I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

--Frantz Fanon

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i was accepted into a master's suite on political responsibility of the voices of our nation writing workshops offered to writers of color every summer. i just received my syllabus that i'm reading over now. i'm going to explode at the seams in a dazzling array of pyrotechnics.

the workshop is one-week long and starts june 23. this is my vacation i've given myself this year.

i have two weeks to get through the following reccomended books: the kite runner by khaled housseni, the brief wondrous life of oscar wao by junot diaz, brother i’m dying by edwidge dandicat, all aunt hagar's children by edward p. jones, incognegro by mat johnson, to see and see again: a life in iran and america by tara bahrampour.

while not a requirement, obviously, i'm going to get to as many as i can anyway. i'll be heading to a bookstore on my lunch break today.

i really can't contain my excitement. thank you all who have been rooting for me and gently encouraging me this whole time. ryka and leah get monster shout-outs.

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The masters suite invites writers to shape their memoir, poetry, prose or performance work with an emphasis on impacting perceptions, be they political, personal, social, literary or cultural. We exchange our writing and develop voice and authority while working on techniques to elevate the richness and toughness of our voice. We read and analyze authors to observe how they effectively move the reader, affect perception and perhaps opinion. Class discussions focus how our work shapes how we are perceived and how the events of the world are understood.

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I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.... Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world - I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

--Zora Neale Hurston

when i went to the launch party last month, i bought two back issues of red ink. i've been passing through last spring's issue, vol. 13, no. 1. i came across this poem last night over dinner and just about had the wind knocked outta me. wasn't expecting this little doozie (prayer).

she will... live with memories that don't make sense

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Daughter of a Yu'pik Woman
by Cynthia Deike-Sims

My daughter remembers eating
fish eyeballs and scooping the
fish from the bones after it was
boiled on the stove.
She was a baby but she has a
mind like a trap. A fishtrap.

The whitefish -- the akakiik.
Silvers, Sockeye, Kings, or Reds?

After years of the white man's food
she does not know how to
make sense of the tin can.
Her eyes lit up when telling
stories of Grandma's house
with good boiled fish.
The story changes, turning to
"Yuck" sometimes with giggles.
We remind her,
"You liked it. It was good."

Her trust of the homemade
went south sometime back
when she had to trust better
prepackaged fast food.
Her lessons of the system
were longer than preschool.
She paid attention
to talks about foster parents
when she should have been
learning the stories of
spawing Yukon King Salmon.

( the rest behind the cut )

Strip clubs in Vegas
lacking imagination
30-year mile dud.

i watched rabbit-proof fence the other day. christ, it was a little too close to home. when it came out in 2002, the tag line was: if you were kidnapped by the government, would you walk the 1500 miles back home? and i kept thinking about all of the stories of the carlisle indian school i read, of the hundreds of attempts the kids tried to escape home, most getting caught halfway home and being returned, most never making it, and some making it. children.

it was uplifting to know it was based on a true story, then heartbreaking when you find out the oldest had a child who was taken to the same school and never seen again.

children.

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Fixing my kite

I've been fixing my kite on the kitchen table. The preparation, drying, and clamping involved in using the crazy glue has kept me from being able to do it all at once. I'm lucky my roommates haven't complained about it interfering with breakfast. This one is an improvement from the one I left half-finished on the table in the bar. With that one, I walked out of the door and never looked back. There's one I see all over Chinatown -- it's like the country just stamped the same patter on an ocean of silk despite being underpaced by the intricate cutting, steaming, and bending of the skeletal bamboo frame. They all have the same six shades of a spectrum placed in the same stenciled patterns, only occasionally reversed and disguised as noncomformity. The one before that I accidentally lit a cigarette a little too close and the spontaneous combustion revealed its beautiful wings were actually plastic and not silk and it was alight and gone before I could say anything. It's only been recently that I could talk about the one whose chord snapped when I reeled out all of the string. It was a bright, silver day on Ocean Beach, and though the sun was hot and the sand burned the soles of my feet, the breeze off of the Pacific petered everything out. The waves kept pace with my breathing patterns and slowed down my heartbeat despite the exhileration of seeing it up there circling the birds. And I forgot that the clear Pacific still contains pockets of gusts and a tiny little pop! had it gone. It was so high I couldn't even distinguish the colors and it looked like a little purple dot as its end unravelled and pulled individual veins off of the muscle buried deep in my ribcage -- one by one, peeled off, not to be set aloft with the purple dot that kept getting further and further away, but fell like blood-laden threads to the ground.

A. Asked me who I was and he punched it into his computer, the name that I had given him, he punched it into the computer and it took a little while for it to happen. So I kind of took maybe half a step back to just wait for this process to go through. And Neil was freaking out in the back car, back seat of the car. And the officer driving asked me, “Do you know this guy in the back?” I said, no, I didn’t know him because I didn’t want to – I didn’t want to be there in that car with him. The name that I gave came back as not having any warrants or anything like that in order for them to pick me up. I asked, “Can I go now?” And they let me go.

--Evidence of Jason Roy, (Inquiry transcript, vol. 2 (September 9, 2003): 363-366) the third to last person to see Neil Stonechild alive

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it seems that i've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately. i'm wrapping up we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: stories from rwanda by philip gourevitch. i have some memoirs of palestinians from the the 40s through the 60s to get through soon. but, my head has been all over the place lately. and as postmaudlin was once wont to do when her arms were still healthy, post the books/references she was reading for a piece she was writing.

i've currently been reading report of the commission of inquiry into matters relating to the death of neil stonechild by the honourable mr. justice david h. wright commissioner -- which as i'm reading it realized that it should be required text for native studies majors in canada.

neil stonechild was a 17-year old salteaux kid in saskatoon, who had the tragic misfortune of running into a rogue portion (estimated at half) of the saskatoon city police one frigid night in november of 1990 after he'd been drinking with a friend. the saskatoon police force have a different definition of drunk tank than a lot of other places. it took ten years and a survivor of the infamous saskatoon starlight tours for his mother to get this inquiry started.

i'm new to html, so i haven't figured out why the formatting of this is so wonky in that the title is a mile from the actual poem. but, it is being kept behind an lj-cut tag.

( aboriginal representative and ontario ministry of finance representative conduct dialogue on economics )