Your contributions as an artist, activist, and feminist make you a role model for many writers, activists, and women. I’d like to know what drove you to become an activist and how do you feel about being viewed as a role model for being outspoken?
What I carry in my heart, my feet, are my mother’s singing and my father’s family’s warrior ancestors who fought for justice. They have come together in my generation, in my time. I serve those gifts, or try to—along with others in my family, with my people, whose names you won’t recognize.
Adrienne Rich has said about you that “she’s generous in her poetry, opening her sacred spaces and music to all, yet never naive or forgetful about hostility and hatred.” Your generosity and openness has allowed a mythical, meditative, and spiritual quality to resonate in your work. How do you feel this helps to distinguish your work from minority literatures and mainstream Anglo-American literary traditions?
The voice is the instrument of the spirit. I’ve had to follow it, and practice dutifully so I can attempt to translate all the valleys and mountains of it beautifully. Sometimes it speaks in poetry, other times via saxophone or singing. It’s the same voice.
Concerning feminism, you’ve stated it “doesn’t carry over to the tribal world, but a concept mirroring a similar meaning would.” And “many women’s groups have a majority of white women and [you] honestly can feel uncomfortable, or even voiceless sometimes.” Has your sentiment changed since you made that statement or has there been any significant event(s), which have made you feel empowered or heard?
My answer was inept and small. A major part of my struggle is directly related to being female in a society that disrespects or devalues female power. There is no balance of power in this society, this “over-culture.” Not in government, not in the home. Not in public or private space. The predominant Christian religions include no female power in the power structure. How could there be life in this place without both? Common sense will tell you that it isn’t possible!
We see the effects of this faulty operating system at all levels of society. The feminist movement inspired great change even though the larger community of predominately white feminists is different than say a small tribal community in Oklahoma. When I compare my mother’s life, her inability to move freely in a life that could include her children, her home, and her music, to my life and the lives of my daughter and granddaughters, I see more openings, more movement. Some things have changed, some not at all. We’re still grappling with a system in which anything related particularly to female experience is devalued, like teaching, childcare, or caretaking. The worst insult a boy or man can call each other is still: “woman,” “girl,” or “pussy.” This wouldn’t even be able to be constructed as insult in cultures in which the female experience and contributions are valued. Yes, there are hard realities of being a female sax player, for instance, in a field dominated by men, that can or might come into play when walking into a music store or talking to a sound man, or performing. I’ve had to focus on where I’m going, and keep going.
Would you say there is a tendency in contemporary American writing to exploit minority cultures for the sake of establishing American writing as a collection of diversity and culture in securing an ancestry, or do you see minority literature still struggling to be heard?
It’s curious how powerful cultures of peoples have become “minority” in the vernacular. It’s a power trick. The western hemisphere is Indian country and extends from the North Pole all the way to Tierra del Fuego and into the Pacific and Caribbean and within it are diverse and accomplished literary traditions. What is African also extends throughout the Americas, to the continent of Africa and beyond and encompasses major literary traditions. And so on. How easily we are reduced to becoming once again dirty natives scrabbling for a voice. And yet if we are viewed through a slim, western perspective that travels back through Descartes and Christianity, all the way back, we will never add up to much. Try analyzing the Navajo Blessingway with western literary critical means. It’s like measuring water with a measuring stick instead of a cup. I’ve challenged some of my Navajo writer friends to apply Navajo literary theory to Shakespeare, for instance. You’ll get a very different reading. Yet, common sense theory tells you that both Navajo master texts and British master texts both have value.
Yes, we’re still struggling to have a place here, though, ironically, we have a place. It’s the fearful ones who try and keep us out who are still looking for a place.
You are a woman with many stories to tell about your experiences and the voice of your poems gives your readers some insight into who you are and where you’ve been. How has poetry helped you deal with the voices that make you who you are today?
Poetry became the voice of my spirit, a spirit that is much larger than all of my human failings. It’s always teaching me something.
You are a “warrior” for many women and writers, and your love for the world around you comes through in your work. What advice do you have for minority writers who are fighting to be heard or who are struggling for legitimacy in American literature?
Remember that you are born with gifts that need to planted and grown. This “American” culture is young and rootless. It is adolescent with an adolescent sense of time and place that is “here and now,” with no reference or power rooted in the earth, ancestors, or historical and mythical sense. Value your community and what that has to offer and continue to reach out beyond what you know to grow fresh ideas, meetings between borders, new roots.
What’s your favorite work to read when giving a reading? Why?
It depends. New work excites me so I’m up for performing it—though it’s a tricky risk. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t quite, yet. “Fear Song” is an old favorite. I like to sing it. I sing many of my pieces during a reading, and often add sax.
Can you tell me what you’re working on now?
I’m working on some instrumental music, more words and music (with singing and speaking), a book of stories, and a little courage and compassion.
Ruben Quesada is a Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University. His poetry and translations have appeared in Rattle, Stand magazine, Southern California Review, and Third Coast. His awards include residencies at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Lambda Literary Foundation Retreat, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Santa Fe Art Institute.