Whereas

You may have noticed on your social media feed that May 5 is National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. While looking into the history of this, I discovered another news item I missed from April. A unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs has been created to investigate murdered and missing Native Americans. The unit was recently announced by the first Native American cabinet secretary, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. On a related note, you might listen to this 2020 episode of TAL, featuring a story about Lissa Yellow Bird, who has been investigating missing persons from her community since 2016.

Violence against native American peoples is nothing new in our history. But whether it's taught in our history classes is another matter. One text we might turn to is Whereas by Layli Long Soldier. Through poetry and prose, she offers her lament for 38 Dakota men who were ordered to execution by hanging by President Lincoln. She also responds to a 2009 apology offered by the US government which was buried in the 2010 Defense Appropriations Act. She discusses her response and other reflections on mothering, trusting, and writing in an especially gripping episode of On Being.

"I’m certain
that certain kinds of talk only = pain
excusing myself I paddle deep
in high grass waves I’m safer
outdoors than in /
in those heady grasses the mouth loosens confesses:
I don’t trust nobody but the land I said”
―Layli Long Soldier, Whereas

68.5 million

Did you hear this story on NPR?

Someone out there did and sent me the book it features, Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini.

The book follows one family, one out of an estimated 68.5 million currently displaced people, and their memories of before. And after.

Even if the one line that haunted me fades…

“I said to you,

Hold my hand.

Nothing bad will happen.”

the watercolor illustrations by Dan Williams will remain indelibly etched.

Author proceeds from this book will go to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and to The Khaled Hosseini Foundation. So thank you. 

Serafina's Promise

Today is a repost in honor of #internationalliteracyday and the storms ravaging the Caribbean.

Serafina's Promise by Ann E Burg

Serafina's chore each morning is to collect water for her parents and grandmother:

"One foot forward-

stop.

The other foot forward-

stop." 

This is only the first of many chores she faces growing up in rural Haiti.

After meeting the young doctor that takes care of her baby brother, Serafina decides that she too wants to become a doctor when she grows up. First, she must figure out a way to ask her parents to send her to school. She approaches her father and together they make a plan. However, nature decides to throw several obstacles in their way. 

Told in verse, the story drums with the beat of the parade Serafina watches with her father, rushes with the waters of the flood she flees with her mother, and shines with the hope she sees in the stars. 

After my daughter and I both read the book, we discussed it using the questions we found here. We both admitted to crying through most of Part III of the book. And we both agreed that we are very fortunate to be able to go to school. As Serafina says, "Education is the road to freedom." My daughter interpreted that to mean, "If we go to school, we can be whatever we want."

One foot forward.

Women in Translation

This week’s challenge was to read a collection of poetry in translation on a theme other than love. 

Turning to Powell’s, my trusty purveyor of used books, I discovered a women in translation sale. Sold.

Liu Xia’s collection of poems, Empty Chairs, spans the years 1983-2013. Under house arrest after her husband, now deceased, was imprisoned, she is described as a poet who has “turned from a bird into a tree, her feathers becoming white and withered.”

From “One Bird Then Another”:

Back then,

we were always talking

about the bird. Not knowing

where it came from – the bird,

the bird – it brought us

warmth and laughter.

From “How It Stands”:

Why draw a tree?

I like how it stands.

Aren’t you tired of being a tree your whole life?

Even when exhausted, I want to stand. 

Old Familiar Carols

When my grandparents lived in Bella Vista, Arkansas, we would often make the seven hour car trip to visit them the day after Christmas. After eating a lunch of leftover turkey and Jell-O salad, we would make the obligatory trip to Wal-Mart. Sometimes (if we were lucky), we would also stop off at a junk store on the outskirts of town. One of my favorite finds there was a pack of mini playing cards for a game called Authors.

Through this game, I discovered the titles of works by James Fenimore Cooper, Sir Walter Scott, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Although I’ve read excerpts of Longfellow’s poems over the years, it wasn’t until I read Christmas Bells by Jennifer Chiaverini that I gave his personal life a second thought.  

The book opens with a harried choir-director, Sophia, rushing to make rehearsal on time at St. Margaret’s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A featured piece in the program her children’s choir is singing is a song based on Longfellow’s poem. Throughout the novel, Chiaverini revisits the rehearsal character by character. Each of their stories reveals the hurts, fears, and longings they bring with them to the church on this wintery night.

 Interwoven throughout these modern-day stories is the story of Longfellow. We read about the crises he endures from his wife’s death to his son’s struggle to fight in the Civil War. Dark though it may be, his tale offers some perspective to the somewhat lighter tones of unrequited crushes and mischievous pranks of the contemporary story lines.  

I have long since misplaced that card game, but luckily the poetry of its authors is readily available. 

Custard and Company

 My soon-to-be-second-grader found my old copy of this book by Ogden Nash. She's been reading it at night before bed. No doubt she's been dreaming of porcupines, mustard, and dragons. 

The Butterfly Jar by Jeff Moss

I found this for my phone's Kindle app. If I can convince her to open it rather than that bird game, she might enjoy it, too.

Another book I'm quite enamored with lately is Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost, edited by Gary D. Schmidt and illustrated by Henri Sorensen. Illustrations that fit the mood and a short commentary at the bottom of each page help the young (or old) reader. I have my eye on finding more books from the series, especially the collections of Langston Hughes and William Blake.

For it seems better at bedtime, rather than dragons, for my daughter to count sheep.