Scan barcode
A review by justabean_reads
A Generous Spirit: Selected Works by Beth Brant by Beth Brant
challenging
emotional
informative
medium-paced
5.0
Sinister Wisdom Press is doing a "Sapphic Classics" series republishing older lesbian/queer woman writing so that it doesn't get forgotten. (I just tried to find out more about it, but to be honest their web presence is kind of scattered). Anyway, I'm glad they put this together, as I was entirely unfamiliar with Beth Brant's writing, and it seems from the multiple forwards and afterwards that she was very important to two-spirit writing in the 1980s and '90s. Keeping history alive is such a struggle.
This is a slim book, actually published as an issue of the magazine, containing short stories, poetry and essays by Brant. The stories are mostly from the '80s, and you can really see Brant develop as a writer as the book carries forward. I really liked how much attention she paid to dialogue and feeling of place. All the characters are working class, many are queer, many are Indigenous, usually Mohawk like Brant, and the mix of the three informs how they go. Some of the stories felt a little didactic, but most of them sidestepped that by focusing on people finding human connections and help in unlikely places, and defying the world that's trying to grind them down by surviving and thriving and not having to give up who they are. The essays are mostly about anti-Indigenous racism and the damage done by colonialism, but the focus was, again, on the work of healing and the work of community happening within what Joshua Whitehead would call the Indigiqueer community. It kind of feels like the conversation about cultural appropriation and centring #OwnVoices has been stuck in a loop for the last thirty years though, gotta say.
Well worth reading, and I hope that we start seeing more two-spirit writing getting republished like this.
This is a slim book, actually published as an issue of the magazine, containing short stories, poetry and essays by Brant. The stories are mostly from the '80s, and you can really see Brant develop as a writer as the book carries forward. I really liked how much attention she paid to dialogue and feeling of place. All the characters are working class, many are queer, many are Indigenous, usually Mohawk like Brant, and the mix of the three informs how they go. Some of the stories felt a little didactic, but most of them sidestepped that by focusing on people finding human connections and help in unlikely places, and defying the world that's trying to grind them down by surviving and thriving and not having to give up who they are. The essays are mostly about anti-Indigenous racism and the damage done by colonialism, but the focus was, again, on the work of healing and the work of community happening within what Joshua Whitehead would call the Indigiqueer community. It kind of feels like the conversation about cultural appropriation and centring #OwnVoices has been stuck in a loop for the last thirty years though, gotta say.
Well worth reading, and I hope that we start seeing more two-spirit writing getting republished like this.