons. Um, and I think that—That, for me, It has taken a lot of time for me to, come to grips with, what these past few years, mean; what, what are the multiple meanings that they, that they have, for me. Um, and at the same time, I was able to find joy and beauty and kindness and love, and, I, I think I am an optimistic person; I, I feel like I've been a little bit pessimistic in this, in this interview, but, but the thing that, that gives me hope actually is the way, are the ways, that people I really care about are, carrying on, making beautiful things, laughing, um, making love, being, being sexy, being desirous in spite of all of this. You know, like, there are ways that we, that we, um, thrive in spite of, and those are the things that I, I keep trying to, to find. That's where I try to, to go.
thank you for letting us into your heart, even when your heart doesn't know how to put words to feeling 🖤