{"id":281,"date":"2021-02-18T14:19:15","date_gmt":"2021-02-18T19:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/?p=281"},"modified":"2021-02-18T14:19:15","modified_gmt":"2021-02-18T19:19:15","slug":"shackled-by-fear-amongst-other-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/2021\/02\/18\/shackled-by-fear-amongst-other-things\/","title":{"rendered":"Shackled by Fear, Amongst Other Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Auto)biography of Mad<\/em> was quite possibly the most intriguing poem I have ever read. I shake my head now, to think I initially scrolled by it thinking it was references for the introduction, or for some reason, creatively placed footnotes. The entirety of the selected poems held me with a feeling of intense interest and strangely captivating sorrow, as if I was mourning heavily the loss of someone I never knew, but what drew my eyes so closely to (Auto)biography of Mad <\/em>was its manipulation of form. The choice by Driskill to formulate a poem around something so sterile and unforgiving seemed contrary to the very goals of poetics itself, so the ingenuity pleased as much as it confused me. As I began to read the poem, I thought that perhaps it was engineered to be ignored, scrolled past without care, as many of the issues it describes are when they take place in native communities. But it was impossible to look away from a particular section, one about fear-<\/p>\n

Fear<\/p>\n

of being watched, 4, 14,<\/p>\n

26, 28;<\/p>\n

of bleach, 4, 14, 26-28;<\/p>\n

of body, 109;<\/p>\n

of fireworks, 1997, 1999;<\/p>\n

of flat people who hide under bathtubs, 135;<\/p>\n

of hairs on the backs of<\/p>\n

hands, 14;<\/p>\n

of loud noises, 19-28;<\/p>\n

of men, 4, 14,46, 128;<\/p>\n

of pencils, ix, 4, 14, 26-28;<\/p>\n

of people hiding in<\/p>\n

laundry piles, 3-28;<\/p>\n

of police, 52, 98;<\/p>\n

of snakes, 198;<\/p>\n

of spit, 63;<\/p>\n

of sudden movements, 19-28;<\/p>\n

of unlocked doors, 571<\/p>\n

The repetition of \u2018of\u2019 at the beginning of each line describing either a feared item, or a moment of fear itself, and how frequent some of the fictitious page numbers occurred for different items illustrated to me that the fear for native people (and perhaps more predominantly two-spirited native people) is ever-present and unchanging. Additionally, the poem on first glance seems akin to the pages found in the back of a textbook, which have possibly been the largest offender concerning the misrepresentation of native issues, cultures, and diversity.<\/p>\n

The fears themselves, \u201cof sudden movements, of flat people who hide under bathtubs, of people hiding in laundry piles, of unlocked doors, of loud noises\u201d portray someone living in a constant state of hiding, fearing discovery more than anything else. The impossible nature of \u201cflat people who hide under bathtubs\/of people hiding in laundry piles\u201d is crushing to contemplate, as two-spirited people and native people in general are not only living in fear during their public daily life, but cannot escape this paranoia in their private and most intimate spaces. Considering that fear is the most elaborated entry in the poem, it suggests that is it\u2019s the most chronic and withstanding issue to the native community, an issue only heightened to native people who are gender fluid or defy heteronormative expression in any way. Whether this fear of being watched relates to the eyes of the government, the eyes of the ethnic majority, the eyes of their own people, or even the eyes of their partner, we will never truly know, but by placing fear alongside chronic mental illnesses and events of historical trauma, Driskill begs us to elevate fear to being an equally destructive force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Auto)biography of Mad was quite possibly the most intriguing poem I have ever read. I shake my head now, to think I initially scrolled by it thinking it was references for the introduction, or for some reason, creatively placed footnotes. The entirety of the selected poems held me with a feeling of intense interest and … Continue reading Shackled by Fear, Amongst Other Things<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4639,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[169398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2021-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqhistoryandliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}