Birthed from Scorched Hearts : Women Respond to War [1 ed.] 9781555918828, 9781555916657

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Birthed from

Scorched Hearts WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

COMPILED AND EDITED BY

MARIJO MOORE

© 2008 MariJo Moore, unless otherwise noted All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Birthed from scorched hearts : women respond to war / compiled and edited by MariJo Moore. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55591-665-7 (pbk.) 1. Women and war. 2. War--Literary collections. I. Moore, MariJo. HQ1233.B55 2008 305.48’9692--dc22 2008030359 Printed in the United States of America 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Design by Ann W. Douden Fulcrum Publishing 4690 Table Mountain Dr., Ste. 100 Golden, CO 80403 800-992-2908 • 303-277-1623 www.fulcrumbooks.com

For my mother, Frances, my sisters, Kathy and Cherri, my daughter-in-law, Katie, my granddaughters, Makayla and Emma, the memory of my grandmothers, Marie and Pearl, my great-grandmothers, Fanny Florence and Eliza Bobtail, and all ancestral women whose potent blood flows through my wild heart. Thank you.

CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 The Endurance of Women: Before the Beginning of Time and Onward … .................................................. 3 Medusa, The Gorgon .................................................................................... 4 Ellenburg The gods turned from her, / would not look, / but muttered lies / and slanders / and myths grown bitter / with rage.

The Daughters of Boudicca .......................................................................... 10 H. Byron Ballard The enemies came fi nally, spreading across the fertile plains from the windy steppes, burying their glorious dead in high-piled kurgans fi lled with gold and slaughtered horses.

In Search of Hypatia .................................................................................... 19 Kimberly Shuck If there are any people anywhere who understand the power of symbol, they are leaders of organized religions. At the same time, there are few images more symbolized than women during times of confl ict.

This Land Had Seen War Before ............................................................... 24 Rhiana Yazzie We tried to return in following months to recognize the place where our people had been massacred. We tried to return to the place that now holds a sacred meaning to us.

Birthed from Scorched Hearts ...................................................................... 29 MariJo Moore “We women pleaded with those who had come to destroy our warriors to please spare us, our children, our homes. But these men were bloodthirsty, fleshthirsty, soulthirsty.”

vii WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

The Shields of the Earth ............................................................................... 36 Dawn Karima Pettigrew when the lash meets my back, / i remind myself / that / i am no mule / for / i once was loved.

Finding Home .............................................................................................. 39 Linda Boyden Played me awake that night, she said. / With my fingers one by one on his; / Played into them the cedar songs, one by one, until the soldiers came.

A Turned-Around World ................................................................................ 42 Linda Hogan The white men, after the massacre at Sand Creek, bragged about it on the streets of Denver. There was the white man who bought the skulls of the Sand Creek massacre victims and used them for target practice.

Saga of American Truth ................................................................................ 45 Lee Maracle The ghost of black mother walks this wind / atop red earth woman’s ageless Cayuse. / They come to us now and then, / jogging us from our earthly sleep.

Dead All Over the Hills: An Interview with Ex-Slave Mrs. Phoebe Banks .............49 From the WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives EDITED BY T. Lindsay Baker and Julie P. Baker

The Creek Indians and the slaves with them try to fight off them soldiers like they did before, but they get scattered around and separated so’s they lose the battle.

Shelton Laurel Diary .................................................................................... 54 Kathryn Stripling Byer I want you walking back / unscarred or not at all. / A broken man is better dead / than living. Ask our neighbor / who ran out to meet the man / who once had been her husband.

Carrie McGavock: The High Priestess of the Temple of the Dead Boys .............. 59 Deborah A. Bowles Mrs. McGavock found a source of inner strength within the depth of her being to endure all of the tragedies during her life. She got out of her bed of grief for her dead children and went about taking care of her “other children”—the wounded, dying, and dead soldiers.

viii BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

Vows .......................................................................................................... 65 Glenis Redmond He wanted a wife, not somebody stirring rebellion, / no mythical Moses mess riddled with lamplight codes / bloodied bare-feet and gun toting episodes.

Rya’s Rainbow ............................................................................................ 67 Dolores Kendrick …I stayed / to wrap the bones / of the dead / in a piece of cloth, / sometimes my petticoat, / and prayed

Chapter 2 A World of War................................................................................................71 Hermine Jungus Komnik’s World Wars I and II Experiences and Results ........... 72 Paula Popow Oliver At the Dresden train station, the Americans began bombing the city. We lived three days and three nights at this train station; moving from one track to another and running to the bunkers underground.

Granddaughter Song .................................................................................... 80 Laura Hope-Gill …I am my own 1000 cranes, each one trapped inside my body. Spell my name backwards. I am not flown.

War Is Never Done! ...................................................................................... 83 Barbara-Helen Hill War is confl ict, fighting, hostilities, and battles, so how many can say that this isn’t going on in our communities? How many people in any part of the world can truthfully say that they are not living in some kind of battle zone?

A Fragile Being ............................................................................................ 94 Diana Festa They told me he died in the mud, lay / where cries are muffled and only heard / by those who listen.

My Mother’s Tattoo ...................................................................................... 96 Helen Epstein Her war had taught her to size up people and situations instantly, to lose no time thinking but to determine her course of action and act at once. Any action was preferable to hesitation. Introspection was as useless as wallowing in feeling.

ix WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

War’s Sorrow Visits Our Daughters and Sons ............................................... 105 Suzanne Zahrt Murphy She mourned him, the way we do when we are young, when another person is everything to us, when we haven’t yet learned to trust in our own ability to fi nd resources.

La Scarlettina ........................................................................................... 108 Alexandria Giardino Later, agents came to interrogate Grace, and they told her that they knew her husband had supported Mussolini and had sent money to Italy for many years.

How I Became an Evacuee ................................................................................ 117 Margaret Abruzzi I put my gas mask in a cardboard box with a string strap so I could slip it over my shoulder. I would carry my doll, Betsy.

Majestic Theater: A Landscape of War ......................................................... 126 Alice M. Azure I couldn’t keep up with it all because whenever I fi nd myself amidst talk about World War II, my mother’s image always takes stage front and center of another kind of theater.

Recsk: Not Even Ghosts Wish to Visit Here Again .......................................... 133 Emöke B’Rácz Father has never burdened his three children with his experiences. His response was always that that was the past and nothing can change that, and asked us not to go asking or looking for it. He could not relive it through spoken words, nor could he imagine us imagining humanity’s inhumanity.

Chapter 3 Memoirs of Guarded Reflections ................................................................... 139 The Collectors ............................................................................... 140 Janet McAdams the broken skull of Osceola, stolen for a talisman, / teeth without their gold fi llings, bits of skin // fl aking from lampshades, the cracked binding of a book

x BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

MIA, Foreign and Domestic......................................................................... 146 Kimberly Blaeser But I have since learned / that no injury or war / could cause any of us to forget / the names and stories that made us

The Coffee Table Book of War: A Memoir ..................................................... 149 Daniela Gioseffi The book of corpses haunted my nights when the moon poured in the windows of my lonely room, where ghosts of war dead seemed to weep in every shadowy corner.

Patch Work: Picturing Vietnam ................................................................. 152 Rebecca Blevins Faery The split, divided subjectivity of the postmodern self makes perfect sense to me. I’ve lived it; probably most of us have. Arguably, neocolonialist wars like Vietnam helped to produce this divided self.

The Magellanic Clouds of Vietnam ............................................................... 161 Grace Cavalieri It took eleven years / of walking / for you to reach / the marble names

Johnny Stack ............................................................................................ 164 Sheila Massoni I haven’t thought about Johnny and Joe in way too many years / to mention here. / But since Iraq, I have, and I cannot stop cr ying.

Dodge Charger .......................................................................................... 166 Laura Tohe In Vietnam he met and brought the monsters home that broke into his dreams suddenly and violently.

A Woman Accompanied by the World .......................................................... 169 Matilde Urrutia And in this moment of suffocating darkness, like a shout for freedom, one can hear, “Pablo Neruda! Present! Now and forever!”

xi WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

A Snapshot in Time: War in Ireland ......................................................................177 Eavan Boland The bombings, sniper fi re, and internments were confi ned, with few exceptions, to the counties at the top of the island. But the other violence—cultural, political—spilled out and began to stain the whole country.

In Search of a Larger Truth: Eritrea My Ithaca .....................................................179 Louisa Calio Wars are interminable separations / My children are all refugees or dead / Who will pay this blood debt?

Lebanon, Summer 2006: A View from Cyprus .....................................................184 Lisa Suhair Majaj It doesn’t look like there is any end in sight. And so we continue, day by day, as the number of dead and homeless on both sides of the border grows. So simple to call for ceasefi re! So simple to just stop shooting and start talking. But no, that wouldn’t fit the master plan.

Chapter 4 Different Kinds of War: Battles on the Home Front ..........................................193 How Could It Be?........................................................................................... 194 Nancy J. Jackson No longer silent, exposed in a lab, the war begins.

You’re White ..........................................................................................................197 Christine Stark …But no there couldn’t be organized rape murder white supremacy here now on this land they say and I wonder what they think this country was founded on…

A Glimpse into the Life of a Levantine ................................................................. 201 Suranee Mariettha Perera That night I vowed to myself that I would always fight with every bit of knowledge and strength I possessed to make sure that no one else would be made ashamed of who they might be.

Indigenous Women and the Legacy of Oppression ........................................ 210 Victoria Ybanez In our society today, women and girls are victimized and murdered at alarming rates. Shockingly, it is of little concern to the public.

xii BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

Surfacing .................................................................................................. 218 Michele Ramos It is said that when a dolphin starts to sink / Others come to bring her to the surface / to breathe again / feel the warm sunlight / And so our womanstrength buoys us back.

The Cure ....................................................................................................... 219 Emily Ferrara There is nowhere / to hide from / your absence. / I drown / in spaciousness.

Visceral ............................................................................................................220 Carolyn Dunn Bones fi nely ground / from words that / took upon lives / of their own

Birthplace, Women’s Maximum Security Prison, Date: 1985 ...........................222 Regina Krummel This raging war inside / it’s gotta stop for my baby.

Fall, 1998.................................................................................................. 225 Terra Trevor That day I didn’t want to have to behave in a normal manner and make attempts at conversation. I wanted to wail, to rock back and forth moaning and sobbing.

Last Night the Moon .................................................................................. 235 Mary BlackBonnet I implore the moon to heal you, / bleed into your body. / Shine moonbeams down, / heal your stricken side.

Re-Waging the Battles: Native American Women’s Poetry and the Reinterpretation of War .................................................................. 238 Molly McGlennen And from this contention, the warrior-poets refashion how to wage the battle, how to recover the power stored in indigenous original knowledge that will direct a new cycle of beginnings.

xiii WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

Chapter 5 Protestors, Participants, Peace: Why, Why Not, and When? ..........................247 Goodnight, Mr. President ..................................................................................... 248 Ala Riani There is a girl out there / Beaten to death. / I sing you this lullaby reminding you

Those Policemen Are Sleeping: A Call to the Children of Israel and Palestine ...................................................................................... 250 D. H. Melhem War is insatiable, / it has a stomach for youth

We Live in Violent Times ...................................................................................... 253 Annmarie Sauer If power is just in the hands of a few, state power becomes leavened with the slow poison of fascism: decline in civil liberties, intolerance and the rise of daily injustices, the stealing of the minds and hearts of people who lose control over their lives, turning neighbor against neighbor.

Protesting the War about to Begin: March 19, 2003 ........................................... 261 Charlotte Mandel Shoulder hitting a vacuum / Wheels spinning

Apache Warrior—Apache Troop .......................................................................... 262 Paula Gunn Allen “we’re just doing what’s right,” the baby faced warrior claims, / like we’ve always done since so long ago.

Figures from the Iraq War .................................................................................... 266 Jun’er …before the war started / 600,000 people fled the country / to become refugees

Sufi Dancing with Dad ......................................................................................... 268 Marjorie Hudson Sufi dancers believe they can make peace by twirling to perfection. Why not? It makes more sense to dance for peace than to war for it.

xiv BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

After Reading Women on War .............................................................................. 275 Pat Falk …the places and the weapons / vary / but the terror is the same the unimagined pain the same

The Call ................................................................................................................ 278 Stacy Bannerman People have become more, not less, violent, and there hasn’t been a single year since WWII that some countries, somewhere, weren’t at war. Does it really make any difference what I do?

F-16 ...................................................................................................................... 285 Doris Seale Thunder fades, / And only this is real.

The Best Way to Honor My Son’s Death Would Be to Bring the Troops Home .... 286 Amy Goodman The fi rst thing, he came up to me, and he goes, “Mom, I can’t imagine your loss. I can’t imagine losing a loved one, you know, whether it be a mother, a father, a sister, or brother.” And I stopped him, and I said, “You have two children. Try to imagine them being killed in a war. How would that make you feel?”

Grandma............................................................................................................... 292 Rochelle Ratner …One grandson was killed in / the Gulf War (the fi rst Gulf War, as they call it now).

Selections from A War You Carry in Your Pocket ................................................ 294 Kimberly Roppolo How do we as women resist the values of the monetary-system culture, the anti– Mother Earth, anti-woman, anti-child, anti-elderly Imperialist Super Machine that tries to remake us in its image with the intention of making us consume ourselves to support that very Machine?

Civics after Grace Paley ....................................................................................... 309 Demetria Martinez …It is the citizen’s / Duty to send letters to soldiers who / Will be tried for refusing to fight, / Whose numbers grow by the day

xv WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

Two Young Lives before and after Enlistment ................................................. 312 Marie Nigro She was eighteen years old and was looking for something to do. The recruiter was delighted. Caprea passed all the tests and was quickly inducted into the United States Air Force.

Better a Good Warrior ....................................................................................321 Cheryl Dietrich There’s little outcry when women are the victims of war, except when it serves a political purpose to paint the adversary as particularly brutal. The more difficult the war is to justify, the more likely the politicians are to trot out the women and children.

Woman’s War Cry ..........................................................................................328 Angela Sterritt Although the issues above are vast, we understand that all are linked to a colonial legacy that governments and corporations work to continue today. We know that through networks, campaigns, and actions, change will come slowly—but step by step, if we are strategic—surely.

American Helmets ............................................................................................333 Bushra Al-Bustani I shake off the blood clots from the bottom of my heart. / The prayers are unsound…

Requiem for Arrival .................................................................................... 335 Deema K. Shehabi …So that the world / may become itself again, / will you stay awhile with me

Acknowledgments ................................................................................... 337 Permissions ............................................................................................ 339 About the Editor .....................................................................................341 Contributors ...............................................................................................343

xvi BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

INTRODUCTION And the miraculous comes so close to the ruined, dirty houses— something not known to anyone at all, but wild in our breast for centuries. —Anna Akhmatova, 1921

What is war? How can we defi ne this horrible word? Children murdered, women raped, cities destroyed, generations of memories taken away with one nuclear blast? What descriptions come to mind when you think of war? Previous and present administrations have tried to desensitize us by commercializing it. We see pictures of women killed in arenas for mere infractions, children torn apart with fl ies circling their wounds, young men and women returning from battles in wheelchairs or in coffi ns. Realistic computerized war games, which turn murder into an amusing pastime, are available at the touch of a switch. Constantly we are bombarded with this imagery, so often that many have to go deep into themselves to grasp compassion. After all, it is not happening here, it is not happening to them; therefore they must go on about their business, say a few quick prayers for others, and continue to believe they are not impacted by these horrors. But there are still those of us who have not become so insensate that the realities of war are common expectations instead of treacherous realizations. Looking back over the past two thousand years, I understand that many wars were fought (and continue to be) because of religious and political imperialism: one group believes its ideology to be superior to another’s. And of course, greed, racism, and misogyny fuel the fires of imperialism, which offer credence to the fact that women often have different perspectives of war than men. I wanted to know what these opinions could be, so I presented the following question to several women from various areas of thought: If you could converse with a woman, any woman (living or deceased), who suffered from war, any war, whom would

1 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

it be? What questions would you ask? Their answers, in both poetry and prose, were poignant and deserve to be anthologized. Some women considered wars more military in nature, while others chose wars of another sort: the ongoing battles with breast cancer, alcoholism, drug addiction, illegal adoption, and spousal abuse; conflict over the right to abortion, stem cell research, and other medical melees; women in prison denied religious rights; and of course the invisible walls many of us try to climb over as we struggle to excel in the workplace. Comparing histories can be unifying, a spiritual bonding that encourages and renews our commitment to our callings.The contributors to this anthology are exclusively women. Who better to intuit what really exists in a woman’s mind and heart? Who better to search their own souls and decide what they would have done in similar circumstances? Who better to compare and contrast their own experiences? The selections here are presented chronologically from before 60 CE to the twenty-first century. The contributors live across the world, from the United States and Canada to England, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, Palestine, Kurdistan, Belgium, Latin America, China, Sri Lanka, and Iraq. Writings are by or about women who have lost everything and succumbed to their own demise, women who have gained from their losses and not given up, and women who have not had the opportunity to share their stories. Women who have fought inner wars, outer wars, and who are still engaged in battles. Women who fight, win, lose, fight again, lose again, and yet continue to remain stalwart. Women who remain women, regardless of their environment. Women of the past, women of today. All of this for women of the future, the women who must remain strong in order to hold this planet together. These are the women I champion; no doubt this anthology will give others the chance to do the same. These writings will go deep into readers’ psyches, past the nonverbal consent caused by desensitization, to reawaken and bring to the surface the innate realization that we are all involved in the historical and recent events concerning war; that no one is insulated from these issues; that everyone has experienced the realties of war in some way. These are the blood memories that will remain “wild in our breast for centuries.”

2 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

CHAPTER 1 THE ENDUR ANCE OF WOMEN: BEFORE THE BEGINNING OF TIME AND ONWARD…

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Medusa, The Gorgon Ellenburg There were not very many women available for heroine worship when I was young. I remember Clara Barton, Betsy Ross, Pocahontas, and Annie Oakley, and though Annie’s sharpshooting skills were impressive, it didn’t escape my notice that all these women were shadows, asides, footnotes to the story of man’s great and noble exploits. Church wasn’t any more encouraging.A woman had coaxed a whining man into eating an apple and had been condemned for eternity; nothing said about his part in the feast, or even in the fact that there might be such a thing as evil and deception in the Garden of Eden.Who invented those things? Who knew? Eve’s son, first murderer, was pardoned: “go, and I’ll let no one harm you.” And what of Lot’s virgin daughters offered to an unruly crowd of men if they promised not to defile his male guest? Or Mary Magdalen? The one who was first witness to the resurrection—poof! Call her a whore and get her out of there. It was, even to a young girl, too obvious that history, religion, all our cultural constructs were created by man and they did not particularly like it when women misbehaved, that’s to say, when women acted like human beings with minds and bodies of their own. Many still don’t like it. Ask any neocon. Over time I found the heroines I searched for, women who felt the way I might, or dreamed the things I did, or thought the way I wanted to when I grew up.They were hidden in fairy tales and legends and ancient tragedies. I began to realize that those lily-white princesses awaiting their princes were not the most interesting girls. Check out the women of power: the magic, the spells, the herbs, the sorceresses, witches, stepmothers, and ice queens. Who wrote these tales? Why were those women demonized, why were those women destroyed in order to save the princess whose only calling in life seemed to be bride of the prince? No, not even wife—bride.The story of their marriage and subsequent life together was always summarily dismissed, “they lived happily ever after,” and I’d say, “Yeah, I’ll bet. How long before he’s back drinking with the guys, chasing dragons, and leaving her alone in the big castle? And don’t even think he’s going to let her continue seeing those seven dwarfs!” 4 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

Morgan le Fay, Aphrodite, Isis, Diana, Demeter, and oh, those Amazons. The wild array of goddesses in ancient legends and myths—why, even men’s history began confessing: ‘‘Well, there were those Apache warrior women, and some of the women burned at the stake were guilty of only looking good. Well, maybe the figurines found at the archaeological sites could’ve meant something other than another damned fertility cult, and of course there were smart women, but we just can’t find their writings and papers amongst our things.” Medusa became, for me, the symbol of all the women throughout history who were denied their right to be human or goddess, to be whole, to be who and what they were and are. She is fierce and tender, destructive and creative, a warrior and a peacekeeper. She is everything women were not supposed to be when I was growing up, and everything that women are. She is the hidden that is becoming known, the lie that is being revealed, the last who shall be first. We have seen what the world has become under the guidance and governance of men, and, crazily enough, we can worry that we are destroying not only ourselves, but also an entire planet. We have also seen what the world has done to the gods who came in earthly bodies to save us; now we will see what the world can do to the sacred that takes no form, but awakens our consciousness. It should come as no surprise that the voice that does speak to that consciousness is a woman’s voice. She has always been here watching us make fools of ourselves, waiting for us to act like we have some sense. And over the past couple of decades, despairing of us ever doing such a thing, she’s returned. I think this time we’d better let her talk. The stunned stones never were. They turned toward ugliness and never found it. But there was beauty unbearable like the vivid sun trembling with the heaviness of light. Tall, taut she strode lean ripples like a black panther

5 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

out of the heat of Libyan mirages. The gods turned from her, would not look, but muttered lies and slanders and myths grown bitter with rage. Jealous gods, we are, they said, petulant in legends of almightiness, casting the first stones as she knelt in the sands tracing lines of lyrics from ancient truths. Sands of time and winds of change men of gods and gods of men profane the glory of beauty strong sung deep to African rhythms loud, delirious the joy and holy the beauty that stuns to stone like stares. Oh who thought beauty could kill like that, just like that.

6 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

Gorgon. Monstrous muse of man’s worst fears. Let’s say she is hideous and death to look upon. And let’s say the hair lashing around that face the color of night is a frenzy of vipers seething from the pores of her dark soul. And so the dreadlocks coiled thick around that superb taunt of her face writhed into lives of their own and her laughter shimmered like heat dancing, dervish ghosts of sacred memories. Mercy is mine, she said, and leaned deep to the edges of time and watched to see what on blue earth man would make of his reverence and what gods he would name.

7 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

And vengeance, vengeance is mine, she said, and placed her fabulous, furious head in the pale palm of her black hand as horrors seeped from man’s mad imaginings sickening the sweetness of deception. Vengeance, too, is mine, she muttered, the vengeance of a terrible love, the only love they will not destroy. And thunders bellowed like war’s merciless clamor from age to age and hot light shredded the dark musings of the brightest of men and rain fell soft upon Europe down the Danube up the Amazon across the sea Atlantic over Himalaya and soft over the lands waters, sky and seas that hold secret the forgotten names of she who will not be forgotten. and all men and women we travel still like ancient worshippers the breadth of history still pagan despite the

8 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

long ages of lies, slanders and myths grown quiet with rage and god remains where she began inside the world’s lonely longing heart, beating strongly like African rhythms sung deep to the glory of beauty strong.

9 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

The Daughters of Boudicca H. Byron Ballard “Let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves.”—Boudicca’s speech to her assembled troops, 60 CE. One Roman historian described Boudicca of the Celtic tribe Eceni as six feet tall, with fl aming red hair to her hips. Standing before her statue near the Thames in London, I get a feel for the unquenchable spirit of the warriorqueen. As a feminist and a mother, I have great empathy for her story. Her husband ruled the Eceni in Britain in the early decades of the Common Era, when the Roman Empire was strengthening its hold in Western Europe. The Eceni was a client-kingdom of the Empire, and upon the king’s death, the Roman governor moved in to disarm the tribe and claim the ancestral lands. He didn’t reckon with a woman who had been raised since childhood to rule her tribe, with or without her husband. He didn’t reckon with Boudicca.

Bailígí timpeall orm anois agus go neosfaidh mé scéal daoibh. Is fada dhom ag cuimhneamh ar é a insint daoibh ach níor fhéadas é go dtí so.* Now I’ll tell you a story—come gather around! I’ve long wanted to tell you this but haven’t been able to till now. I am sitting in an auditorium with a large group of well-meaning and mostly white people who smell nice and have warm coats. We are singing about and talking about and dancing about peace. I do this a lot. These groups of gentle people wish desperately that the world were a better place and have a vague notion of peace as the answer to all the world’s ills. Some think you can’t have peace without justice, some quote King and Gandhi,

* Although the Irish I’ve used throughout is modern and Boudicca’s tribe would have spoken a variety of Brythonic Gaeilge, I wanted readers to have a feel for the language.

10 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

and some believe that “we” are the ones we’ve been waiting for. I will see this group of people again in January of 2007, when we all participate in the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Peace March in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, which will culminate in prayers to gods I don’t honor and boring speeches that are difficult to hear outdoors. The dragon’s teeth we’ve sown in the land between the beautiful Tigris and the mighty Euphrates continue to bear dark fruits, and my email inbox sees a new invitation at least weekly to protest in the town square. An overdue drink with a friend can only be scheduled after she’s finished standing silently in black, round and silent as an old Greek widow. “Peace,” we mutter. “Peace at all costs.War is waste, madness, and folly. Bad, dark, dangerous.” But if war is bad, why do we love it so? We spend our treasure of children and gold on uniforms and weaponry, and we walk in fear of the enemy, the shadow, the other. We create the jihadist as a golem and cannot see his face or know his heart. The screens of our entertainment are filled with beautiful men and powerful women, armies of one, all they can be, held in reserve for regional emergency and national folly. Nach bhfeiceann tú os do chomhair é? Can’t you see it there—in front of you? A friend wished me joy and peace for the New Year. I replied that I’d take the joy but am unsure what is meant by “peace.” Is it only the absence of war or is it the place where we can grow our crops and raise our young without fear? I live a peaceful life, barring the occasional return of my harsh temper. But I yearn toward the honor and glory of the warrior model that is so clearly expressed in our Western culture. Blood, gore, flashing steel, flame-tipped arrows. Armored horses, armored warriors. How can we make peace more glorious and honor-filled than war? Some people think that in our long-ago past there were cultures of people who lived in rich areas that supplied all their Maslovian needs. These ancestors created art and left artifacts, and I like to think they spent their time drinking wine and making love and growing perfect vegetables. Did they get bored with plenty? Did they grow tired of all those whole men hanging around with nothing to do but create art, whether in stucco or in the bedroom? Did they yearn for battle scars and jolts of adrenaline?

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Did they pine for a fight worth fighting and someone to declare their enemy? The enemies came finally, spreading across the fertile plains from the windy steppes, burying their glorious dead in high-piled kurgans, filled with gold and slaughtered horses. An cumin leatsa é? Do you remember it? I return to my ancestral lands, to the town that I called home for a brief and giddy time. I stand beside the slow-flowing old Thames with Big Ben at my back and the reconstructed Globe Theatre on my right. I stand before the majesty of a warrior-queen and seem to remember a time when women were wilder than we are now, more disciplined, more terrifying.When women held the reins of a war chariot with the grip that now steers a stroller or a buggy full of food we haven’t grown. After a night of heavy beer and heavier food, my hair smells of smoke and my dreams are filled with flight. I take three steps, each one higher than the one before, and suddenly my body is aloft, floating for a time until I remember how to fly. I bend at the waist and my arms do the breaststroke, my legs undulating behind me. I go higher, past the electric lines and the t-shapes of power poles. Careful! I see the plains below me, and a river, and I follow the course of the water, deep into the countryside. There are mounds here, too, and standing stones waiting for the midwinter sun. Gunpowder dragons fire the night and I wake in the morning with aching shoulders, as though my flight was a shaman’s work and not a dream at all. An ghaoth aniar, bíonn sí fial. The west wind is generous. And so I return to the Thames and the statue of Boudicca, queen and war chief of the dead Eceni. For an Iron Age queen, she looks peculiarly Victorian, almost pre-Raphaelite—the period when Victoria’s Albert commissioned this statue. She is graceful in her strength, like a good dancer gone to seed. The daughters whose names I never knew or can’t remember crouch at her feet, unwilling participants in their mother’s war for their sakes. The smell from the funky old river drifts past me, with some dust and loose pages of the Times. I read the inscription on the stone

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platform that holds the chariot and its occupants: “Regions Caesar never knew/Thy posterity shall sway.” At the base of the statue, amongst the pigeon droppings, people have left offerings: some wilted flowers, a few coins, and a silver ring. Is cumin liom. I remember. Her name has changed since I was a girl, when we called her Boadicea. “The person who was thought worthy to be their leader and who directed the conduct of the entire war, was Boudicca, a Briton woman of the royal family and possessed of greater intelligence than often belongs to women. This woman assembled her army, to the number of some 120,000, and then ascended a tribunal, which had been constructed of earth in the Roman fashion. In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch.This was her invariable attire. She now grasped a spear to aid her in terrifying all beholders, and spoke.”1 That’s how she is in this statue, and when I lived near Victoria Station, I often walked the length of Victoria Road, past Westminster’s cathedral and abbey, and marveled at the lack of practicality. Why were there no reins on the horses? Why did she have no armor—not even leather slabs with fiddly bits of embedded metal? I had seen the metalwork of her tribe in the British Museum and knew how adept they were with hammer and tongs. Was she wrapped in the ferocity of her rage, impervious to the spears of the piddling Romans? Her dress and those of her crouching daughters reveal every curve as if the chariot had risen from the depths of the river. The folds of bronze emphasize the woman-ness of the warrior, her perky breasts and massive thighs. I own those thighs, too, another legacy of home. Through a line of pigeons, I squint to see her face, to find a drop of personality, a stir of memory. But her face is impassive, aloof. She cannot smell the blood or the sweetish death smell. She does not hear the Morrigan and her ravens as they circle the fields of filth, of mud and piss and scraped flesh. Look at her, arms raised like a priestess, holding a spear, her pelvis arched forward.

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Is beannaithe thú idir mhná. Blessed art thou amongst women. She had fallen into obscurity and is not mentioned by Bede the Venerable or Geoffrey of Monmouth or any of the mediaevalists. She is not part of the Arthur legend cycle, which embraces so much of the folk history of Britain, churning farm lore into glory. When she was rediscovered in the Renaissance through the translated writings of Tacitus and Cassius Dio (who lived and wrote long after she fell), she became the subject of plays and poems, and there is a mention of her in Holinshed’s Chronicles. During the reign of Queen Victoria, this woman who had given her life to free her people from the tyranny of an expanding empire became the poster child for a new Rome. Victoria was called her namesake because the name “Boudicca” means victory.2 After the massacre of the Druids at Ynys Mona at the end of the world in Wales, where rebellion and stubbornness were answered with genocide, the Romans should have watched their backs. Maybe they were too far away from the heat of home. Perhaps they felt they were superior to the matted wool and blue faces of the tribal people. But they made a series of mistakes, as we all do. Mistakes of pride and circumstance, when we stand on what is right, instead of thinking about what is best. We understand from the Roman writers that upon the death of Boudicca’s husband Prasutagus, the Emperor Nero and the king’s daughters jointly inherited the tribal kingdom. The running of the tribe—the chiefdom—was left to Boudicca until the oldest daughter was of age, we suppose, though the Roman writers are not clear on this point. Nero, as we know, did not play well with others, and the Roman governor of Britain annexed the Eceni homelands and treasure. Boudicca assumed the barbarians from the East didn’t understand tribal law and went with her daughters to speak with the man in charge. Maybe he didn’t like uppity women; maybe the Druids on Mona had cursed him with impotence; maybe he had a toothache, we don’t know. But he ordered the queen flogged and her daughters publicly raped. He would have been smarter to kill them all and place their heads on pikes. But he thought they were only women and he knew how to deal with women. Humiliation and fear are always enough to shut us down. Our sense of self is always measured

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through the lens of other eyes, other hearts. Níor cheart é a denim. It shouldn’t be like that. She went home, like a good woman, and turned her daughters over to the tribal wise women who tended their wounds and made sure the daughters of a chieftain would never bear a soldier’s brat. Maybe these old women bathed the queen’s back in native tinctures and rubbed her with an ointment made from the fat of geese and the flowers that grew by the river. Since she was chief, there were servants to prepare her garments, arrange her transportation, bring her food and drink as she sat in the council circle. Did she send an envoy to the neighboring Trinivantes or were they her matrilineal tribe, spoiling for a fight with the overlords? Whatever the domestic details, this mother and woman and lover and widow raised an army of limed and blue-smeared warriors, freedom fighters, and terrorists. They moved first on a retirement community of former Roman soldiers at Camulodunum, a fortified place sacred to Camulos, a Celtic war god and home to the pork-barrel project that was the temple to Claudius. The museum of the modern city of Colchester squats on the same site. The massed warriors slaughtered the inhabitants and razed the city. The few old soldiers who holed up in the Claudian monstrosity were pulled out and hacked to death on the perfect Roman pavement.Then Boudicca turned to London. Tá sí ag teach. She is coming. Suetonius Paulinis had returned from Ynys Mona, along a straight Roman road called Watling Street. He was hoping for reinforcements that had not come, and so he deemed it prudent to leave London unprotected. He could not take the chance that she would destroy his legions, leaving the colonists in eastern Britain to the tender mercies of the Eceni queen. The Roman writers marveled that she led an army, and they attributed to Boudicca more intelligence than the average woman. No Roman woman would have done such a thing, presumably. The Celts didn’t fight in tight battle formation as the Romans did, organized and deadly, but in a loosely structured gang, a horde that moved as a single ferocious entity. And that

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was enough to destroy the Ninth Legion Hispania, the one legion that did come between Boudicca and London. How tired she must have been by then, the adrenaline high draining away. Did the future queen and her sister travel with their mother, learning the arts of war and rubbing salve on their offended parts? We don’t know. Some scholars don’t believe there ever was a Boudicca, though the archaeological record shows us places where towns were burned and the carbon dating matches her dates. So daughters of a mythical mother can’t have much historical ground upon which to stand, can they? Boudicca sacked and burned the young London and then turned her chariot toward Verulamium, where she again sacked, burned, and massacred. She was defeated in the end, of course, else she never would have been forgotten for so long. Boudicca escaped the final battle and legend has it she took poison rather than face being dragged through the streets of Rome in chains. We don’t know what happened to her daughters. We don’t even know where the warrior-queen is buried. Old rumor has it that she was interred with the spoils of her doomed war under King’s Cross Station in London, but archaeologists say no. Fortune hunters reckon she’s buried with all the plunder from three cities, but they haven’t found her either.There are statues to her in some interesting places but no hard evidence, none at all. Tá a fhios agam nach bhfuil sí ansin. I know she is not there. She didn’t even save her people—they were used as an example to the poorer and smaller tribes in eastern Britain and were made slaves of the empire. They were also faced with starvation, because they had spent all their time and energy in fighting and not in farming. The Eceni had been one of the largest, richest tribes on the island, but with the failure of the rebellion it faded into obscurity along with its war chief. Thousands dead on both sides, but the organized might of the Roman Empire prevailed for a time, though the Empire would soon find itself beset by wild tribes from the North and inner turmoil in Rome. The legions withdrew from Britain, from Gaul, from Africa, withdrew to protect Rome from the barbarians both within and without. Tuigim anois.

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I understand now. I close my eyes as the river rushes past and I am there again, the wool of my tunic scratchy at my neck, my bare arms encircled with rings of gold. The wealth of any tribe is measured in land and livestock, in enough to share and enough to trade to someone else. Sometimes the acquisition of that wealth requires a tribe to move into more fertile lands, migrating to find the rich soil, the racing waters, the kind climate. If that land already has a tribe, then there is often a fight to the cultural death and the usurpers either destroy or are destroyed. We see that pattern in history again and again, less war than territorial imperative, driven by biological urges that are encoded into politics and religion. Women have little to do with the march of history as we are taught it in our schools—women are the ones who wait at home or take on “men’s work” in order to get by and keep the war machine going.Women are, and always have been, the ones who nurse the wounded and bury the dead. Women are rarely the ones who make the decision to go to war and the sacrifice of women and of the culture is the psychic and physical health of the next generation. But those who perish for the cause attain a kind of immortality not often granted ordinary mortals. Mortality makes the loss of the beloved not only bearable but also glorious. Women and power. Women and death. Western culture gives us the glory of death and courage wrapped in a warrior package and occasionally a woman is the warrior. But how do we now—as the world twists and changes—fully step into our role as creator and destroyer? Have we the skills and the hearts to survive the unmaking of the old orders, keep our balance and walk the tightrope between aggression and strength, between power and glory and wiping a baby’s nose? We learn so much through the practice of living and through flying in our dreams. It is up to us now, as women, to define how the glory goes and when and to whom. Our quest as women is to find and claim our own kind of power in a world that has long denied us this privilege. How do we create a new world? As we midwife the death of the dominator system called patriarchy, we must organize and respond as women, consciously creating the world in our image. But first we must clarify that image and find the wit and courage to step into our own authentic power. We can

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look to the old systems for information, for inspiration as we gaze into the future of the planet and our species on it. We can honor the memory of the warrior-priestess, the queen, and the freedom fighter. Because it has fallen on us to birth the new world. Again. We begin by acknowledging that those centuries of living under an autocratic and misogynistic culture has left gaping wounds in the human psyche. We accept that we must be healers as well as leaders, and that we must salve spirits that are hurting and feed those that are hungry. We, as women, will define what a warrior is in this brave new world; then we will become that thing; we will model that for our sons and our daughters, for our grandchildren and our grandparents. For Boudicca and for her daughters, for we are all her daughters. Fúmsa atá sé. Is cumin liom. It’s up to me. I remember.

NOTES 1. Cassius Dio. History of Rome, Book LXII, Chapters 1–12. 2. Proto-Celtic boud ko “victorious”; cf. Irish bua, Buaidheach: Wikipedia.org.

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In Search of Hypatia Kimberly Shuck Hypatia of Alexandria was a mathematician, a musician, and generally an intellectual in the fi fth century of the Common Era. Her father, Theon, was curator of the museum of Alexandria, which also housed the famed Royal Library. She wrote commentaries on math books that have since been lost, as have her commentaries. A non-Christian during a time of warring and great tension between Christians and pagans, Hypatia fell afoul of the bishop of Alexandria and was horribly murdered by his monks in a church. Before her death, she was a woman with almost universal access to the wisdom and science of her time. She was located in a city at the nexus of several powerful cultural groups. She saw with her own eyes at least two mythical wonders of the world. The way her life is represented, both by her contemporaries and by later historians, casts her in a mythical light as well. What were her intellectual curiosities? As someone raised virtually in the Great Royal Library, what was her favorite book? What can we really know, in the 2000s, about this woman who was murdered in the process of Christianizing Alexandria?

Have you ever said something so ignorant that it changed your life? I know I have, and it usually has something to do with my odd sense of humor. In this particular case, I was asked, “What woman, living or dead, who existed during a time of war would you like to talk to and what would you ask her?” It’s a good question. My answer was an honest one, but looking back on it in this moment I wonder if I wasn’t trying to show off. I said Hypatia of Alexandria. Now, at the time I was operating on a number of misconceptions. As a child, I had been spoon-fed images of the library at Alexandria. My mother told me, the reading addict, that there was once a library that held copies of all of the written material that ever came through the major trading port of Alexandria, Egypt. She said that any time a ship, trading caravan, or tourist came through that city, they would be searched for written material, which, if they had

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any and it wasn’t already part of the library, would be confiscated and copied. It sounded like the world’s most exciting candy store to me. I’d never met a book I didn’t like. I was the child who obsessively read the back of the cereal box. I learned about interlibrary loan at an early age because I’d read everything in the children’s section of my local library. So okay, I was a nerd…and I still am, so I wanted to talk to Hypatia of Alexandria. I’d heard somewhere that she’d been the last librarian of that fantasy library. I’d even heard that she’d been killed defending it from…and here my memory failed. The Christians? Maybe it was the Romans? I wasn’t sure, but it sounded as if she’d been alive during a war. I would want to talk to her, the brave also-nerd woman who died for her life’s work. I had some romantic notion, which I often do. It was utterly wrong, which it often is. What’s more, I knew what I’d ask her…I wanted to know what her favorite book was. I don’t read ancient Greek. This is one of those sentences you don’t imagine you will ever need to say in life. It became an important one only when I started researching Hypatia. Or perhaps I should say when I began the responsible portion of my research on Hypatia. My initial research was rather passive. Sitting, as I do, at a computer with an Internet hookup, I simply plugged her name into a search engine. It spat out a few sites and I was off. The Internet, like my imagined library at Alexandria, is a fantasy world for me. I was one of those youths who would do research in the family encyclopedia and find myself reading everything in whatever volume I was perusing. When I looked up Hypatia, I was also prepared to look into the library at Alexandria, the founding of Alexandria, Alexander the Great, and whatever other orbiting information might seem remotely germane to my topic. Now, generally when you look up a historical figure, you get sites that offer a few bits of information at minimum. They will have a complete name, birth date, death date, and some hint as to why the person in question was important enough to warrant mention. Of the few dozen sites I looked at, no two agreed upon anything but the name Hypatia and the fact that she lived in Alexandria. I found this curious. It was outside of my experience that so many different sources would each be so sure of their facts and each be so different one from the other. I imagined that

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I might need better sources. Maybe that was the problem, and, short of reading the original Greek for any of this, I did consult a good deal of material. Here is where my plan to find this woman was revealed to be deeply flawed. No matter where I look, no matter what I find, none of it will be Hypatia of Alexandria. In this time and place, she only exists as a symbol, or, more accurately, as a number of divergent symbols. There are some interesting reasons for this, and even the contemporary sources are in conflict. Some of the available material can be summarized as follows: Hypatia of Alexandria died young and beautiful; Hypatia died old and eroding. She was well liked by the general population in Alexandria; she was mistrusted by the population and considered arrogant. The arrangements for her death at the hands of a high functionary in the very new Christian church of Alexandria were the plan of Saint Cyril; the arrangements were unknown to Saint Cyril until they actually took place. Aha! A member of the Christian church with the possible involvement or foreknowledge of Saint Cyril killed Hypatia, a pagan woman with ties to the library of Alexandria. The conflict that Hypatia lived through had connections to organized religion. If there are any people anywhere who understand the power of symbol, they are leaders of organized religions. At the same time, there are few images more symbolized than women during times of conflict. What are images of women like during a war? There are grieving mothers, wives, and girlfriends; there are concerned and tense mothers, wives, and girlfriends. You never see some crusty mountain woman sitting on her porch with a shotgun yelling for the stumble-footed soldiers to haul their fannies out of her turnip patch. Instead, you get an image of femininity that needs protecting, that has been abused by the evil fill-in-the-blanks who are the source of the conflict. Occasionally a woman will become a bride as traitor and justification for the war. Sometimes, in extreme cases, you get an image of a woman as the symbol of the evil that is being fought. These aren’t realistic images, and they aren’t meant to be. In the case of Hypatia, depending upon the perspective of the writer, she is the feminist victim or the evil symbol of a pagan hierarchy.

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The library at Alexandria, which it turns out was actually a museum, was a storehouse of literature connected to pagan thought. It housed sculptures of pagan gods. How problematic must this place have seemed to the early Christians? Hypatia was not curator of this museum, but she did have a connection. Her father, Theon, was a curator. What’s more, she not only wrote her own book on mathematical theories, she also rewrote her father’s work on a related subject. Pagan woman, attached to an edifice of pagan thought, talented in her own right, consulted by learned men: not only is she seeming like a better and better woman for me to have chosen to converse with, but it’s not hard to see how her mere existence could have been considered a threat by an organized religion, which was trying to gain a toehold against the power of a pagan faith that had been in place for centuries. It isn’t difficult to connect the dots and come up with a clear picture of why Hypatia had to die. The mythology around her murder runs something like this: She was stopped in the street, dragged into the basilica, and cut to pieces with either shells or roofing tiles. Her body parts were dragged through the streets and then burned. Her death, if indeed she died this way, was from start to finish a choreographed performance. She was a sacrifice, hacked to pieces, displayed and then destroyed utterly in flames. Even better if she was cut up with shells, the symbol of the pagan goddess of love. The story is high theatre—horrible, bloody, and dramatic. True or false, it’s all calculated for effect: the downfall of the pagan priestess. During my process of doing what research was possible, I found I liked my new imaginary Hypatia better than my old one. I’m a math geek and she was a math geek. I’ve developed a serious longing to read the book she wrote and no longer care that much about her favorite. Naturally there are no known copies of it. I suppose that I could read her father’s book, which she supposedly rewrote for him. I hate reading things in translation, though. I wonder how long it would take for me to learn to read ancient Greek. I’d like to be able to follow her reasoning in her own words. Outside of the story or collection of stories that she has become, I’m curious about this woman. I wonder about the things she thought, and I can’t find any in the material available about her. In the beginning of this essay, I said something pretty dramatic

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myself. I admitted that I’ve said things so ignorant they changed my life. The realization I came to while metaphorically talking to Hypatia is that although her murderers caused her death, both her fans and her detractors killed her.The stories about her are too varied to really present any kind of a clear picture of the woman. The museum she spent time in is long gone and as much a myth as she is at this point. She really is dead, gone, burned to ash. We rewrite Hypatia whenever we take up her life. Because she is such a collection of stories we can’t triangulate, we can’t get a real fix on her character. Even this small piece that I’ve written continues the process of removing her from reality. There is a ton of feminist theory on the subject, but the greatest conflict that women seem to live through is the right to narrate their own stories. War only magnifies the problem. Holy wars tend to be more symbolized than most, their very nature raising the stakes of the conflict in people’s hearts. The older I get, the more these periods of definition and redefinition disturb me. My child mind, the one that likes an easy bedtime story, enjoys the symbol I made out of Hypatia. My adult mind has deeper curiosities. I wonder if she, like me, could never find a writing tool at her desk, or absentmindedly got ink on everything, or could always find one shoe but not the other. Maybe she was more organized than that. One way or the other, we are all robbed of her reality. Perhaps she was happy with being a symbol of paganism, or perhaps she would have been just as happy doing calculations by herself in her workspace. I’m sure I’ll continue to mythologize her in my private thoughts; humans are patternrecognition animals after all. If no pattern offers itself, we will create one. I hope, however, that I can keep in mind whenever I see a woman being used as a symbol in any kind of conflict, that this is another example of theatre. I hope that I can remember that woman exists as herself and not just a sacrifice or a victim or a goddess. As humans, we owe each other that much at least. I still wish I could have read her book.

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This Land Had Seen War Before Rhiana Yazzie I was asked by Emigrant Theater Company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to contribute a short play to “9/11/5: The Last Five Years,” an evening commemorating the fi fth anniversary of September 11.* My first thought was to write something that gave a glimpse into a Native American perspective about the day. From my experience, the sentiment I have heard over and over again from my fellow Native American friends and peers is that September 11 was only the latest attack on our tribal nations. This time, it was something all of America shared. However, the memory of terrorism, an act of violence to induce fear and coercion for political means, goes further back for Native people in this hemisphere. It began more than five hundred years ago when the “New World” was found and the original people in it suddenly became targets for a multitude of ideological and economic reasons. In doing some research, I found that the location of Ground Zero held a historical memory of politically motivated violence and devastating destruction inflicted on the first residents of the land. On February 25, 1643, the Dutch made a surprise night attack on the Wecquaesgeek. The first European man to own the World Trade Center land was a lead instigator of the massacre. By seeing the parallel experiences of then and now, we might begin to see how the world of today is deeply rooted in past events, and it may suggest that it is time to take a more honest look at the history of the violence committed on this land in order to begin to understand why violence continues to be perpetuated today.

* At the Minnesota performance, Aditi Kapil, Sandy Whitehawk, Juanita Black Hawk, and David Mann were the readers.

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Characters A Woman’s Voice (a Native American woman, late 20s to 30s) A Mother’s Voice (a Native American woman, 20s to 30s) A Grandmother’s Voice (a Native American woman, mid-40s or older) A Man’s Voice (40s or older)

The women in this piece are all Native; the male voice can be any ethnicity. The play can be performed with music stands spread out across the stage.

At Rise: Three women are on stage, all in modern dress appropriate to their ages. A Woman’s Voice This land had seen war before. It had been soaked in tears and ash before. A Mother’s Voice But it was in February. A cold day in February. The earth frozen over where the ocean met the land. Then, the ocean had covered more of the island, Manhattan. It was all water up to where Greenwich Street is today. A Grandmother’s Voice That February earth was so cold, so hard like a rock. It did not; it could not reclaim the blood that spilled on it… A Mother’s Voice …as if the earth had drunk so much it could not do more than let the liquid that came to its mouth smear down its chin, slide down its neck… A Grandmother’s Voice …fall over its clothed stomach. Messed itself with more than it could consume. A Woman’s Voice I was sleeping when it happened. A Mother’s Voice I had a long night; my kids were wriggling under their blankets, and even snoring. I couldn’t get rest until long after the sun had set.

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A Grandmother’s Voice When it happened I was sound asleep still. A Mother’s Voice Grateful sleep. A Woman’s Voice My mother called me and I rose. A Grandmother’s Voice Ambe! Ambe! A Mother’s Voice What? What’s happening? A Woman’s Voice I asked myself, is this the end of the world? A Grandmother’s Voice Run! Oh my god, just run! A Mother’s Voice I didn’t cover my ears when the children screamed. They still had air in their lungs to… A Woman’s Voice Run! A Mother’s Voice Air in their lungs still breathing life. A Woman’s Voice I thought I would be safe here. I thought this is where I would grow old. But on a February night I ran into the black with no shoes on my feet. A Grandmother’s Voice No gloves on my hands. A Mother’s Voice No blanket on my back.

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A Woman’s Voice That February night we were taken by surprise. What had we done to deserve this? We came here to be safe. The Dutch with their guns and their metal were offended and decided that my family would be the ones to pay the price. A Mother’s Voice My family was the one to be an example to our nations. A Woman’s Voice To inject fear into our blood, fear into our hearts, terror in our spirits. A Grandmother’s Voice And from my bed I turn my feet to the ground. But it is so cold, so slick, like it’s suddenly dead. A Mother’s Voice Maybe speechless, maybe in shock, maybe horrified too, the Earth, she iced over. A Grandmother’s Voice They crossed the frozen river to our homes and left a bloody trail back to Fort Amsterdam. The new owners of that land near the river shore, building towers and empires. A Woman’s Voice We tried to return in following months to recognize the place where our people had been massacred. We tried to return to the place that now holds a sacred meaning to us. But we’re hiding in our homes now, we’re fearful in our lands now. Our future has suddenly taken an unrecognizable direction. Nothing is certain anymore. That feeling of when you can’t trust your eyes. Can’t steady yourself. And the thought that the life I imagined is no longer waiting for me. A Man’s Voice This land is sacred. This is hallowed ground. For the men and women that died here we cannot forget. We must be vigilant and never let something like this happen again. We will not eat, we will not sleep. As Americans, we understand for the first time the meaning of sacred land. Our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, now souls that left this earth that morning on this hallowed land.

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A Woman’s Voice On a September morning, three hundred years later, I’m remembering again. That land is still resonating with a suppressed memory eating at the sky. But it’s still calling, and it’s still asking why.

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Birthed from Scorched Hearts MariJo Moore During the Creek War of 1813–14, General Andrew Jackson ordered his friend and most trusted subordinate, General John Coffee, to attack a a force of Muskogee (Creek) Indian Redsticks who were in the village of Tallushatchee (in Mississippi territory). Coffee’s militia, which included Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek Indians, as well as Americans, divided into two companies and encircled the village. General Coffee’s one thousand soldiers systematically slaughtered almost two hundred warriors, and women and children were also murdered. Davy Crockett, serving in the Tennessee militia, later announced, “We shot them like dogs.” A white soldier found an Indian baby boy clutched in the arms of his dead mother on the battlefield.The soldier took the baby to Jackson, who sent the child to his own home, the Hermitage, in Nashville, where he lived under Jackson’s supervision. Very little is known about the child Jackson called Lyncoya, as he was rarely mentioned in Jackson’s papers. I have found that Jackson did tell his wife that the child was to be a kind of “toy or playmate” for his adopted nephew, Andrew Jackson Jr. As paradoxically as it appears, during the time Jackson was intent on killing as many American Indians as possible (those who fought for the British), he was making sure Lyncoya received a white man’s formal education. It was reported that Jackson had planned for the young man to attend West Point, but instead kept him in Nashville, where he became an apprentice to a saddle maker. On June 1, 1828, around the age of fifteen, Lyncoya died from tuberculosis. That same year, Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States. He then instituted the removal of thousands of American Indians from their homelands. The following is an episodic account of Lyncoya’s short life, told from the Spirit of the Muskogee mother’s point of view, interwoven from remembrances of my dreams with remnants of my sadness.

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One night as I dreamed, the dream formed itself into a female body. And this dream floated around my room for a long while and then began to speak. This dream spoke not in words at fi rst, but in tears. Streaking, silent, winding tears that fell from the dream woman’s eyes and burned into my heart. My heart hurt for a long time—many months to come—until it was time to hear the meaning of her tears; until the tears had incubated inside my scorched heart and birthed themselves into this, her story. “They came, surrounding our village from all four directions. Women screamed, children screamed. We tried to run, but to where? We women pleaded with those who had come to destroy our warriors to please spare us, our children, our homes. But these men were bloodthirsty, fleshthirsty, soulthirsty. These men had lost their souls and so they sought to drink ours. I will tell you what happened. “I am holding my baby, my son, against my breast. A man with coldness in his eyes shoots. I feel the stinging balls hitting my legs, tearing open my flesh, exposing my shame, my humiliation to die such a wicked death. My heart explodes and is on fire. I fall. My baby falls with me. Falling, falling, falling, ever so slowly to the earth. I scream. “I feel the fog on my floating spirit, surrounding it, licking it, caressing it. There are others here, deep in the mist. I feel them. Feel their existence but cannot see them for my eyes have not yet adjusted to this realm of spirits. ‘Tafachady.’ I cannot hear, but I am certain I feel my name being called. I look back to the other realm from whence I have just come, where I see the soldier take my baby from my bleeding breast. Watch as the soldier takes him to two women of my nation who have not yet succumbed to the horror of what is happening to our people. I can see the women shaking their heads, but I hear nothing other than the sound of a deep silence. Almost like an underwater silence I have experienced many times before. But this silence is different. This is the silence of transition from one realm to another. I can see my baby being taken from the battlefield, but I cannot hear his cries. “Sound is first perceived in vibrations in this realm from where I dream to you. Much is not instantly revealed when one goes from one world to the next because there is so much shock. Here, there is a different way of hearing that is the way of listening only. To listen is to feel: this is the difference in sound in this

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realm. Listening only. Perhaps it is better I cannot hear the cries of my baby. But I do feel them. I feel them…” This was a time of great sorrow for me—neither the first nor the last of many such times. I was beginning to understand the meaning of the horrors and aches of love, life, and loss. Terribly depressed, I escaped through sleep. I slept so much in my depression, I began to dream deeper and deeper. So deep I reached the other side of my dreaming, and stepped into the falling space of the memory of the Muskogee woman Tafachady. The body of the dream formed again and again, and so I listened to her hovering words. The whole of a life—of her son’s life—was slipping into my saddened sleeping. And I, not knowing not to, turned even deeper inward.The story, crusted, filled with the screams of sorrows and fears and revelations, bit into my mind like small claws clamping onto soft flesh. I cried and cried. I begged my dreams to subside, but her story continued. “I watch from the fog, and I plead with the Master of Breath to allow my spirit to return to my body to save my baby from this soldier. From this horrible, dirty man who looks at my son as if he will swallow him whole. But it’s not time. It’s not time for me to return, and so I watch and wait and follow the soldier. Follow him with the eyes of my spirit to the tent of the ugly man with red hair and no soul—the leader of the soulless ones.The ones who seek to suck the souls from others, who seek to destroy the cultures of others.This one is the most soulless of all. And now he is taking my baby. My screaming, crying baby. “I watch as the leader of the soulless ones examines the skin of my son. He looks deep into the eyes of my son as if looking for an animal inside his black pupils. I watch as my son spits up green fear on the lap of this soulless one. “‘What’s wrong with this child?’ The soulless one asks those who gather around to look at my baby. I hear now! I have adjusted to my new home and now I hear these words and I hear the cries of my son, and I whisper into the air surrounding the leader of the soulless ones, ‘Give him drink.’ Brown, sweetened water is given to my baby. I hear the plans for my son. Now I know what shall happen and I whisper into my sweet baby’s ear, ‘I am with you. I shall always be with you, in spirit, in song, in meaning. Never fear.’ My baby stops crying and stares up into my spirit eyes. I should have been stronger. I should have stayed alive for him.”

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For a while, I dreamed no dreams at all. If they were being sent, I could not accept them, for I was so low, so miserable, so depressed.And then the memories of my childhood began to surface and I knew I could not deal with her dreams and my memories, so I didn’t sleep for long periods in order to keep the dreams in abeyance, to keep them from surfacing. I dreamed not at all for a long time. But she came again. “Now I see bodies are piled atop others, are kicked, slapped, scalped, skinned, burned. I see the smoke of the bodies floating into the trees, clinging to the saddened, old trees. The smoke of the bodies is clinging as if it can stay there, close to our homeland. “I watch the soulless ones dig out the potatoes from underneath the cabin they have burned. The cabin that had so many warriors trapped inside, unable to flee the fire. When the old woman seated in the doorway stretched back a bow with her crippled feet and let fly an arrow into the heart of the young man trying to get into the cabin, the soulless ones became as savage dogs attacking a deer. Like vicious dogs, gone mad at the sight of blood, they attacked the old woman, and shot her so many times with their strong balls that her soul had trouble deciding through which hole to exit.Then, they set fire to the cabin with so many warriors trapped inside. Now, they are eating the potatoes that were stored underneath the cabin. The potatoes seasoned with burning flesh of our warriors and the old woman. “I watch through the eyes of my spirit as the soulless ones wipe the grease of my people’s flesh from their mouths. They bite angrily into the potatoes. Bite at them as if they are afraid the potatoes will turn into the people they have slaughtered like animals and bite them back. The white ones, and their allies of my color, eat with a vengeance, with the same vengeance with which they are destroying my village. I watch them through the fog, where my spirit has settled. “Now, the soldiers have the flesh of my people in their guts. Now they will carry the sorrows of my people long into their bloodlines. Now their children and their children’s children, and on, and on, will know the taste of my people’s cooked flesh. This taste will develop into diseases never before known. Diseases that will rip the purpose away from the body without questioning when, or where, or why. Diseases that will cut down their people as their diseases have cut down my people. Heavy storms filled with diseases will rain down, capture eyes, and make them look into the past. Thunderous lightning will strike repose in the

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minds of those who shed tears for so many of their lost loved ones.This is the way of balance. The way of retribution. The way of Spirit. Spirit, where there is no time, no space, no longing that goes unnoticed, unheeded. Spirit. “At this instant, I look back to my body lying in the blood and dirt. Crumpled body, shredded head, and I am shocked at what I see the men doing. They are filleting the unburned skin from my body to take it and make belts. I can sense the tearing of my lifeless body as these wild ones take the skin from it with dull, rusted knives.” I waited. Hopelessly at times, removing expectations, turning them into two days, two weeks, nine months, but never over. I was scared. I was a child birthing a child and I was terrified. My son was born; my son died. A child-mother had become a childless mother. The dreams continued. “I hear your cries to the night for someone to help you. For someone to come and take you from your misery of knowing and feeling too much. Sometimes one is born so sensitive, so aware, she can oftentimes listen. That has been your fate and it has caused you much duress, but it has also caused you much success in overcoming many obstacles put in your path by those who choose to bypass good intent.You are a survivor, just as my son was a survivor. He knew to talk to the waters, to listen to the trees, to ask his dreams for guidance, just as you have always known these things. And he, like you, had no one with which to share these gifts, no one to explain to him the meaning of interconnectedness. That is why he, like you, chose to find solace in the woods, alone with all of creation.” After this dream, I stepped outside of what I had always thought I needed to know and into what I had always known, and my path became certain. I would write. I listened and learned more and more from the dream woman. “At eight months of age (the same age at which your son returned to Spirit), my son was sent to the home of the soulless one to become a play toy for a little white boy. My son lived in a place with a woman who did not understand him, who could never learn to love him because of the color of his skin. This was the wife of the man who was decidedly killing our kin. She must have been as cruel as her husband. How else could she have loved such a man?” My son had died. I was so deeply saddened I could not grieve. My poor, poor baby. I love you. I love you. I should have been stronger while carrying you. I should have prayed more for you. I should have recognized

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the condition earlier. I should have known…I should have known! Sometimes, I needed no sleep at all to dream. A threefold dream reached into the soul inside my soul, grabbing secrets to be exposed. My heart had been broken and set on fire, my soul torn apart by my loss. I began to feel darkness covering me. Began to see the darkness that surrounded all evil comings and goings. Began to see the happenings of which the woman of the dreaming spoke. I began to write of my feelings, my loss, and her pain. “I watched over my son as he grew.When the white ones told him to ignore his Indianness, taught him to be ashamed of who he was, I was there always, until the day his spirit came to be with me in this realm. I was there, whispering into his ear, telling him not to give up, not to give in to the ways his heart would not let him approve. Just as I whispered to you during the manyfold times you were ready to die. I whispered and dreamed to him still as I am to you.You shall one day tell others in words.” For a while, I hid her memories and mine inside books I read, inside smiles I forced when remembering. Then, I began to write and to write with clarity of purpose. Her dreams began again. She had been there in the sad shadows all along, waiting for me. “My son grew strong. He was put in the service of a man who made things of leather. My son grew impatient; he grew bored. He watched as the chiefs of many nations came to the big house belonging to the soulless one. Came to ask for peace, for mercy upon their people. My son stared at these men. Seeing them made his heart long deeply for the life he would have lived had he stayed with me. Had I not been murdered; had he not been taken from that battlefield and placed in a situation where his soul was smothered. Where his heart could not grow.Where his body had no resistance against the diseases the white ones carried. His heart grew weaker, his mind grew restless, his spirit wanted to return to me. He succumbed to what the white ones called tuberculosis, but I know he died of a soul split open by Jackson, who used him as a token. This soulless one never regretted killing so many people. Never regretted murdering them, taking away their lands, treading on them as if they were subhuman. My son died, his spirit returned to me, but the soulless one never developed a responsible conscience. He was like so many of those alive in your world today. And because of this, people suffer still…”

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I continued to write. I listened and wrote what my dreams told me. Now I have written some of my own memories woven with the memories of the woman in my dreams. This I have done for you, Tafachady. And for the souls of all women who seek redemption from their losses, from happenings they may deem caused by their weaknesses, and from events whose causes they may never have an in-depth understanding of. So now I will hear the song of the mothers. I hear it in the rattling of the gourds the whispering of the winds the rattling of the corn the whispering of the winds the rattling of the beans the whispering of the winds. I will hear the song the sad old song the song mothers sing when they lose their babies to wars when they lose their babies to diseases when they lose their babies their sons…their daughters… it is the song birthed from their scorched hearts. It is the song of the mothers praying for peace. Sing with them. Sing with her. Sing with me. Sing. Sing. Sing…

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The Shields of the Earth Dawn Karima Pettigrew The US government carried out a policy of displacement and extermination against the American Indians in the eastern United States, systematically removing them from their homelands. Until 1821, Florida remained under the control of the government of Spain, but the US territories of Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana were its neighbors. The United States, willing to use any means necessary, including warfare, wanted the Spaniards out of Florida and the Seminoles as well. Osceola, the great Seminole chief, was violently opposed to the Indians’ removal from their land. He loved his beautiful wife, who was the daughter of a chief and a multiracial former slave. The Seminoles and Creeks had a vibrant legacy of protecting, adopting, and intermarrying with free people of color, multiracial people, and freed and runaway slaves. Osceola’s wife, who had been born free, was kidnapped during a trading trip to Fort King.The Second Seminole War with the United States in 1835 resulted from Osceola’s devotion and his ill-fated efforts to retrieve his beloved. He was later imprisoned in Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, and died there from malaria in 1838. The whereabouts of his wife remain unknown. The following poems are an indication of what she may have thought. For my Indian grandmothers The Bride Price of War: Osceola’s Wife Is Captured by Slave Hunters, Starting a Seminole War Crossing blood, washing my heart, I meet a masked brother, raccoon, panning for shine in the river. Foil, fool’s gold, twist,

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threads spun into gold. Reward enough for this small miner. My treasures were buried moons ago, and so, that we could lose this war scares me most, the remnants of hope in the rest of need. Never being rescued scares me second, no redemption for bad heart investments. Raccoon, it’s as good as bankrupt, this word “war.” The Dowry of Conquest: Osceola’s Wife Is Enslaved in the Aftermath of the Seminole War this morning, i learned about icarus. i stood with master’s children, while they studied. i poured chocolate and listened, but i already knew what it is to lose your wings, to fall from grace, to make archangels cry, which i do, longing for sweet, red heat, missing the taste of the word “creek,” lacking patchwork skirts, losing the braids i wore like a crown.

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when the lash meets my back, i remind myself that i am no mule for i once was loved.

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Finding Home Linda Boyden

If I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors and don’t know about them, how will I find home? This question has haunted me as I have tried to discover my place and purpose in the world, for if you don’t know your family roots, how well can you know yourself? I am of mixed-blood ancestry—French Canadian on my mother’s side and Cherokee/Irish on my father’s. Being raised, as I was in the 1950s, when there was much animosity toward American Indians, our Native ancestry was not a topic for discussion, yet I was not satisfied. My curiosity led to inquiry and study, which in turn led me to a sense of peace. Not knowing the actual story of my Cherokee ancestors gave me the freedom to create one, which I have tried to do in the following poem. With these words I have woven the few facts I do know with my imagination to flesh out characters that could have been my great-great-grandparents. I set this poem in 1838 so they would have to experience the event that changed my personal history, the Trail of Tears. The horrible war between the United States and American Indians, also known as The Removal, tore the Cherokee nation apart. But President Andrew Jackson and his followers could not foresee the strength of the Cherokee people not only to survive this horror, but also to flourish. In contrast, I think about what this event did to me personally. My Cherokee ancestors must have remained in the Tennessee mountains, or returned at some point, for that is where my father’s family has lived for generations.What records there were of the family burned in a county courthouse fire. The family survived physically, but abandoned or lost their Indian identity in order to survive, which in turn has left me with a permanent sense of loss and homesickness. From living in places far from where I was raised, I understand what constitutes homesickness. Besides friends and family, I longed for the familiar: from favorite flowers and animals to aromas, angles of sunlight, and what I missed most, mountains and my beloved trees. In “Cedar Songs, Left Behind,” the cedar flute symbolizes the paradoxical themes of separation and unity for the family and becomes the treasured heirloom I wish I had inherited. 39 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

Cedar Songs, Left Behind She stayed behind, the mother of my grandfathers, Not by choice, his or hers: theirs. Singled out, she was, by soldiers. Spared, they told her, by yaller hair, blue eyes. Spoilt tho’ she was, Still no kind of fate, for a white woman, this trail, this Removal. In the guile of their final night, in the lull of the dark, they slept, The mother of my grandfathers and her man, her red earth man; His skin in rich opposition to her pale, they lay entwined until he woke. Stirred by the cadence of boot-heel crunch on gravel, The thick man-scent rising in the air, whiskeysmokesweatwool, he woke. My grandfather’s father crossed to the rough-hewn mantel for his flute, The smoothed cedar flute, which under my living fingers delivers still the songs; The haunting cedar songs, gifts left behind by the Tree People, In the branch he carved so long ago. The mother of my grandfathers taught her son, Then her grandson, the songs he played that night. In time, Grandfather taught me, his granddaughter, Child of pale hair and red earth skin; told her, too, the story. Played me awake that night, she said. With my fingers one by one on his; Played into them the cedar songs, one by one, until the soldiers came. As they broke down the door, as they dragged him away, I faltered once, she said, but did not stop. I released the cedar songs, instead of tears

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As they pushed my man from the dawn, from my arms. I played for him the songs; for the son born after; For the grandson of my old age… Now as grandmother, I tell her words. I, the girl blessed with Grandmother’s name and hair, Grandfather’s red earth skin, I play the sweet cedar songs, the haunting holy gifts Of the trees he left behind.

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A Turned-Around World Linda Hogan I come from warriors, yet I can hardly speak. That’s why I write this. I remember reading that after the [1864] Sand Creek Massacre, when the men returned to their camp and found their women and children killed and mutilated, even sexually mutilated, they were in such dismay and despair that they stabbed and cut themselves, taking pain into the body, away from what was seen. There was no way to send it away from the self, soul, or mind. There would always be that memory of terror. They were unable to fight the horror of the new America, the change of the world from a beautiful loved one into the horror of devastation and the cruelty that came along with it. There was not a language, even then, for such pain. That was the reason they hurt themselves. And the distance of this history still reverberates, entering into this and every day. We are never not Indians. We have never forgotten this history. The white men, after the massacre at Sand Creek, bragged about it on the streets of Denver. There was the white man who bought the skulls of the Sand Creek massacre victims and used them for target practice. He was the same man who captured and broke Black Kettle’s famous colt that ran wild for thirteen years.This too, their human darkness, continues today. It is the darkness that makes us want to drink, the story of war and its tidal wave of violence, the falling of countries and civilizations.We human beings need to greatly reflect on what this means, the inhumanity that lives within a human, side by side with our beauty and promise. In spite of a geography changed, interrupted histories and lives, there were brilliant Native leaders. Shawnee Metacomet (Tecumseh) traveled the continent, even to our tribes in the Southeast and into Florida, where he met with Osceola in order to band together into a resistance movement. Osceola hid his people in mangrove swamps for twelve years, evading the military. Multitudes of Europeans were arriving, greatly changing the

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land. Native languages, larger and more encompassing than English, were forbidden and changed, spiritual traditions banned. Brilliant, strong leaders had no choice but to somehow endure. Sitting Bull, the man who tried to save his people, the man who said so beautifully that he was sending his heart across the miles to his homeland, found himself forced to become part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. For white Americans, even today, we Indians came to represent spirit, heart, an earth-based way of living, but the true stories of our lives were, and still are, missing from history, the geography of our lands changed. In those days, there were photographs of leaders who were dying, some propped up for the photographers and painters. While the living bodies of tribal people were destroyed, photographs and paintings romanticized Indian lives. It was, and still is, a turned-around world. The traveling photographers created posed depictions of people living traditional lives they no longer, in reality, by American law, were allowed to live. What comes to mind is a portrait photograph of Charles Eastman, the Santee Sioux medical doctor. Dressed in traditional clothing, he appears to be a chief. Inside the face of the portrait is Eastman, Ohiyesa, the author and medical doctor, survivor of wars, attending physician at the Wounded Knee massacre of Indian people, primarily women, elders, and children. He was portrayed as the brave warrior—not as the physician. He was seen as the image of what Americans had killed but at the same time romanticized and longed for. The grief inside him was enormous. For a time, Eastman had been in great demand as a lecturer across the country. He wrote in “The Soul of the White Man” that the new people, the Christians, did not live their “wonderful conception of exemplary living.” It appeared, he said, that they were “anxious to pass on their religion to all races of men, but keep very little of it themselves. I have not seen the meek inherit the earth, or the peacemakers receive high honor.” He wrote, too, “when I let go my instinctive, nature religion, I hoped to gain something far loftier.” Instead, he finally left white America and returned to the forest of his origin. One day, back in the woodlands, as if to return him to nature, a large tortoise scratched on the door and entered the house. Eastman pointed out that the new kinds of people were impossible

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then, as now, to understand, in their duplicity. The attending physician invited the artist George Catlin to watch Osceola’s death. Catlin wrote about Osceola, the brilliant, though Western-educated, mixed-blood Seminole leader who kept his people hidden in the Florida swamps and Everglades for more than twelve years as the US Army searched for them. Catlin wrote that he had never met a more intelligent and genteel man. Then, after his death, Osceola’s severed head was placed on the bed of the doctor’s children whenever they misbehaved. Chief Joseph’s skull became an ashtray for a dentist who bought it. Our fallen worlds, our anguish, became their curiosities and souvenirs. There was also Four Bears, a Mandan leader who wanted peace. Four Bears was painted by Catlin in his traditional clothing at the same time that he and his people were dying of smallpox the painters and photographers helped spread. The tragedy of this went unmentioned by Catlin and others. The Mandans were nearly extincted. Yet, there was then, as now, a search by Euro-Americans for what they thought American Indians represented. Not for the best of what we have to offer, our knowledge of the world, our complex theologies, our remembered ecology, but for a romantic tie to the earth the Europeans have forgotten and severed, and could now have back, but for self-deceit. They could have what it is they want but they would have to change. Now, too, is a time of great anger, the backlash of white Americans who need to find and abide by their own integrity. Laurens Van der Post, a white man who lived among the Bushmen of Africa, talked about what happens in a world surrounding and overwhelming indigenous people. He wrote of the white man’s guilt as the “guilt that grows great and angry.” Interestingly, he too comments that the destruction of the body and land have coincided in history. He calls it the “defoliation of landscape and spirit.” It is true on this continent, too, that our world changed from one where every place and thing mattered and was loved, into a world defoliated, where nothing human or other, mattered.

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Saga of American Truth Lee Maracle I was in California, the San Francisco Fillmore district, and wandered into a bookstore where I found an anthology of oratory of black women in which there was this poem by Sojourner Truth and a brief story of her walking to the national suffragette meeting and the powerful words she spoke at the gathering. It reminded me of a short pamphlet written by a Mig Mawg [Mi’kmaq] woman three years earlier, in 1975, about the Cree Cayuse trail to Canada for black slaves that preceded the underground railroad. They were caught, seven thousand Cree men were shipped to Jamaica, and the women were sent north; hence no Crees in the United States. I decided to write this poem because I had met a young Jamaican man in 1966 who spoke Cree despite the fact that he had been in Canada only six months. They stole upon the village huts Under cover of a moonless night With musket and sword they drowned The sleepy resistance in blood. Stripped of gold Manacled, they marched the heart Of Africa through stanchions of green To vessels bobbing innocently, awash with the red glow of a rising star. Layer upon layer they stacked Africa’s finest In filthy holds, Feverish. Wounded The robust daughters of Africa Were readied for death’s claim.

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Under a demonic dome of bourbon lust The tumescent erection of youthful madness Birthed? America? Manifest destiny? To be nursed by the breast of Africa. Grandmothers, red earth colored Bore witness. Spirits quivering, Our naked grandmothers cried above the howl of spilt black blood. The fire of our outrage burned America’s face. Cotton dawn and Tired earth dogged his erection. Resistance rattled the cage of slavery. Inflamed by America’s crotchety lie We secreted black mother between tipis Pathed by blessed song, the tears of split Family, a cross requiem for black young. Village to village, sheltered by starless skies Fleeing black youth ran ’longside Cayuse and red earth warriors. But few survived. Few survived the broken trail to liberty. America, his brat youth spent cloaked his madness in rigid maturity. In a dying dockyard a slave ship revived to carry our multitudes to the jewel of Carib. By dint of the lash and musket Black mother’s daughters built roads Atop our ancestral lands, fresh with red earth woman’s blood and forced cotton from earth’s barren chest.

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Under a de-bizoned, treeless October sky We watched the parched and looted land. America’s autumn birthed a thorny rose. A sojourner whose truth bids us rise again. We rose again, were beaten by the pining of America’s delicate orchid. —the hallmark of America’s tumescence drowned the song of Sojourner. Sojourner whose truth we could not bury burned holes in our winter refuge. Dogged by her resistance, she filled our bodies with this persistent need. The ghost of black mother walks this wind atop red earth woman’s ageless Cayuse. They come to us now and then, jogging us from our earthly sleep. This sojourner whose truth I dare not see. This ghost of black mother and her homeless Red earth companion, singing their sacred song: AIN’T I A WOMAN! AIN’T I A WOMAN! We are here yet, the rising wretched of America A pair of stubborn roses, thorny and wrathful, Left over from an America whose withered manhood has been twisted into a saga of perverse humor. Like an old sick joke America tries to rise His worn loins, swollen with misuse Runs amok to invoke the rage of womanhood, His demise is but a squirt away.

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(Epilogue) We sit staring out the window At this dirty old man who cannot stop raping the world. We watch while he spills the blood of the children in Soweto. The blood fills my bedroom with truth It is the blood of Annie Mae, my sister, My children, running red in my homeland securing indigenous invisibility. “Inequity” is a blasphemous Cloak for Canadian apartheid A liberal term no one but us need take seriously. Rise Soweto. I swim upstream against the rivers of blood Gnashing hopelessly at death with words Penned between gasps and desperate strokes aimed at the same perverse enemy. Rise Soweto. From my window I see death For this America who cannot drown us all. Rise Soweto! My turn is coming, ’tis Just round the corner.

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Dead All Over the Hills: An Interview with Ex-Slave Mrs. Phoebe Banks From the WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives EDITED BY T.

Lindsay Baker and Julie P. Baker

Mrs. Phoebe Gates resided at 1008 Oak Street, Muskogee, Oklahoma, and was seventy-eight years old when interviewed by WPA fi eld worker Ethel Wolfe Garrison1 during the winter of 1937–38.

In 1860, there was a little Creek Indian town of Sodom on the north bank of the Arkansas River, in a section the Indians called Chocka Bottoms, where Mose Perryman had a big farm or ranch for a long time before the Civil War. That same year, on October 17, I was born on the Perryman place, which was northwest of where I live now in Muskogee; only in them days Fort Gibson and Okmulgee was the biggest towns around and Muskogee hadn’t shaped up yet. My mother belonged to Mose Perryman when I was born; he was one of the best known Creeks in the whole nation, and one of his younger brothers, Legus Perryman, was made the big chief of the Creeks (1887) a long time after the slaves was freed.2 Mother’s name was Eldee; my father’s name was William McIntosh, because be belonged to a Creek Indian family by that name. Everybody say the McIntoshes was leaders in the Creek doings away back there in Alabama long before they come out here. With me, there was twelve children in our family: Daniel, Stroy, Scott, Segal, Neil, Joe, Phillip, Mollie, Harriett, Sally and Queenie. The Perryman slave cabins was all alike—just two-room log cabins, with a fireplace where mother do the cooking for us children at night after she get through working in the Master’s house.

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Mother was the house girl—cooking, waiting on the table, cleaning the house, spinning the yarn, knitting some of the winter clothes, taking care of the mistress girl, washing the clothes—yes, she was always busy and worked mighty hard all the time, while them Indians wouldn’t hardly do nothing for themselves. On the McIntosh plantation, my daddy said there was a big number of slaves and lots of slave children. The slave men work in the fields, chopping cotton, raising corn, cutting rails for the fences, building log cabins and fireplaces. One time when father was cutting down a tree it fell on him and after that he was only strong enough to rub down the horses and do light work around the yard. He got to be a good horse trainer and long time after slavery he helped to train horses for the Free Fairs around the country, and I suppose the first money he ever earned was made that way.3 Lots of 4 the slave owners didn’t want their slaves to learn reading and writing, but the Perrymans didn’t care; they even helped the younger slaves with that stuff. Mother said her master didn’t care much what the slaves do; he was so lazy he didn’t care for nothing. They tell me about the War times, and that’s all I remember of it. Before the War is over some of the Perryman slaves and some from the McIntosh place fix up to run away from their masters. My father and my uncle, Jacob Perryman, was some of the fixers. Some of the Creek Indians had already lost a few slaves who slip off to the North, and they take what was left down into Texas so’s they couldn’t get away. Some of the other Creeks was friendly to the North and was fixing to get away up there; that’s the ones my daddy and uncle was fixing to join, for they was afraid their masters would take up and move to Texas before they could get away. They call the old Creek, who was leaving for the North, “Old Gouge” (Opothleyohola).5 All our family join up with him, and there was lots of Creek Indians and slaves in the outfit when they made a break for the North. 6 The runaways was riding ponies stolen from their masters. When they get into the hilly country farther north into the country that belong to the Cherokee Indians, they make camp on a big creek and there the Rebel Indian soldiers catch up, but they was fought back.

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Then long before morning lighten the sky, the men hurry and sling the camp kettles across the pack horses, tie the littlest children to the horses’ backs and get on the move farther into the mountains. They kept moving fast as they could, but the wagons made it mighty slow in the brush and the lowland swamps, so just about the time they ready to ford another creek the Indian soldiers catch up and the fighting begin all over again. The Creek Indians and the slaves with them try to fight off them soldiers like they did before, but they get scattered around and separated so’s they lose the battle. Lost their horses and wagons, and the soldiers killed lots of the Creeks and Negroes, and some of the slaves was captured and took back to their masters. Dead all over the hills when we get away; some of the Negroes shot and wounded so bad the blood run down the saddle skirts, and some fall off their horses miles from the battle ground, and lay still on the ground. Daddy and Uncle Jacob keep our family together somehow and head across the line into Kansas. We all get to Fort Scott where there was a big army camp; daddy work in the blacksmith shop and Uncle Jacob join with the Northern soldiers to fight against the South. He come through the war and live to tell me about the fighting he been in. He went with the soldiers down around Fort Gibson where they fight the Indians who stayed with the South. Uncle Jacob say he killed many a man during the war, and showed me the musket and sword he used to fight with; said he didn’t shoot the women and children—just whack their heads off with the sword, and almost could I see the blood dripping from the point! It made me scared at his stories. The captain of this company want his men to be brave and not get scared, so before the fighting start he put out a tub of white liquor (corn whiskey) and steam them up so’s they’d be mean enough to whip their grannie! The soldiers do lots of riding and the saddle-sores get so bad they grease their body every night with snake oil so’s they could keep going on. Uncle Jacob said the biggest battle was at Honey Springs (1863).7 That was down near Elk Creek, close by Checotah, below Rentiesville.8 He said it was the most terrible fighting he seen, but the Union soldiers

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whopped and went back into Fort Gibson. The Rebels was chased all over the country and couldn’t find each other for a long time, the way he tell it. After the war our family come back here and settle at Fort Gibson, but it ain’t like the place my mother told me about. There was big houses and buildings of brick setting on the high land above the river when I first see it, not like she know it when the Perrymans come here years ago. She heard the Indians talk about the old fort (1824), the one that rot down long before the Civil War. And she seen it herself when she go with the Master for trading with the stores. She said it was made by Matthew Arbuckle and his soldiers, and she talk about Company’s B, C, D, K, and the Seventh Infantry who was there and made the Osage Indians stop fighting the Creeks and the Cherokees. She talk of it, but that old place all gone when I first see the Fort. Then I hear about how the Arbuckle soldiers leave the old log fort, the Cherokee Indians take over the land and start up the town of Keetoowah. The folks who move in there make the place so wild and rascally the Cherokees give up trying to make a good town and it kinder blow away. My husband was Tom Banks, but the boy I got ain’t my own son, but I found him on my doorstep when he’s about three weeks old and raise him like he is my own blood. He went to school at the manual training school at Tullahassee9 and the education he got get him a teacher job at Taft (Okla), where he is now.

NOTES 1. Mrs. Phoebe Banks was interviewed in Muskogee, Oklahoma, by WPA field worker Ethel Wolfe Garrison during the winter of 1937–38. Garrison’s initial draft of the Phoebe Banks narrative, now lost, was rewritten by her coworker Craig Vollmer on 13 January 1938 as the typescript “Interview with Phoebe Banks, Slave Born, Age 78, 1008 Oak Street, Muskogee, Oklahoma” in the OHS Slave Narratives. This draft then was revised into standard project format on 19 October 1938 as “Phoebe Banks, Age 78, Muskogee, Oklahoma.” This latter version, which is published here and which differs only slightly from the intermediate draft, was forwarded to national project headquarters in Washington. The ribbon copy is

52 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

available in the LC Slave Narratives, and a carbon copy is available as item 350075 in the LC Slave Narrative Carbon Copies. 2. Legus Choteau Perryman served as principal chief of the Creek Nation from 1887 to 1895. John Bartlett Meserve, “The Perrymans,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, 15 ( June 1937): 177–80; H. F. O’Beirne and E. S. O’Beirne, The Indian Territory: Its Chiefs, Legislators and Leading Men, 105–7. 3. At this point the preliminary version of the narrative includes the following paragraph: “Lots of the supplies was freighted up the Arkansas river by the steamboats; sometimes daddy take me down to the river when he go to help unload the freight, but I don’t remember the names on them boats.” 4. The preliminary draft here states “Some of the slave owners.” 5. For an account of Creek Chief Opothleyohola’s life, see John Bartlett Meserve, “Chief Opothleyohola,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 9 (December 1931): 439–53. 6. For background on the exodus of Creeks and their slaves for Kansas in the autumn of 1861, see Dean Banks, “Civil War Refugees from Indian Territory in the North,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 41 (Autumn 1963): 286–89; Edwin C. Bearss, “The Civil War Comes to Indian Territory, 1861: The Flight of Opothleyohola,” Journal of the West 11 ( January 1972): 9–42; Carter Blue Clark, “Opothleyohola and the Creeks during the Civil War,” in Indian Leaders: Oklahoma’s First Statesmen, ed. H. Glenn Jordan and Thomas M. Holm, 49–63; Edmund J. Danziger, “The Office of Indian Affairs and the Problem of Civil War Indian Refugees in Kansas,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, 35 (Autumn 1960): 260–63; Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Africans and Creeks: From the Colonial Period to the Civil War, pp. 236-37. 7. For overviews of the 17 July 1863 Battle of Honey Springs, see Charles R. Freeman, “The Battle of Honey Springs,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 13 ( June 1935): 154–68; Lary C. Rampp and Donald L. Rampp, The Civil War in the Indian Territory, 21–28. 8. A reference to the all-black community of Rentiesville, Oklahoma. For background on this freedmen’s town, see “Rentiesville,” typescript, n.d., “Blacks” vertical fi le, Federal Writers’ Project Collection. 9. For accounts of the Tullahassee mission and school, see Althea Bass, The Story of Tallahassee; Virginia E. Lauderdale, “Tullahassee Mission,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 26 (Autumn 1948): 285–300.

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Shelton Laurel Diary Kathryn Stripling Byer A branch runs through this cavern, in it trout whose eyes are blind from years of too much dark. I envy them for all they haven’t seen, and maybe with enough time I might too cease to see these things I tell you of… —from “Shelton Laurel” by Ron Rash

The voice in “Shelton Laurel Diary” began after I read Ron Rash’s poem entitled “Shelton Laurel” in an issue of The Asheville Poetry Review. In it, the speaker, hiding out in a cave in the mountains, is writing a letter to his sister after witnessing the Shelton Laurel massacre during the Civil War [ January 1863]. The war often fomented violence between neighbors here in the southern mountains, segments of the population supporting the Union, others the Confederates. The Shelton Laurel killings were among the most brutal, haunting the families involved for generations afterward. When I finished reading Rash’s poem, I could sense the sister herself trying to respond. Several more poems followed the first, as if once she’d begun to write out her anguish, she couldn’t stop. 1. I dreamed you wrote a letter to me, grimy-fingered in the glow of some dream cave, holed up like wolf or bear. Your nib scratched over wrinkled paper, blood-stained, was it? Yes, I saw it clearly for a moment, fading though it was, as fading you were in the light. How did

54 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

we come to this? Against each other. Other side of creek. Or ridge. Against, against. It tries my fortitude, this war. Recall that pair of overalls you gave me, unbeknownst to our strict father, saying, now you too can crawl the laurel hells and climb the rock face with the rest of us? I did. I keep them near to feel the earth they crawled, the thorns they bore, worn down to flesh itself through trailing you. I almost drew them on to track you into battle, joining boys out in the front lines, fight as hard as they. You know I could. Where are you, Brother? And why hide from me? I fear you’ve crawled into some hell more hellish than our laurel can be for a stranger who has lost his way in these parts. Yes, I dreamed the letter you left on my pillow, yet I do not dream I wake. I know I have awakened. And I know you wait in darkness, as I see now dawn begin to creep above the fog in Shelton Laurel.

2. Who can bear it? Thus I write each morning,

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as if asking might give some relief to waiting, waiting, knowing that we must, we women left as women always let themselves be. None

can keep us from it, least of all ourselves, not knowing what to do next. Fear resides in empty chairs and empty beds. No fire within the hearth within an empty house with none to feed or hover over with a blanket or a bone! Not even hound to scold. We wait because at least we wait among what’s left of us, our beads and thimbles. Quilts. Our widow’s weeds. Out there beyond the last ridge, what waits? Neighbors who do not wage war against the other, hack their neighbor’s children

56 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

like a spring field waiting to be hoed? Where streams do not hide pocket watches smashed and tossed aside, or bones that slowly shed their flesh? Who of us has gone that far away? And if she has, she’s not come back to tell us how a woman might live there, bereft of all she’s known. 3. My body under cold quilts, all bone. I touch hip and ribs. I try to want a man’s palm here atop my belly where a child might coil, a tiny grub of flesh. I try to want a child. I touch my nipples, wondering how milk swells, how a woman lets herself be used thus. Emptied out like feed sacks unto mouths and more mouths, like earth itself, a trough at which the hungry feed till sated, they sleep not as I sleep, if I sleep at all. I know you do not sleep wherever you lie this night, Brother. Were you not the one who once declared

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The well-fed sleep warm? Not like us, whose ribs push hard against our cold skin underneath a cold quilt made by long-dead hands. 4. I want you walking back unscarred or not at all. A broken man is better dead than living. Ask our neighbor who ran out to meet the man who once had been her husband. Ask her how all night she fears that he will strangle her or burn the cabin down. Ask how she found him crouched above the baby’s cradle, bayonet atremble in his hand. By day he sits and stares. By night he roams the woods. But better out than in, for then she locks the door against him, lets him howl till down he slides to sleep. Then she does too, and dreams I know not what, nor do I want to know.

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Carrie McGavock: The High Priestess of the Temple of the Dead Boys Deborah A. Bowles I have heard it said, and seen it in the eyes of my mother as a result of the death of my brother from a military accident, that a mother never gets over the death of a child. The pain of loss and separation is always there. At the age of thirty-five, on the morning of November 30, 1864, Mrs. Carrie McGavock, of Franklin, Tennessee, was understandably still depressed and grieving the loss of her three little angels when a representative of the Confederate States of America arrived at her front door. General Nathan Bedford Forest had come to inform the family that their house was to be turned into a military hospital. A large battle would take place nearby during the day and casualties were anticipated. Mrs. McGavock was expected to assume the duties as a nurse assisting in the treatment of the wounded. Tragedy, that most unwelcome guest, encompassed Mrs. McGavock again in unfathomable depths.

Caroline Elizabeth Winder was born on September 9, 1829, near Natchez, Mississippi, to Van P. Winder and Martha Anne Grundy Winder. On December 8, 1848, she married John McGavock and moved approximately 520 miles from her relatives to live with him on his family estate Carnton near Franklin, Tennessee. The McGavocks gave birth to five children: Martha W., born on September 25, 1849; Mary Elizabeth, born on March 28, 1851; John Randall, born on June 5, 1854; Harriet Young, born during 1855; and Winder, born during 1857. Three of the McGavock’s five children died as a result of illness: John Randall lived only three months, dying on September 11, 1854; Mary was younger than seven when she died on January 26, 1858; and Martha was twelve when she died on March 19, 1862.1 Watching each child suffer with fever and illness, in the days prior to antibiotics, drained the strength and

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courage from Mrs. McGavock. An overwhelming sense of helplessness slowly took hold of a loving mother who, despite trying everything she knew how to do, death repeatedly reached out its bony hand and grasped each of the three children from her grip. Carnton was a plantation built around 1815 by John McGavock’s father, Randal McGavock, who was a planter, political leader and former mayor of Nashville. John McGavock later added the Greek–revival styled porches to both floors of the large house.2 Beautiful in its design, the house’s roofed porches allowed for rocking chairs to be placed sporadically for one to enjoy the view and relax from the day, or to watch the sun rise or set on the horizon. The size of the house and its location to nearby Franklin made it an excellent observation post for General Forest and to serve as a military hospital.The shock to the system of learning one’s home is to be taken over without permission must have been overwhelming to the McGavocks personally and as a household. War cares not for whom it inconveniences, wounds, or kills. Mrs. McGavock and her house staff frenetically worked to create a hospital from whatever domestic supplies could be made into dressings, cots, surgery tools, whatever was needed, prior to the arrival of the first men injured in the battle. The sound of ripping sheets and other linens into strips rolled for bandages could be heard throughout the hallways. The children’s toys, books, and games were stowed away to make way for cots and makeshift bedrolls in the downstairs living spaces. Valuables were quickly hidden beneath loose floorboards or in sacks of flour and cornmeal to protect them from damage or theft. Breakable knickknacks were placed in cupboards or closets. The battle, which became known as the Battle of Franklin, developed into the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The Confederate Army of Tennessee suffered 6,252 casualties, including 1,750 killed and 3,800 wounded.3 None of the McGavocks or their house staff had any experience as nurses or assisting in hospital work, particularly the children, but everyone gave their best efforts. Life indisputably changed forever for Mrs. McGavock with that knock at her front door. By late afternoon, injured soldiers were strewn along the lower level of the house in every available spot for a man—or in a good number of the instances, boy—to lie upon the floor. One room of

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the upstairs was turned into an improvised operating room where emergency surgeries and amputations occurred. To make room for the next person on the operating table, the amputated limbs were thrown out the window. It has been recorded that the number of limbs amputated that day piled up high outside the house, reaching to the second floor windows.4 The less seriously injured soldiers were placed outside on the lawn. While weather averages for Franklin, Tennessee, in November are not severely cold, the temperature still would have ranged from lows of 30 degrees to highs of 55 degrees.5 Not exactly pristine conditions for injured and ill men to be lying about the grounds, and, of course, there was no possible way for one family to supply enough blankets to keep thousands of soldiers warm and dry. None of these soldiers were in the best of health during the latter months of the Civil War. Most wore raggedy clothes, not uniforms, and many did not possess shoes. When men fell to their deaths by illness or wounds, other soldiers would don the dead men’s shoes or coat or anything that might serve to protect the living from the cold. It was not out of disrespect for their fallen comrades, or foes, but purely for survival. Mr. and Mrs. McGavock and the children, Harriet (eight or nine years old) and Winder (six or seven years old), along with Mariah Otey Reddick (who had been given as a slave and maid to Mrs. McGavock when they were both children) and Theopolis (Mariah’s son) tended to the basic needs of the soldiers, such as providing meals and water, cleaning wounds, and changing bandages. Mrs. McGavock also assisted the physician in surgery. The horrors that they endured in caring for the wounded and dying men must have been abominable.The flow of blood—like hundreds of fountain pens broken and spilling their contents—along with the smells of infection and illness, mingled with the filth of dirty, battle worn soldiers would cause one to gag or retch when walking into the rooms. How horrible must have been the sight of the wounded lying about by the thousands, a sea of helplessness grasping for hope of recovery or the relief from pain that death might bring. The majority of the world’s population is spared such horrors as seeing these things, but this family was not only forced to see but also tend to those poor, unfortunate sufferers. I dare say that the McGavock children, Harriet and Winder, aged a number of years

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on that day, and horrifying images were planted in their impressionable minds that even time could not erase. During the five hours of battle on November 30, 1864, approximately 1,500 of the Confederate soldiers who fought died on the battlefield, located between Winstead Hill and the Carter House.6 These soldiers were later buried in a mass grave, tagged for identification by regiment and/or state of residence as best as could be done given the circumstances. There the bodies of these soldiers remained for almost two years until the owner of the property decided he wanted to plow the mass grave into a field to grow his crops. The McGavocks tried their best to persuade the owner not to desecrate the burial site of these soldiers, but the owner refused to let the area remain as a graveyard on his property. The McGavocks took it upon themselves to turn approximately two acres of their estate, an area next to their family cemetery, into a burial ground for these fallen soldiers.7 Mr. and Mrs. McGavock, accompanied by Mariah and Theopolis, took their wagon and shovels to the mass grave to begin the arduous task of digging up the bodies in order to rebury the soldiers. Some of their friends and neighbors from Franklin assisted the McGavocks in this task, as they found it disagreeable for crops to be planted over the dead soldiers. Each man or boy was transported by wagon to Carnton and reinterred in a private grave, recorded by plot number and coordinating personal identification in a cemetery record book created and maintained by Mrs. McGavock. In the years following, Mrs. McGavock wrote letters to as many families of the soldiers as could be located. She advised the families of the location, battle, and date where their respective loved one died, and that he had been moved to a final resting place at Carnton. Mrs. McGavock wrote as only one parent can write to another parent of such devastating loss of a son, brother, uncle, cousin, or spouse. The majority of these soldiers are still buried at Carnton. A few have been removed to be buried with their families elsewhere; this information was also recorded in Mrs. McGavock’s cemetery record book. Robert Hicks, in his book The Widow of the South,8 relates a story of the Winn family from Hinesville, Liberty County, Georgia. Mrs. McGavock had written the parents informing them of where their son was buried. The arduous journey to Carnton, by horse and wagon,

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took the Winn family weeks to accomplish. They came in anticipation of taking their son back to Georgia to bury him in his home state, but when they saw how he had been so respectfully and honorably interred, they departed. Approximately one year later they returned, their wagon loaded with Georgia dirt so that their son might be buried with his home soil. When slavery was abolished and the slaves were freed, Mariah and Theopolis remained, at their choice, with the McGavocks. Mariah assisted Mrs. McGavock in maintaining the McGavock’s Confederate Cemetery, which abutted the family cemetery. Mrs. McGavock would walk daily among the soldiers’ graves to see that the grass on each was kept neatly trimmed, the markers remained in place, limbs or other rubbish blown about from storms was cleared away, and to keep her own private vigil for them. She donned black mourning clothing as she had done since the death of her own children, which probably helped to further her reputation as the Widow of the South or, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “the high priestess of the temple of the dead boys.” Carnton was their temple and the shrine to their lives sacrificed in duty. Here she walked in communion with their spirits as she guarded and protected their final resting place. Mrs. McGavock found a source of inner strength within the depth of her being to endure all of the tragedies during her life. She got out of her bed of grief for her dead children and went about taking care of her “other children”—the wounded, dying, and dead soldiers. In a similar vein, she could not have left those soldiers in their mass grave knowing that the callous and uncaring property owner was preparing to plant seeds atop them, using their ultimate sacrifice as a source of fertilizer for his crops. These soldiers were other people’s husbands, sons, fathers, brothers, uncles, or cousins, and deserved to be honored and cared for in death, regardless of the circumstances of their lives before the war. Until her demise in 1905, Carrie McGavock maintained the cemetery for the soldiers, for the families who visited to find their loved ones to realize that their beloveds were not left as carrion or buried with crops planted atop them, as well as for those families who could not visit. These men were buried with the dignity and respect that all soldiers deserve. Mrs. McGavock continued to wear black mourning clothes every day until her death. Ironically, when she had a formal portrait painted at the

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age of nineteen, she would wear only a black dress, which was definitely not fashionable at that time. This makes one wonder whether her spirit knew she would have a life of mourning. Today, the Franklin Chapter No. 14 of the United Daughters of the Confederacy maintains both the cemetery and Carnton, carrying on this strong woman’s work. Oh that every fallen soldier around the world would have such a dedicated guardian as Mrs. Carrie McGavock!

NOTES 1. Dates of births and deaths for the McGavock family are set forth at the family cemetery. See www.cemeterysurveysinc.com/albums/WilliamsonTN/McGavockFamily. 2. www.tngenweb.org/williamson/military/conf/battlefranklin.html. 3. www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Battle_of_Franklin_II. 4. “Carnton and the McGavock Cemetery Franklin, Tennessee,” www.geocities.com/Bourbon Street/Square/3873/franklin4.html. 5. www.weather.com. 6. www.carnton.org. 7. Ibid. 8. Robert Hicks, The Widow of the South (Clayton, VIC: Warner Books, 2005). An excellent book and a must-read for those interested in fi nding out more about Mrs. Carrie McGavock.

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Vows Glenis Redmond Araminta Ross took the name Harriet Tubman. She was one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. Her selfl ess act of freeing slaves needs no introduction, yet her personal life was, and still is, virtually unknown. Tubman, though raised to mythical proportions, has been labeled with many masculine references such as “General” and “The Moses of her people.” The poem “Vows” was inspired after reading Catherine Clinton’s scholarly account Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. Clinton’s biography fills in many missing pieces of this complex “sheroic” human life. Clinton gives us brief glimpses not only of a brilliant war strategist and enlightened prophet leading her people, but also insights into the heart of a woman battling through personal tragedy and loss while freeing her people. She was one of America’s first women’s activists, and she most definitely was a woman. Harriet Tubman’s husband left her liberated her from his love because she broke chains off slaves instead of slaving in the kitchen yoked to a stove, potato, and a pan. He wanted a wife, not somebody stirring rebellion, no mythical Moses mess riddled with lamplight codes bloodied bare-feet and gun toting episodes. Or a woman on the right side of the war fighting but loving hard with a North Star heart scooping her dark hand back reaching for children, woman and men and when it came to her man, she grabbed nothin’ but air and broken heartedness, no one at her back. Her word stood, like a solid promise, his like his bags packed with excuses: your arms are too large, your heart is too on fire with revolution.

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The only dish you serve is emancipation. He didn’t like the taste of her bed empty unclean house freedom. Couldn’t fathom her genius or her vows proving in history a good woman is hard to find.

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Rya’s Rainbow Dolores Kendrick I thank these women for coming, and I thank the God who sent them. Oh, the war be a mess. I nuss the sick and wounded on both sides. Make no difference then, I guess. Dyin’ be dyin’, blood be blood: see it all now, should have been on my way North with them other folk like Judd told me to do. But No I stayed to wrap the bones of the dead in a piece of cloth, sometimes my petticoat, and prayed for they decent burial. Everything be over. But not me I weren’t over ’til the Lawd called me and the wings of the mighty ghost hover

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over those death fields that wound us all livin’ as well as dead before the last bell toll before the sun give witness before the land perish takin’ with it them angry moans that fall from the mouths of all them that hate and live to like it even when it splatters them with dusty demons eatin’ through they souls at misery’s gate. One boy, he be a Yankee, looked at me and begged for water. I gives it to him but he pass on anyway, dry at the mouth, dumb eyes that suddenly stopped. Oh Lawd, deliver me! So’s I nuss do my best talk a little whisper the Lawd’s name where it be prayer properly wash they wounds, carry they peril and feel my children at my bosom and know they hunger and the good of my milk and hear that terrible rainbow that steal

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over the cold land after the evenin’ rain, touchin’ me from inside girdin’ my strength passin’ the power of life from flesh to ground with all them colors smilin’ on the slain.

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CHAPTER 2 A WORLD OF WAR

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Hermine Jungus Komnik’s World Wars I and II Experiences and Results Paula Popow Oliver Hermine Jungus Komnik was born in the Ukraine on January 22, 1915, and died October 22, 2002, in Pennsylvania. I met her in 1993 at Calvary Lutheran Church in West Chester, Pennsylvania. She graciously translated one of my ancestor’s letters that had been written in old-German script. The letter, which was written in 1886, mentions wars and diffi culties in Germany. After we became better acquainted, Hermine explained that she wanted to tell me about her life. We began to meet at my home once a week in 1995, and I interviewed Hermine for several months. The following essay is transcribed from those interviews. My great-grandparents came from Germany. It was good for most of my family to live in the Ukraine until 1928. My parents, Karl and Elizabeht Jungus, had a farm with horses, cows, wheat, and barley and sunflower seeds seventy miles from the Black Sea in Neurosengart. My parents were very religious and strict practicing Christians. Daily my father read aloud Biblical verses to me and my mother, my siblings Maria, the eldest, Elizabeht, second to the eldest, Karl, and my baby brother, Johan; he also led us in family prayer. Communism began to take hold throughout the Ukraine in 1928. From that moment on everything belonged to the Communistic government; everyone had to work for the state. They called it the Kollektiv [Russian collective]. The Communists’ goal was to make everyone economically equal. To equalize the wealth the communists took from the wealthy and distributed among the poorer people. This was accomplished by taking cows, pigs, and agri-crops, clothes, furniture, land and homes from people who

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worked hard, sometimes all their life, to have their possessions. The new agriculture plan left my father with a little more than a hectare of land. We had two cows instead of six, a few chickens instead of sixty, and a few ducks instead of twenty-five. One time they came to our home and wanted our two cows. I put a string around my hands and held one cow. I was not going to give them our cow. I said to them,“You can do anything to me; I’m not going to give it.” Instead they tried to take our pigs away, so I opened the pigpen door and all the pigs ran out. They said that they would put me on the wagon. When they put me on the wagon I jumped off on the other side. It was springtime, and I was only thirteen years old. I had to work since I was nine years old. They could do nothing to my father because he was blind. The Communists had no use for a blind man. They did take the meat we had butchered. Mother would hide the lard in the well when we would hear that they were coming. They randomly visited villages for a year. We had worked all our life for our cows and pigs. The poor had not worked and many did not want to work. Stalin’s people seized other people’s possessions, too.Then, suddenly, the Communists received orders not to do it any more, like before the Kollektiv, and we began to work together. In 1933, I visited my sister, Maria Klatt, who lived in Hohenfeld. She was expecting her second child, so I worked for the state in her place since she could not work while pregnant. I worked in the fields. While living with Maria I met my future husband, Henry. His home was in Hohenfeld, too. In 1934, Maria’s husband came back from the Army. Henry asked my parents if he could marry me. My parents gave their permission. We bought a house made of mud brick with a straw roof. Four years we lived together [in Hohenfeld]. I had my first baby, Frieda, in 1937. The police told villagers that anyone who received packages from Germany were suspect, and they were automatically taken from their village. My mother got care packages in 1933 from her brothers. That was what we called hunger years because we did not receive any rain. Many people died from hunger that year. On April 20, 1939, I gave birth to Heinrich.

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World War II began in 1941. In that same year my twins, Karl and Fred, were born. In June, the war began with Germany and Russia. The Russians sent many Germans who lived in the Ukraine to Siberia including men, women and children. My two brothers and a sister were sent. After they sent my family away, I never knew what the Russians did with them until decades later. They sent my parents October 3rd, and they pushed us up to October 7th.We could not get away because the Germans were getting closer; they were in Mariupol. We traveled in a wagon with the Gypsies to escape the Russians. My husband was on one wagon with Frieda and Heinrich, and I was on another wagon with my twins. Our wagon wheel broke on the journey to the train station, so we became estranged from my husband and my other children. An [officer] in the Russian Army dressed in a general’s uniform came by in an automobile and stopped to ask, “Why are you sitting by this river?” Olga Seebert could speak Russian. Angrily, she said, “The children are freezing. If you want the children to be good pioneers for the state, they need food and a warm place to stay.” The general responded, “I am going to the city, and I will look for a room for all of you to stay overnight.” After a few hours he returned. This general took us to the city Korang to a Greek home. We slept there until the next morning when the general arrived with a wagon and horses. We could [then] travel to the train station. My husband was waiting on the road near the train station looking for us. At the same time Russian soldiers marched by. One soldier who knew my husband told him to take his family and hide because the German soldiers were on their way to Mariupol, close to the train station. Heinrich took us to hide in a field in holes made of mud brick. The Germans arrived and began bombing the train station in Korang. We stayed in the mud-brick holes overnight. We went back to the train station and found everything bombed.We found an empty house with only the walls and roof. My sister and her family, as well as my sisterin-law and her family, lived in this house for two weeks. After two weeks Heinrich, my children, and I went back to our home in Hohenfeld. The Germans had taken over our village.

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Unfortunately, one of my twin boys, Fred, became sick. Little Fred contracted pneumonia. Since he was not baptized, a friend of ours, Maria Wischman, helped me baptize Fred using the Baptismal Sacrament— Nottaüfe—from the Lutheran Hymnal. Fred was eleven months old when he passed away. Because we were German we could live in my home until February 5, 1943. During this time, I became pregnant with Gerhard. When the Germans lost the war [the battles in the Ukraine], we had to leave our home. We traveled by horses and covered wagons along with other people from other villages to safety. People were helpful because so many people were refugees. It was very cold. Mennonite villages in Halbstadt took us in, and we rested for a month. The German Army told them to take us in. It was difficult times and the Mennonites were very kind and helpful. After a month, the Germans came and gave us the order that we had to take the train to Poland to get away from the Russian War. We ended up in Lemberg,1 Poland. I gave birth to Gerhard in the nearby village, Kaltwasser, because women did not have babies in the German refugee camp. This camp was our home until July of 1944. Then my children and I took a train to Oberschlesien to live in another refugee camp while Heinrich stayed with the horses and wagons. He was told to take food and supplies to the German front lines. My children and I stayed seven months in the Oberschlesien camp.We had bunk beds and our home was between the beds. Over one thousand refugees lived in this camp. When the Russians came closer to our camp one night, we were sent to Prague, Czechoslovakia, by train. On our travel to Prague, we stopped at a train station in Dresden. At the Dresden train station, the Americans began bombing the city. We lived three days and three nights at this train station, moving from one track to another and running to the bunkers underground. At the end of three days, the city was bombed and devastated. Verschlagen! We were able to board a train to Prague. Before we left, I lost Karl at the train station, but soon found him.We spent one night in a school in Prague. The next day we boarded another train to Vernigarode. We lived in a castle; it was so crowded we were lying on a floor. Among people at this castle were refugees from Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.

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At the end of a month we were sent to Thüringen. We stayed at a refugee camp for women with young children.We stayed in a movie house. My sister and I, and my sister-in-law and friends, all lived on a balcony.The women with older children were sent to the German farmers to work. There were only elder men and some male teenagers, and women with children in this camp. We were going without food. My children were swollen from hunger, and I, weak without food, barely escaped starvation. One day I found cigarettes in my suitcase. I took them to a village and bartered for food.The farmers were smokers and they couldn’t buy any, so you traded cigarettes for food. I received little food, but enough to save us from perishing. In the camp I had one pound of bread for five days of breakfasts for five people. Lunch we ate potato soup, mostly broth, no potatoes. For supper we had flour soup that looked like a washing starch mixture. We had to stay alive. Our bunk beds were made of wood with thin mattresses; German mattresses were in three pieces. We all had lice on our heads. We cooked our clothes to get them clean. Bed bugs hurt us, too. After five months at the Thüringen camp, the American soldiers parachuted into our area, but prior to this the SS men wanted to blow up the whole camp with the people in it. Another soldier from Poland, but with German background, told us to be quiet and leave the camp with our children and go find a safe place to hide because the SS officer wanted to blow up the camp. So we dressed our kids and ran to the woods to hide. We put the children in bushes. In the morning we heard that only the bridges were blown up and the camp was still there, but the windows were all shattered. In the morning it began to rain and we all wanted to go back to the camp. I took my suitcase and walked back. Along the way Americans shot from the air with machine guns. I put my suitcase down and laid flat on the ground. I witnessed a little boy about six yards from me having his shoulder blown off. Many other people were injured from the shooting. We could not go back to the camp because it was filled with glass. We walked and found a house with a family living in it. We asked if we could sit on their porch because it was raining. In the morning we went back to the camp. The American soldiers came and introduced themselves to us and told us not to be afraid.

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One day my friend Frieda Vogelsang looked out a balcony window and screamed, “Oh, my God, Heinrich is coming.” My husband, Heinrich, had searched for us for three months on foot. His feet were all blistered from walking so far and so long: Heinrich had walked to Thüringen and found us in the camp. I never thought he would be able to find us. I felt God answered my prayers. I prayed without ceasing. We learned one week after Heinrich found us that the Russians were planning to seize Thüringen. We did not want to surrender to the Russians, so Heinrich built a hand wagon. We walked out in the middle of the night—walking a whole day and night to Bavaria.We met a farmer, and he needed some help on his farm. They gave us one room with three beds for four children and Heinrich and me. We worked on the farm while the children went to school. We awoke at 5 AM to milk cows and feed animals. The rest of the day we worked in the fields making hay, picking beets, earning our keep. We found out that many friends and relatives from our village were located in Württenberg, Züttlingen. They worked for a Graf—a Count. We joined our friends and relatives, but we did not have any place to live, so we made room in an old and crowded Government Army barracks. We made our own beds from boards and put straw in them for our cushion. We built a stove from bricks where we could cook and bake. We stayed in the barracks for seven years and Heinrich worked for the Graf for two years. Afterwards, Heinrich worked in the salt mine where he received more pay to help our family. I worked a year longer for the Graf until I became pregnant. I gave birth to Gertrud on January 14, 1950. Since we could not make a home in Germany, we had no future. Many were planning to travel to the United States. Heinrich decided to apply for a visa for our family to attempt the journey.We waited three years to receive the visa. The Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church in Germany worked together to find a sponsor for us to emigrate. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Harney in West Chester, Pennsylvania, sponsored our family. We had to promise to stay with them for one year because the Harneys were responsible for us. When we left Germany we traveled to Bremen May 12, 1952, and boarded The General Harold Taylor Ship. On May 24, 1952, we arrived in a

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New York harbor. After successfully passing through customs, we boarded a train to Philadelphia. The conductor had to tell us when to get off the train because we did not know the English language. On that Saturday Mr. Harney took my husband and the boys in one car, and Mrs. Harney took the girls and me in another car. They had everything prepared for us—beds made and food in the cupboards. We were so tired. In the morning when we got up, I went outside and I started crying. After that Frieda came down and we were sitting on the hill. We couldn’t speak English and couldn’t go anywhere. After that my husband came down and he said, “Why are you crying? You don’t know what to expect from America.” The Harneys took us to the farm and showed us everything and told my husband what he would have to do. They bought us seeds right away, and then we started planting a garden.We planted it like in Germany with beds, and you [could] walk in between them. We had lettuce, onions, beans, cucumbers and lots more. They took us to the Lutheran church in West Chester.When church was over, there were a lot of German people in the congregation who could speak German, and they came and greeted us. Then we started to feel happier already. After two weeks a retired teacher came three days a week to teach. The children learned the English, writing and speaking for the whole summer. The Harneys were good people. There are not many people to find anymore like them. The children learned fast. When school started in September, they were ready. I learned English in church reading the Epistle and the Gospel. I’ve been a member of Calvary Lutheran Church for forty-three-years. I was only five years here when I became a citizen. My husband couldn’t make it because he could not learn English and write it. He said, “I don’t mind, and I am not going to try again. I can live in the United States just as good as anywhere else, if I don’t do anything bad.” In 1983, we learned that my husband had leukemia. After five years he passed away. I still live in my own home. In 1990, I received a letter from my oldest brother and his wife Alwina explaining that they moved from Siberia to Germany. Beginning in 1941, Karl was in a prison in Siberia. After ten years, he was freed; when

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he became free, he searched for his family and found only his wife—after ten years! As soon as I heard from my brother in 1990, I made plans to fly over to see him. My son, Henry, traveled with me. Karl looked just like my father. When I visited him, he told me all about living in Siberia as a Russian prisoner. Karl had to build roads and push a wheelbarrow full of stones day after day. He received little food and he always felt weak. My sister-in-law (Alwina) explained to me how my parents died. They existed in a wooded area where the land was very sandy, and the three of them even traded some of their clothes for food. My parents, already old, could not survive. No one received much food, and my parents finally passed away from lack of nourishment and exposure to the environment. Alwina and my niece, Elisabeht’s daughter, made a shallow grave burying their bodies in the sand. Sometimes people ate the dead in order to stay alive.

NOTES 1. Lwow Lvov and Martin Gilbert. The Dent Atlas of the Holocaust, 2nd ed. (London: Orion Publishing Group, 1993), 266.

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Granddaughter Song Laura Hope-Gill Grace Hope-Gill, my paternal grandmother, grew up in Manila. Her father was in the Royal Navy. She met my grandfather in Hong Kong, where he was a physician for the mines. When the Japanese invaded China, my grandfather told her to go back to Britain, but she couldn’t imagine traveling alone with their baby and toddler sons, or leaving him. They ended up in a prison camp near Manchuria for three years. My psyche is heavily intertwined with my grandmother’s, as I was the one she told her stories to, after a life of silence, as she was dying. Only 11 percent of US history books mentioned the prison camps in China until recently. I asked about the camps in high school as we concluded our World War II unit and my teacher told me there weren’t any. Denied a chance to educate myself—faced with Grace’s silence and the textbooks—the prison camp got suppressed into my deepest consciousness. Writing about it, I try to loosen its hold while setting her stories free.

I inherited PTSD the way some kids inherit money. I inherited flashbacks to a gun held to my head, a prison camp. I inherited knowledge of the silk and string of parachutes that arrive too late. I inherited the weight of a mushroom cloud. I am the granddaughter of the rising sun and the daughter of the kite my father flew. Don’t touch me. I’m an electric fence. When you ask me who I am, I am the Courtyard of the Happy Way. I’m the nightmares of the stolen son. I am the black market girl who waits outside the hospital. I am the comfort women of Tianjin. When you ask me what I want I say I want the golden dirt to be fragrant again.

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I want the grass to grow green where we have trampled it these three winters. I have seen each morning our children lined up to be shot. I’ve tried to forget how to kiss them goodnight. Ask me if I am the sum of my memory and I will say I hold the jade boat my grandfather gave my grandmother at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong one week after they met and I am still the one who carved it to seal the promise of my beginning. I am the Jewish girls who lived with them in Swatow. I vanish beyond the pages of a letter. Ask me what I want I will tell you the cess pool has grown full and I am the one this month who cleans it. I am the parts of my sum. I steal branches from trees I am forbidden to touch. I keep my children alive. I am the friend of the runner whose body lies by the white Moon Gate. I’m the white cat that sits there. You once made me out of a broken mirror. When I died, I struck your window. It was how I closed your throat. Like this, I am the granddaughter of ash, the great granddaughter of a bright light over the pueblos. See me in the broken black pottery of the families that left. I am the child of cancer and sudden disappearances. Call me the ghost daughter. I was never really born. I am excrement of a history my history books never spoke. I am the borrowed time they could not return. I am big boy and little brother. I am the acid thrown in the eyes, I am the run over pet cat. Code of silence, thief, excommunicant, refugee, I am Manhattan and I am the project. I am not my own woman. I am the decision one man makes and millions die for.

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I am the millions dead so I can live. I am my own 1,000 cranes, each one trapped inside my body. Spell my name backwards. I am not flown. I am forever reaching homeward to the ashes of white mourning. I am rice wine and the bell the servants answer in Karachi. I am the tiger stretched on the floor. In Manila you helped me escape from the hospital and I gambled with your money. I am what was left of me when they set us free into a world we’d forgotten how to live in. I am the wood the children gathered and placed inside the oven of our house. I am what’s left of the war. Go ahead. I was starving. It was me. I brought the parachutes lifeless to the ground.

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War Is Never Done! Barbara-Helen Hill Our Mohawk traditions teach us to do things today keeping in mind the okonsa: se tahonni—“new faces coming forward.” I guess others would say “keeping in mind the next seven generations.” Bob Antone, Diane Hill, and Bryan A. Myers, in their self-published 1986 book, The Power Within People, defi ne ethnostress as “the disruption of the joyful feelings of being a Native person. It is the disruption of the beliefs we carry that tell us about our place in the world.” To me, the connection of war (all kinds) to the trauma and the generational pain that our Indigenous people have experienced, and continue to experience, results in ethnostress. I have studied and worked in the field of alcoholism, dysfunctional families, abuses, and recovery for a long time. In Ontario, Canada, for the most part, where I worked in an alcohol/drug prevention office on Six Nations, and also worked for Medical Services Branch of Health and Welfare Canada as the liaison between the federal government’s prevention program and the sixteen territories/reservations in Southern Ontario. And I was a treatment director in a Native treatment center in Thunder Bay, Northern Ontario, and New Credit Reserve in Southern Ontario, before starting my own business, and then returning to college. During all this time, I saw behaviors in our families as well as other Native families that resulted, I believe, from wars, the residential school systems, and the browbeating of the churches. Behaviors that are all reflective of the generational trauma that we see coming down from those wars and the churches’ influence. Now don’t get me wrong. I do believe that Christ’s teachings are similar to the teachings of our leaders—our Native spirituality. As I wrote in my book on healing the trauma of colonization: “The trauma of ‘churchianity’ and government control resulted in frozen groups of people without trust in themselves, let alone others. I use the word churchianity

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because it is not necessarily Christian teachings that are wrong, rather, the church’s interpretation that has destroyed our people.”1 These are my profound beliefs. My dad, my uncle, and my aunt were in WWII; all three joined the Canadian Air Force. Women were given jobs as secretaries or nurses. “For the men,” my Uncle Bill told me,“there were two streams—radio operator school or gunnery school.” Dad chose the gunnery school and my uncle chose the radio school. My dad was sent overseas as a Buck Sergeant and during his tour was commissioned as a pilot officer—a rank equal to that of lieutenant. He served as a tail-gunner with the 158th Squadron, 4th Heavy Bomber Group RAF, experiencing many freezing cold and lonely nights in the tail of a Lancaster bomber; nights that were interspersed with stabbing searchlights and explosions of flak. In 2002, The Veteran’s Pow Wow of Allegheny, New York, honored him. One of the veterans, Bert Anderson, painted his portrait and told us how proud they all were of my dad because he was one of the few Indians who had made officer. My Aunt Ethel took training in Ottawa and was stationed in Hagersville, Jarvis, and Trenton as a secretary. Hagersville and Jarvis are little towns not far from Six Nations and no longer are bases, whereas Trenton is still an air base. My Uncle Bill attended wireless school in Winnipeg, and then was stationed in Tofino, British Columbia, where he was on a tugboat that was used as a radio station. He was then sent to Torbay, Newfoundland, where one of his jobs was to fly out over the ocean looking for submarines. Newfoundland was not part of Canada at that time, so he was considered as having served overseas. He also served for a while in Toronto at another base, and that is where he contracted scarlet fever. I think the training that soldiers of any era have to endure—resulting in people being demeaned and belittled to the point of knocking out their emotions—has helped to produce the dysfunction of many families today. I do not recall my dad being able to cry in grief unless he was drinking. When his mother died, he sat in the garage drinking, sending us to a hotel for a beer. I followed his request and didn’t question out loud the insanity of this. I see this behavior in many of our people yet today, no grieving unless there is drinking. I, too, used to be this way. God/Creator didn’t mean for us to be stoic or show no feelings, but gave us tears for a reason.

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The only difference between war and residential schools that were set up to “kill the Indian and save the man” is the use of guns. Richard Henry Pratt, an ex-army man, had a great vision that the residential school would make men out of the “pagan, heathen, savage red man.” Based on his training in the Army and puritanical religious beliefs, his first residential school in Florida set the precedent for the schools that continued here in Canada until the late 1970s; schools that have literally “screwed” up families. We are still dealing with the fallout. From the website www.wordsasweapons.com/indianschool.htm and an article called “On Sacred Ground” by Stephanie Anderson we read: Captain Pratt’s dream “Convert him in all ways but color into a white man, and, in fact, the Indian would be exterminated, but humanely, and as beneficiary of the greatest gift at the command of the white man— his own civilization.” —Characterization of Carlisle Indian School founder R. H. Pratt’s philosophy by historian Robert H. Utley, 1979

Part of that army training in boarding schools was the beating of young Indian girls and boys if they spoke their language, dared step out of line, or didn’t follow the belief system set down by the schools’ administrators and teachers. The heads of the schools were priests and nuns in the mostly Catholic schools of the East Coast and Quebec. There were teachers and ministers and ex-army people in other schools. Some of the teachers have apologized because they thought they were doing a good thing; they saw nothing wrong in trying to teach the students how to read and write. They either were unaware of the abuse or chose to ignore it for any number of reasons. I viewed a television special on Harvard, the elitist school that was originally set up to train the “good little Indian boys and girls,” or the “bad little Indian boys and girls,” however they were viewed at the time. Harvard was instituted to train the domestic and agricultural people who would work for the rich and powerful. Well, the rich and powerful saw

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the school and wanted the education for their offspring and started paying substantially for the education of their children. Result? The school administrators saw the opportunity to make money, took it, and the education was refined to where the graduates became the rich and powerful with a higher education. These then became the people who hired the Indians and blacks to do their manual labor and keep their children and houses clean. Harvard changed. Indians were no longer educated there because Indians and Blacks are not smart enough to go to school to get an education, don’t you know? Obviously there is a bit of anger and sarcasm here, and I don’t mind feeling that anger right now because the same old ideas and the same old thought patterns are still going on these many years later. Our people are still at war: a war that started with the coming of the “visitors” and continues to this day.War never ends when you are an “other.” An “other” is what one compares one’s self to. Any person who judges one’s self better than another is looking down their noses at an “other.” Indians and poor whites and blacks and Hispanics and Puerto Ricans and, and, and, and, etc. White Snake Coils—A Prophecy white snake coils slithers and grows as it consumes every person until there is nothing left but colorless faces like walking puppets red bodies in white skin suits spewing rhetoric they disbelieve making promises they can’t keep like generations of Clintons & Patakis as our own are selling the nations

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Minister of the Environment seen lunching with Brookhaven Labs snakeskin boots tap dance around to strike a deal then united jaws swallow ecosystems ethnic ghettoes— Reservations China town, Little Italy, Little Greece, once more the snake slithers and tongue darts to crush and devour hope, spirit where soap opera and dreaming are the center of life with elders ignored and children cast aside for want of drugs and booze, and money is spent for bingos and off track betting focus on immigration language second to hatred officers spit on those who are different “spic,” “packie,” “wasp,” and “honky” everyday, sounds like diesel engines, and luggage carts populists parties promote kindness darting tongues poison twisting words and promises

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recoiling in pain saying nothing lest they lose a vote or cast disfavor on a party candidate white snake crawls growing larger, more hungry devouring everything with greed, fear and anger until all is gone and the eagle swoops carrying it to far distant shores while survivors lie in wonder at a land with no more strife only empty shells and Withered skins lie among dying vegetation

or

white snake crawls growing larger, more hungry until it turns to see the world at the end of its tail and jaws unhinge to open wider a mouth to devour and all is gone

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Ethnostress, as stated earlier, is the disruption of the joy of being a Native person. The resulting influences are the lateral violence and internalized racism that affects us all. “Internalized racism carries the belief that the Caucasian race is superior to the Native race, or that certain Natives are superior to another group of their same race. There exists hostility between people of the same race. In other words, the belief that some or many Natives have is that the Native race is inferior to the whites or the dominant culture.”2 People in our communities are often at war with each other over their powerlessness when it comes to the high unemployment or the lack of services. There are also the problems that are results of ethnostress and internalized racism when a person dies from drug overdose, and the family members are angry at the person for dying instead of looking at why the deceased needed to turn to drugs in the first place, as well as where the drugs were coming from. What makes our people so spiritually bankrupt that they would choose to sell drugs and alcohol? I heard a story from an elder in our community: An old man and a young child were standing at the side of a swift moving river. There were all kinds of people floating in the river and the little guy wanted to do something. He kept struggling to try and pull the people out but he was too little and there were too many. He turned to the old man, who stood there looking, and asked why he didn’t help get them out. The old man looked away from the people struggling in the river and said to the little boy, ‘Maybe we should go up river and fi nd out why they are falling in.’ Maybe we should go back to look inside our communities and see why our people are turning to the man-made support systems instead of turning to the Creator. What is causing our people to reach for the drugs and alcohol, the food and the gambling? What is causing our young people to die from heart attacks and diabetes? Why are there so many people in our communities having ramps being built on their homes at such a young age? A man in his late fifties had a ramp built on his house because he believed he would eventually have to be in a wheelchair—not coming

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home from war overseas—but from the amputation he expected to have from his diabetes. Residential school survivors and their descendents have been battling the results of ethnostress and warlike trauma numerous years. My great-grandmother and my great-uncles were in residential school. My dad returned from being overseas in World War II. I’m not sure if it was the result of one or all of the above that caused him to turn into (my opinion) an alcoholic. Oh, he was a functioning alcoholic and worked as a high steel ironworker and made good money, but he was also a man who raged, and, as I stated earlier, didn’t show his feelings until he was drinking. He was a most loving father who wasn’t able to tell me how he felt until he was drinking. His feelings were frozen. My aunt had frozen feelings (again, my opinion), and while she had a successful career as a secretary at many good jobs, she suffered later in life with arthritis and cancer. Arthritis, according to Louise L. Hay in Heal Your Body, is “feeling unloved, criticism, resentment.” Auntie never got married or had any children. I often wondered why. I did ask one time when I was very young and received a cryptic answer that caused more questions I was too scared to ask. Now, later in life, I wonder if it was the war and the training she endured as time served in the Air Force, or was it the generational trauma of the residential school system that was handed down? In all probability, it was both. War and residential schools have contributed to eating disorders, alcoholism, and drug abuse, and the trauma of these has been with our people for generations. And even though we don’t all go to war, there is the generational trauma. “The Iroquois left the Mohawk valley in 1794 in front of a massive famine. From 1514–1780 we lost 90 percent of our population to diseases and we started to adopt to build up our population. In the eighteen hundreds the first epidemic of measles and small pox combination ran through our villages. In 1850 a second epidemic came through—it was from TB. From 1920 through 1935 another TB epidemic went through our villages.”3 Today, we know that those smallpox and measles epidemics were acts of warfare pushed on us by greedy Europeans wanting our land. War is conflict, fighting, hostilities, and battles, so how many can say

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that this isn’t going on in our communities? How many people in any part of the world can truthfully say that they are not living in some kind of battle zone? “In reality, by the time of the American Revolution, the people of the Haudenosaunee had over 150 years of intermittent warfare. From 1784–1838 most of the Haudenosaunee territory was taken under fraudulent treaty or treaties obtained by means of coercion.The Haudenosaunee, more commonly known as the Iroquois confederacy, are an ancient people of North America. Our tradition states that our people originated in the northeastern woodlands of North America. There are no stories within the tradition concerning migration across frozen lands to the area we occupy.”4 Our communities have succumbed to apathy and the response patterns of hopelessness and powerlessness. Conditions that surface in the communities today such as suicide, alcoholism, inhalant abuse, gambling, and other forms of abuse are the symptoms of the much deeper underlying problems. Ethnostress, lateral violence, codependency, addictions, and abuses—all of these come from the oppression and trauma inflicted on our people from the wars and the boarding schools. War not only affects the people on the battlefields, it also affects the people at home, waiting. It affects those who are getting ready to go to war, and it affects the children and grandchildren for generations of those families who have shut off their feelings in order to kill, in order to stay alive. No one is saved from war. Boarding schools did the same thing. The people who were taken to the boarding schools were abused, stripped, humiliated, and traumatized under the guise of making them “better” by beating the “Indian” out of them. They were taken from their cultures, languages, and traditions of their families and placed in foreign places. They learned to speak a different language. When they returned to their homes—if they were allowed to return—they found that their families were still speaking the original language, but were now on subsistence and drinking—mostly from the pain of losing their children. The communication gap began as the young and old could not understand each other. Healthy traditional foods were no longer being served because the government was forcing them to use

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the nonnative foods—white flour and white sugar. Traditional meats were no available because the original hunting and trapping grounds were being taken, or the people were forbidden to hunt and trap because the animals were being slaughtered for the pelts. White flour and white sugar are not the traditional foods of our people but more or less are poison, which caused the beginning of the inherited diseases of obesity and diabetes, bringing on early deaths. Why use guns in a war when it is easier to use unhealthy foreign foods? “Haudenosaunee has over a period of 375 years met every definition of an oppressed nation. It has been subjected to raids of extermination from France, England, and the United States. Its people have been driven from their lands, impoverished, and persecuted for their Haudenosaunee customs.”5 Eradicate the Indians or assimilate, or integrate, or, or, or… genocide is all the same. Whether it is war—battles with guns and ammunition or boarding schools—the result is the same—generational trauma. Our coming generations deserve a better legacy; so how can we assure this? We must learn from the mistakes and heal the pains. We must return to traditional ways. The old ones in our communities can remember that at one time a ceremony was performed for those going to war, and a welcome home ceremony performed for those returning from war. I know for a fact that neither was done for my dad, uncle, or aunt. I believe those ceremonies were eradicated by the boarding schools and the “churchianity” that infected our communities. What is the greatest thing that could happen to this world besides the elimination of wars? One great happening would be to honor the veterans returning from those wars, as well as residential school survivors. Another would be to teach those soldiers, the survivors, and their families how to grieve for their losses and heal their pains. And lastly, but definitely of the same importance, would be to give okonsa: se tahonni—“new faces coming towards us”—a world where they are able to enjoy the gifts of the Creator, tears and love.

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NOTES 1. Barbara-Helen Hill, Shaking the Rattle Healing the Trauma of Colonization, www.instabookpublisher.com/tienda/index.php/cPath/5/sort/2a/page/2, InstaBook Canada. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid.

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A Fragile Being Diana Festa A few years ago at the beach in Connecticut, I absentmindedly scraped my name on the wet sand, and then I found myself adding his name, Benedetto—an impressive name for the young girl I was when I met him. Those were other times and other places. Writing our names on the sand was the silent game of love we played. He joined the Resistance and was killed during World War II. Not the wild type, he was very thin, his face beagle eyed and sad, sadness linked to disquiet. I wondered what was there beyond the sweet smile, the slight tremble in his voice. Strange I should think of him, gone years ago to France, then to war. He was so thin. I wonder about him in uniform, the space between skin and cloth, cloth swaying and tugging. He ended as many do, his face in the mud, pushed by the noonday fiend. They told me he died in the mud, lay where cries are muffled and only heard by those who listen. I think of him lying there, his thoughts perhaps lingering on a future that could never happen, sun and sea, the idiom of hope. Next to him in the pine box, they placed pages of his poems.

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That is what mattered in the end, rhymes adhering to flesh in the mute eloquence of the dead.

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My Mother’s Tattoo Helen Epstein I grew up with a mother whose life was forever changed by a war that took place before I was born. A decade before she became my mother, Franci Rabinek was a stylish young European, barely nineteen when Hitler’s armies invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939. She lived in the center of Prague and worked as a dress designer in her mother’s fashion salon. When she wasn’t working, she liked to see American movies or dance the tango at tea dances she attended with her girlfriends. At the time, Prague was the capital of the most enlightened democracy in Europe, a multicultural city of Germans, Czechs, Austrians, Russians, and Jews.

Franci didn’t pay much attention to ethnicity or religion—including her own. She had been baptized at birth, thanks to a father who wanted to protect her from the anti-Semitism that had hampered his academic career, and she was educated in Prague’s French school. As a young couturiere, she was equally fluent discussing what her customers should wear in Czech, German and French. Every spring and fall, she accompanied her mother on regular trips to Berlin and Paris to see the fashion shows. While in Berlin in 1936, she later recalled paying little attention to Nazi demonstrations in the streets. “We were staying in a nice hotel,” she later said, in her sardonic, self-mocking voice. “I even went to the movies that already had signs that said ‘No Jews Allowed’ because I thought of myself as a Czech, not a Jew.” Her obliviousness to political reality began to come to an end in 1938, when England and France refused to honor their mutual defense treaties with Czechoslovakia after an infamous meeting with Hitler in Munich. She, her parents, and fiancé watched helplessly as the Czechoslovak Army—one of the best in Europe—was forced to demobilize or to face the German armies by itself.

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After the Czech lands became part of the Third Reich, my mother and her parents were defined as Jews by the Nazi regime. Until then, Franci had taken her civil rights for granted. Under Nazi law, she lost them and was forced to give up virtually everything that belonged to her. The fashion salon was signed over to a non-Jew through a legal form of theft called “aryanization.” She and her parents were forced to move to a remote part of the city. Franci was no longer permitted to attend the opera or the theater; she could no longer sit down in the tram or on a park bench. She was forced to give up her dog as well as a series of possessions, including the documents that proved who she was. Like all Jews, she was legally obliged to wear a yellow Jewish star prominently displayed on her clothing when she ventured outside her home. Of all the new laws, my mother recalled, she most hated wearing the Jewish star. She rode her bicycle to the salon that was now “owned” by a former employee, hiding the star under a large shoulder bag. But that was only Part 1 of my mother’s war: the gradual, insidious erosion of her sense of being a citizen, belonging to a republic just two years older than she herself. In 1942, as the war intensified into what we now call the Holocaust or, in Hebrew, the Shoah, Part 2 began for Franci. Jews began to be rounded up and deported from Prague to what rumor described as special camps. In August of 1942, following her now husband Joe, she and her parents were herded onto a train that transported them to Terezin, a former Czech military garrison in a town about an hour from Prague. On arrival, Franci was separated from her parents, who were “selected” for a deportation to the East, where they were murdered. The Nazis touted Terezin as a model city for the Jews, but, in fact, it was a way station where Jews were robbed of their remaining possessions, died of illness or starvation, and were sent to other camps. I began hearing parts of this history when I was two or three years old and asked what the blue numbers tattooed on Franci’s left forearm were. Tattoos in the 1950s were associated with Popeye the Sailor Man—not mothers—and I was evidently a curious child who noticed oddities and asked questions. At least, that’s what I was told by a mother who elaborated on her answer to my first question for the rest of her life. Many survivors of genocide—whether Armenian, Cambodian,

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Rwandan, Native American or Jewish—choose to be silent about their experience of violence but Franci was not one of them. She needed to talk and her audience of choice was me. Franci had been her mother’s business partner and best friend as well as her daughter. She expected to repeat that intensely intimate relationship with me and knowledge of her war was necessarily part of it. But even if she had not spoken of it in words, I would have grown up very much aware of the physical and psychological consequences of the Holocaust: her separation from the mother she never stopped missing; her back, damaged in a bombing; the many symptoms of what contemporary psychologists call post-traumatic stress. As a child, I was fascinated by my mother for many reasons: unlike my father, she spoke excellent English; she was interesting and smart; she ran a business in our home; she took me to concerts, theater, museums; she loved books and introduced me to some of my favorite authors. I listened carefully to her, absorbed much of her vocabulary and iconography.Words like koncentrak (concentration camp), appel (roll call), and kapo (boss) were part of my childhood language, as were certain key images. When I saw a factory smokestack, I thought crematorium.When I rode a crowded subway car in Manhattan, I could transform it into a crowded cattle car in Poland. When a man in uniform was hostile or inflexible, he became a Nazi in my mind. Far more subtle than learning language and images from my mother’s war were the survival skills that she communicated to me, some consciously, some un. She encouraged me to be self-sufficient, independent, and pragmatic, not to trust people too quickly, to test them but once they passed the test, to share with them everything I owned. To love someone had less to do with taking delight or pleasure in mere presence than with creating a bond of mutual protection and care. When I turned sixteen and expressed a wish to travel abroad, Franci thought it an excellent idea, and although I wasn’t yet having sex, went to her gynecologist and obtained for me a prescription for the thenrevolutionary birth control pill. She also took me to see the classic Italian war film Two Women, in which a mother and daughter are brutally raped by marauding soldiers.

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Her message was clear: if I was going to venture out into the world, I should know the dangers and be prepared. More generally, she brought me up to be unsentimental and observant. Her war had taught her to size up people and situations instantly, to lose no time thinking but to determine her course of action and act at once. Any action was preferable to hesitation. Introspection was as useless as wallowing in feeling. I was growing up as a middle-class American girl, with Walt Disney movies, Cherry Ames and Nancy Drew books, the Mickey Mouse Club and the tame family TV of the 1950s. Comparing my mother’s stories to what I saw and read, I became intensely protective and loyal to Franci. I knew my mother had a hard life that was made even harder by the fact that my father, a former swimming coach in Prague, spoke little English and was unemployed for most of my childhood. Like many refugee women, Franci was breadwinner, wife, and mother in those years when the cultural model was Betty Crocker. She was often exhausted, sometimes suicidal. I remember standing guard outside a locked door afraid she would kill herself and sometimes, at the end of her long workday, holding her in my arms as she wept. When I was twenty-six years old, in 1974, I was asked by one of my former journalism school professors to interview Franci for an oral history library. I was already a working journalist, and conducting intensive interviews was part of my skill set. I was intrigued by the project. I used a tape recorder and official questionnaire and would receive a transcript that a stranger had transcribed. I was aware by then that having a mother who had survived the Holocaust had affected me in many ways, some of them odd. For example, I had trouble retaining some of what she told me over and over again; in fact, even though I had stared at them all my life, I could not remember the numbers tattooed on her arm. Interviewing my mother as a journalist allowed me to hear her accounts of wartime experience in a way that had not been possible for me as a child in our kitchen or living room or even as a young adult. It was then that I first became aware of the nonverbal, psychological strategies I had learned from my mother. I think immediately of what mental health professionals call “splitting.”

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One of Franci’s most vivid descriptions in that first interview I conducted with her was of her arrival in Auschwitz in May of 1944, when she was tattooed and assigned to a barracks of about four hundred women: We weren’t there half an hour that a kapo comes in and starts laying down the rules…He had on high black shiny polished boots. And a marvelous black beret like the Italian Legionnaires, and a spotless white shirt in this filth. Where people looked like corpses, he looked like he was eating 24 hours a day, sunburned, perfectly shaven. And with a little whip, a riding whip. And he keeps saying you’re going to be shot if you hide a wedding ring, all these rules and regulations… It was lucky I was sitting way on top of a bunk because I was actually smiling. And then I looked at myself and I said, well you’re not really here. This is some kind of silly production: this is theater. I kept looking and then staring at the number [on my arm] and all of a sudden there were two numbers, two arms, and two elbows. And I blinked and there were still two arms and then I saw all of myself sitting there and said, “That’s funny. Now they’re two of us. I’m going to watch you.” And from then on, I was watching myself. I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even hungry… In my mother’s account, dissociating from both her body and the horrific conditions of Auschwitz prevented her from being overwhelmed by shock or paralyzed in a way that might have led to her death. She became like a camera, registering images without affect. My mother’s refusal to feel helped her make rational decisions.When she heard a rumor that Germany needed labor and that a group of young prisoners were to be selected to leave Auschwitz and work in factories, she was able to strategize:

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The Germans were going to pick out young people between fifteen and forty-five…we were not going to be gassed…we would actually leave Auschwitz alive. Sure enough the order came that there was going to be a selection. A few younger girls slipped in who looked mature. A few older women in their fifties dyed their hair with hypermangane from the sick bay and they all got the same reddish color hair by the time we got in front of that selection committee There we had to undress completely naked, clothes over the left arm. We had to walk up to Dr. Menegele, who was the top SS medical officer, who had the power of life and death over the whole camp.We stood there for hours and hours in line; of course it took the whole day. I was watching the whole thing and I noticed that the weak ones and the ones with glasses and the ones that looked old were returned to one side, and the other ones were sent to a table where the numbers were written down. And that obviously was the better side, whatever it meant. So by the time I got to him I got a little worried because I had a scar from an appendectomy and he didn’t like people with scars. You had to announce your name, your age, and your profession. So by the time I got to him—and I was listening to what went on before me—it turned out that out of these thousands of women every other one was a dressmaker all of a sudden. So I said, well, that’s not original enough and you have a scar from an appendectomy on top of it. So by the time I got to him, I had made up my mind when he asked me about profession I said “electrician.” That stopped him dead in his tracks. And he says, “You’re kidding.” And I say, “No, Hauptsturmführer, I’m an electrician.” He said, “You mean you can install wires and things like that?” I said, “Yes sir.” So he said, “Over there!” I knew that for the moment I did all I could. I didn’t worry too much about the electrician because I figured God knows where they’re going to send us and

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nobody’s ever going to find out that I got through this by claiming to be an electrician…my father was an electrical engineer.Why shouldn’t I know something about electricity? I know a little bit…and three days later we left. We actually left in a cattle car—not one hundred in a car—but only about fifty so we could lie down and sit down and we were singing and screaming. We were drunk with surprise and happiness that we actually left Auschwitz alive and on our own two feet.You want me to go on? You want me to go on: that was, I think in retrospect, always the crux of the matter. Yes, I said, as her interviewer. Yes and no, I felt as her daughter. So often, I felt unable to tell her not to go on, although I wished she would stop. My father, who had undergone the same war, preferred to share joy. Simple sunshine could make him happy, as could a whiff of fresh air. It’s difficult to remember anything about my mother that was not tainted by the war as her body was tainted by her tattoo. I was proud of Franci, awed by her courage and her brains. But another part of me wished for a mother who laughed, had milk and cookies waiting after school; who listened to jokes and chatter and complaints; who could waste time. Over the years, friends have envied me for growing up with a feminist model: a woman who managed to have a long marriage, three children, and a career. Franci certainly modeled how professional discipline can center a life; provide not only an identity and source of self-respect but ongoing creative as well as monetary rewards. Long before working women were glorified by American culture, she disputed the endings of Hollywood movies and fairy tales. A girl had to be awake not asleep, self-reliant not dependent, and not waiting passively for anyone to save her—let alone some wandering prince. Do I have a favorite memory of my mother that doesn’t involve her war past? I would like to be able to remember something pleasurable or light-hearted or tender, but it’s hard to find a recollection that is not tainted by war. Perhaps the closest is her celebration of birthdays. The evening before the actual date, she would cook a dinner that included

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my favorite foods and lay out the presents she had elicited my wishes for. Like everything else she did, her preparations were serious and thought through—and profoundly linked to her awareness of loss, life, anniversaries, and gratitude for occasions to celebrate. Franci used to say the war was her “university.” She never went to college and I think she meant that the war educated her and made her a mature human being. Her experiences in it brought her face to face with good and evil, life and death, coercion and the possibilities of choice. It made the abstract question of human character a concrete reality. It forced her to abandon the superficiality in which she lived before the war. My mother wished to pass on what she had learned to me and her style of parenting made me different from my friends. What exactly did I learn from her? A mistrust of all ideology. An almost automatic identification with victims, disdain for bystanders, and opposition to oppressors. A kind of intensity and seriousness about life that would later cause some of my friends to say, “Helen, could you lighten up!” As I get older—I’m nearly sixty now—I’ve watched popular culture around the world redefine its understanding of war survivors like my mother.When she arrived in New York City from Prague in 1948, she was viewed as a Holocaust “victim.” But in the years since then, survival has become idealized as a triumphal process by American culture. The notion of victim that connotes someone who “has been harmed” has been replaced by survivor, originally a person who “managed to stay alive” but now closer to a hero, a proactive person who is admired for great courage or extraordinary gifts that have enabled him or her to master a history of genocide or personal trauma or natural disaster or disease. If you google the word survivor you get 33 million hits, including a popular television show. Growing up with my mother’s tattoo taught me to admire women who have overcome calamity, to value experience and mistrust naiveté and easy answers.The skills I learned from her were invaluable but I didn’t find her life enviable. Unlike any other woman I knew, she never relaxed. She often seemed robotic, moving mechanically and without pleasure. I can’t remember her being playful or whimsical or frivolous. Or simply happy. Dark, intense, driven, she was sitting at her sewing machine, still working at the age of sixty-nine—“I don’t know what else I’d do with myself,” she

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had written to a former “colleague” from koncentrak—when a blood vessel burst in her brain. Franci would have been a complicated mother even without Hitler and the Holocaust. But I will always wonder how her life and mine would have been different had she not been through a war.

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War’s Sorrow Visits Our Daughters and Sons Suzanne Zahrt Murphy My Great-Grandma Josephine had been taken from her Cherokee family in Independence, Missouri, and put into a convent at an early age. She was released around the age of eighteen, and had no trust for government offi ces. After all, there had been the promise of keeping the land, and the harsh removals. Josephine Bell Ross Anderson had told her daughter and granddaughter she been enrolled on the infamous Dawes Roll, but that the family land had been taken away. She knew one thing through and through: to be as self-suffi cient as possible meant survival. She became a midwife, hid money beneath her mattress, and said to her family, “I will never go to some GD reservation!” She raised chickens and made moonshine, which would always sell, in case of troubled times. She grew her own medicinal herbs, and sang beautiful songs in Cherokee to her granddaughter, my mother. But being Indian was never discussed. You didn’t tell it in those days; you had to forget it, keep it quiet.

My mother was young, gorgeous, and idealistic during the 1940s. Her high Cherokee cheekbones made people turn; her raven hair gleamed in the sun. She was beautiful but did not know her inner beauty. She had been partly raised by her Cherokee grandmother because her mother was always out looking for work. My mother lived with her Grandmother Josephine for at least three years before she returned to her mother, who was a mere fi fteen years older than she. As a child of a single mother, my mother was “seen and not heard.” She saw the benefits of being quiet and watchful. Grandmother Josie, who taught her how to survive, taught this to her. When Mother met Kent, she fell deeply in love. He was dark and handsome, and she agreed to marry him when he asked. She idolized him,

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the way a young girl might idolize a father. He told her what to wear and how to wear it, and she adorned him with her beautiful, bright presence. She has told me over and over that he was a good man and she wanted to spend her life with him. I have a single picture of the two of them, sitting side by side; she is wearing her hair like Betty Grable, and he is dressed in uniform. Then WWII opened up and took the lives of many, including Kent, who was a pilot. The plane went down over the sea, I think. I don’t know if his body was ever found. She mourned him, the way we do when we are young, when another person is everything to us, when we haven’t yet learned to trust in our own ability to find resources. She mourned him and fell down. But Grandmother Josie told her to get up, to stand tall and confident. And so she did, to carry on. When she got up, she joined the WAVES and wore her Navy uniform proudly. She met my father there, among the blue wool uniforms and the polished black shoes. I have a photo of my mother and father, smiling into each other’s eyes. Her beautiful hair is swept back in simple barrettes, and his dark brows are raised in happiness. Some have said he was of Ojibwe descent, on his mother’s side. But Indian heritage was not discussed in those days, either. Over the years, during her struggle with their marriage, sometimes I would hear my mother talk of “the first one, Kent,” and all the dreams that they had shared. I felt jealous of this, because I would not have been born if he had lived. Because I loved her, I wanted her to be happy, even if that had meant my nonexistence. My mother had learned from Grandmother Josie to keep her suffering within; one did not suffer loudly. One had washing, cooking, and children to care for. And one never knew who could come after one, or another member of the family. My mother was often disappointed during the years she was married to my father, and I felt her sorrow. War-caused sorrow. Had the first one, Kent, lived, she would not have had me, and maybe she would have had other disappointments, but the war took that possibility away from her. As a daughter, I carried guilt for her loss. I never knew what to do with that guilt, but it stayed within me.

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And then, the Vietnam War exploded into our reality and I protested, and she did not understand. Although she and my father had met during war, she lost someone whose presence could have changed her life. And although she loved my dad, she never got over the first loss. My parents were divorced when I was fourteen. My father passed to spirit in 1985, when Halley’s Comet came through again. (It had come through in 1910, the year he was born.) Many years later, when my mother was alone, she was able to buy a house at the age of seventy with her GI loan. She hadn’t known she could do this until then. When she died, a bugle was played, and the military gave her a three-gun salute. I cried; it was to honor her. And, war or not, military or not, she deserved to be honored. Even so, I think she would have rather spent her time with her true love, the first one, the one she missed all her life. Today I continue to protest war, for I have never seen how war helps anyone. I wish we still had the days when the Cherokee Peace cabinet was responsible. If war could not be prevented, the members of the White Peace Council removed themselves, so as not to be tainted by war. The Red Council began, taking over, until the war ended. In the old Cherokee way, the Beloved Woman was instrumental in the pivotal decisions. It was this woman—a woman known for her dignity, fairness, and empathy—who could overturn the votes of the councils. She did, indeed, have the last word. The early Cherokee knew that women are needed for balance. Would that we could have such a balancing influence today in all world councils. I have much to be thankful for, and much to wish for: that we find a way to make and keep peace, and that should include the wise thoughts of women; that we find a way to provide adequate healthcare to all; that there will be a cure for autism, so that my granddaughter’s parents and her grandparents may hear the beauty of her voice; that we continue to remember we must be greater than the way things appear, and carry that greatness within us.When we remember to do this, we always come closer to balance, harmony, and wholeness, truth, beauty, and holiness.

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La Scarlettina Alexandria Giardino This is an excerpt from a novel in progress, which combines historical fact with family fi ction. The novel takes place in northern California and Montana and exposes what happened to the Italian American community during the Second World War. The Italians who lived through that time often referred to it as la storia segreta—their secret story. The humiliation they suffered would not be shared by outsiders; it was yet another omerta, a secret in the form of a pact held among them. Italians were transformed by the war: once it ended, they abandoned many of their traditions in order to Americanize. It was as if they collectively proclaimed that never again would they be enemy outsiders. “La Scarlettina” is one woman’s story during that time.

According to Grace, the arrival of the elephant seals was not a sign. It was the beginning of an apocalypse. The world war that had erupted in early December 1941 quickly eviscerated the sardine industry in her hometown of Monterey, California. By the spring of 1942, only a gutted wharf remained. The cacophonous Italian and Japanese men who clamored about in rubber boots had disappeared. Their purse seiners no longer waddled into port in the early mornings, their nets taut with tiny silver fish. Only the triumphant cries of the seals punctuated the grim silence. The elephant seals, the sea’s ugly horses of the apocalypse, had emerged from the ocean, snorting and spraying snot as they reconquered the beaches where their ancestors had been born and where they could fi nally return to root and breed now that the miles of fishing nets had dwindled to nothing. Grace let go of the green hand-embroidered curtain she had been clenching in her fist and stepped back from her bedroom window. Only the seals and the sardines have it good now, she thought before she chided herself once again for wasting time staring at the mounds of seals covering the beach in front of her dockside apartment. Below her apartment was her

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seafood restaurant, which was now closed for business. The forced closure had been the most recent step in the abrupt transformation of her life: first the navy came to requisition all the fishermen’s boats, then the INS came to interrogate and detain her husband, and finally the seals came to reclaim their ancestral beaches. Get back to work, Grace admonished herself. She grabbed the hammer off the bed and kneeled to pry up the floorboards. Grace’s bony knees ground into the floor, her large, knuckly hands turned white with strain, and her thick red hair unfurled down her hunched back. After exhuming all the canning jars stashed beneath her matrimonial bed, she dipped them in paraffin and placed the sealed jars in a wooden crate. She put the crate alongside all her other crates, which contained all her other possessions. In the morning, which was February 24, the day Grace and all the other Italian enemy aliens had to evacuate military zones along the western seaboard, she drove through dense coastal fog into the distilled, cold sunlight of the San Joaquin Valley to the town of Brentwood, which was hemmed in by abandoned fruit orchards and rotting strawberry fields. She parked in front of the address the Department of Justice had assigned to her. Heather-brown dirt from the road curled up and enveloped her car. Her crates, stacked in the back of her Ford, creaked forward, then shifted backward against the seat’s cold black leather. Grace ducked her head slightly to get a good look out of the passenger-side window. She sat forward again, facing the gigantic wooden steering wheel, and dropped her head back onto her shoulders with a sigh. Her new home was nothing more than a half-timber shack, a shack that had chicken-coop wire mesh instead of plate-glass windows, a shack that probably used to house a Japanese strawberry picker.The shack, along with several others nearby, sat next to an endless field that was a riot of weeds. She hauled the crates, one heavy load at a time, into the shack and took stock of her new home. One wood table, two rough-hewn chairs, a twin-sized metal bed, a thin cotton mattress covered with fraying fabric. Huddled in one corner were a white-enamel cast-iron stove, icebox, and small sink, all pockmarked so that the surfaces were speckled black. Grace put her pink enemy alien’s passbook and her Italian passport on the wood

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table. She unpacked all the glass jars and carefully examined their wax seals for damage. After curfew, she dug into the frosty earth outside the shack’s back door and buried the jars. Fifty thousand eight hundred dollars, she thought as she later rubbed her arms with camphor. The next day, she cooked a huge pot of pasta, mixing it with the wild garlic and fennel that she collected from the rotting farmlands. The food simmering on her overburdened stove, Grace swung a heavy wool coat over her narrow shoulders and crisscrossed the outskirts of the tiny town of Brentwood. She strode past row after row of apple, peach, and olive orchards, tsking that none of the trees had been pruned for the winter and that they were growing out of unkempt, clotted earth. Grace knocked on the door of every shack she came upon. In some places, she found the old people from Pittsburgh, a town that had largely been settled by Grace’s fellow Napolitanos. She remembered the old people from her childhood; they all knew her mother well. The same scene replayed on numerous doorsteps: an old woman would hesitate to answer the knock at her door, then she would exclaim the Virgin’s name upon seeing Grace, then she would shake her head and say,“Ma! Can you believe what this government has done to us now?” Grace marveled at how the women all looked the same: their gray-hair spun tightly atop their round heads, their shoulders stooped, their enormous breasts resting on their bulging bellies, and at how they all got teary eyed at the sight of their old friend’s daughter, and at how they still blamed the malevolent US government for every woe that beset their lives, such as the Spanish flu epidemic that had struck twenty years before. On other doorsteps, Grace nodded politely and introduced herself. In these shacks lived the Sicilians from Martinez, which was the next town over from Pittsburgh. She told everyone that she had cooked good pasta and that for a mere quarter they could come to her house for a decent meal and some entertainment that evening. “Come,” she said, “and bring a chair and a plate and a fork.” A boisterous group, maybe fifty people, crowded into Grace’s shack. A tin can passed from hand to hand as people dropped in their quarters. “It was in your mother’s blood, too,” one old woman from Naples exclaimed when she arrived. “She used to make enough food to feed the whole Italian Army!” The woman’s cheeks were bright red from the exertion

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of having to drag her cane chair down the dusty road. “Ah, your poor mother,” the woman said to Grace, “She helped us have all our babies, you know. Momina knew how to handle babies! Poor Momina! She was never the same after you left. She missed you.Too bad she died so young!” Grace had stopped listening. To everyone’s surprise, Grace’s mother, Momina, had not protested when Grace, her favorite and her youngest daughter, left Pittsburgh soon after a miraculous recovery from scarlet fever. Instead, Momina, as a sendoff, had handed her daughter a porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary and said, “This is who saved your life when we all gave you up for dead.” For the past five months, Grace had been wracked with a disease that had killed everyone else it had touched in town. She was nearly seven months pregnant when the fever struck her and sent her into premature labor. Grace’s young, ambitious husband, Tano, couldn’t imagine raising the infant alone, and Momina already had her hands full with a brood of children and grandchildren. Momina, a pragmatic woman who knew everyone in the area because of her midwifery, proposed a solution: she and Tano would trade the baby for a share in a fishing boat, which was being offered to Tano as a gift in exchange for the baby by a Sicilian family in Martinez. The couple had lost three children to miscarriage and now, in their forties, they could not conceive again. The trade gave Tano a fresh start in Monterey, California, a town safely seven hours away from Pittsburgh and Martinez. When Grace recovered, her vision slightly impaired and her skin marred by red patches where she had scratched herself violently, Momina sent Tano a telegram. It read: “Come and take her away from here. She can never see that baby girl.” Before Tano came to reclaim his wife and take her to live in Monterey with him, Momina told Grace her baby had died at birth. She took Grace to pray above a modest tombstone marked “Angela Tessere Rapire.” The two women recited the Hail Mary above solid earth. There was no tiny coffin beneath their feet. One of the old Napolitano women at the dinner party stood up and announced over the clatter of dishes and silverware, “I’ll say grace.” She asked God for a quick end to the war and thanked Him for the company of old friends and family.Throughout the evening, people talked

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mostly about an American woman named Barbara who offered English and civics lessons on Saturdays at Brentwood High School.The old people said they planned to use their time wisely: they were going to study for the citizenship exam that they would take when this was all over and done with. Grace kept moving all around the room, pouring wine out of an enormous wicker-wrapped glass jug. When she finally sat to eat, Grace chose the company of two Sicilian men from Martinez. She knew they were fishing partners because of the way they sat in silence together. They wore identical wool cardigan sweaters and brown trousers and brown worn-out wingtips. “I need to send a letter to my husband,” she said to them. “Do you know anything about a camp in Missoula, Montana?” “You be careful, Mrs. Rapire,” one said. “Some people here are hysterical about this.” The other said, “One of our people is there too. Francesco Cardinali was arrested in December. He left behind a sickly wife and a daughter who live down the road now. They wouldn’t come to a dinner like this on account of Mrs. Cardinali’s illness. But you should try to talk to the daughter, Guistina. She’s a smart girl.” Across the room, a man who had one long bushy eyebrow that dashed across his forehead started singing, but people were already grabbing up their chairs. “It’s almost nine, we have to go now,” they said. Grace told the singer to carry on. “No one’s watching us that carefully,” she laughed. “Stay,” she coaxed, “stay and sing.” The singer’s eyes sparkled, but his wife pulled him off into the night. Grace swept and lay down in bed. She thought about her husband, living somewhere in a prison camp in the frozen north, landlocked for the first time in his life, like she was. Grace thought about how she missed the smell of the sea. In Brentwood she could taste only malty earth on the roof of her mouth. Tano, she imagined, would be staring at four walls right now, running his calloused hand through his wiry black hair, contemplating escape. Only when she received her own relocation orders five days ago had she received official notification of her husband’s whereabouts: Fort Missoula, Montana, in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The INS’s notification included strict

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guidelines for correspondence—“No more than twelve lines. All post will be censored.” When government agents had come for Tano one morning in early January, they stated no charges. They simply hustled his barrel-chested frame into the back of their black Oldsmobile and sped off. Later, agents came to interrogate Grace, and they told her that they knew her husband had supported Mussolini and had sent money to Italy for many years. Grace had laughed out loud when the agents said this. One agent, his crystalline blue eyes wide, told Grace she ought not be so nervy. Grace said, “Well, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. My husband hates Italy.” Grace, cold beneath four blankets and sleeping on a sagging twin mattress, mentally composed her first letter to Tano: “My dear Gaetano, I’m in a town called Brentwood, out in the valley. It’s where all the old people from Pittsburgh came to live. I’m being sentimental, I know, but I guess the war has made me act foolish in some ways. I brought all our canned fruit, so don’t worry about that. And I have already started a little restaurant business here to make some extra money. I think of you every day and dream of you every night. I cannot wait until I see you again. I know that might not be soon. Take care of yourself and eat well. Write to me soon to let me know how you are. I remain faithfully yours, Grace.” Soon after they had settled in Monterey, Grace and Tano built a restaurant business. Grace cooked for all those fishermen who worked throughout the night and needed a good meal before they set out in the evening. Tano, meanwhile, fished hard enough, never taking any seasonal breaks like the others sometimes did, that he bought out everyone else’s share on the boat for which he started as part owner, the very boat that brought him to Monterey in the first place. When he became sole owner of his prized boat, he rechristened it the Maria Angela. Sicilians, who dominated the Monterey wharf, accepted Tano, who was from Naples, because of his shrewd negotiations with the fishmongers and canneries and his wily ability to intimidate people with what appeared to be loosely controlled anger. As an ultimate gesture of their regard, the Sicilians elected Tano treasurer of the Sardine Fishermen’s Association. Every year, the association’s members voted on what to do with the

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balance of their good-and-welfare fund, and every year the men agreed to send the money to Italy. And every year, Tano objected to the idea of supporting people he believed didn’t deserve their hard-earned dollars. He took those good-and-welfare funds, rolled them into wads, and stashed them in canning jars beneath the floorboards of his bedroom. “One day soon,” he’d say to Grace, “we’re gonna live like we deserve. We’ve paid enough in this lifetime. We don’t owe anyone a dime.” No one ever suspected what Tano did. But Grace hated when he’d say that because it made her remember the burning sensation of the baby tearing through her vagina. She remembered that she could barely hear the echoing sounds of her own cries as if she were far away from her mother’s hands, which pulled the premature infant from her body. Grace would shake her head and say, “You’re right, Tano, we’ve paid enough. So why make it so we might have to pay even more one day?” Grace sat up in bed. It was too early to sleep, but not too late to bring food to her sickly neighbors. Grace lit a match, found a clean plate, and piled leftover pasta on it. She navigated the front steps with her feet as she held the plate steady in one hand and used both hands to clutch the shawl she had wrapped around her shoulders. The daughter answered the door. Grace spoke in a loud whisper, “Please take this food. How’s your mother?”The young woman beckoned Grace to come in. In the far corner on a table, a candle burned next to an open book. “It’s for my biology class,” she said when Grace asked. “They let me go to the local high school so I can graduate on time.” She spoke in a hushed whisper. Grace could see only the outlines of her cropped hair and her long face. They could both hear the mother’s hissing voice coming from the darkened hallway. Caterina had tied her housecoat firmly at her waist and was tottering toward the living room. She emerged in a halo of yellow light, harshly whispering, “We don’t need any handouts. Now go and don’t take any more risks with us.” The young woman went to her mother’s side and gripped her upper arm. “Get back in bed!” she snapped. Her angry tone reminded Grace of herself at that age, talking to her mother that way, caring for her mother

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that way. She understood. In the light of the candle that Caterina held in her hand, Grace could finally see the young woman, whom her mother called Guistina with a soft Sicilian accent on the G. Grace saw red hair. She saw that the girl was narrow shouldered and small breasted and that, even though she was a teenager, she was already much taller and more angular than her squat, busty mother. Grace could see that the girl had a haughty posture. “Shathu mia,” Grace heard herself say. Breath of mine. Mother and daughter went back down the hallway. Grace realized she was burning hot, and her legs felt tingly. She forced herself out into the cold night and began to stumble down the road. She was consumed by a single, impulsive thought: That girl is mine. She inhaled deeply and exhaled loudly. That girl is my breath. Her legs finally gave out on the front porch of her shack, and from there, she tried to rein in her wild, singular thought. Grace, a woman who prided herself on being Americanized and youthful and rational, thought the war was turning her into one of them; a deluded, old, old-fashioned woman. She put her head between her knees to fend off nausea. “My beloved Tano,” she started to rewrite, “I’m in Brentwood with all the old people and all our canned fruit. Tonight, the strangest thing happened to me. You know I don’t imagine things. I’m not like those superstitious women who believe anything and everything they see and think it’s all an omen. But tonight I saw something,Tano, that might be true. I think I saw our daughter. I saw a girl who looks and acts just like me. She is exactly like me! I know you are already thinking I’ve gone crazy. But I have to find out for sure who that girl is because I keep asking myself, what else can a mother do? Love, Grace.” Tano, suspected of being a Mussolini sympathizer and sending thousands of dollars to Italian veteran’s organizations since the end of the First World War, found himself imprisoned in a remote fort in Montana, awaiting a deportation hearing that threatened to return him to his native city of Naples, Italy—a place he hadn’t seen since he was a determined teenager who had set his sights on America—and a place he had no desire to ever lay eyes on again. Tano waited and waited for news from his wife. Now, he finally held his first letter. He sat erect in his bunk bed.The envelope had already been

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opened with a razor, so neat was the slice across the top of it. He admired her perfect script. He admired how she followed the rules. He read what she wrote only once. There was nothing to savor. With shaky hands, he put the letter back in the envelope. Tano lay down, closed his eyes, and wished he still believed in prayer. He knew he was fucked, though, and that circumstances had required him to place his future and fortune in Grace’s hands, and that there was nothing he or any of the saints or the Virgin or God could do about it now, now that she was going to discover what he had done, and knowing her, she would make him pay for it because Tano had made his deal: a baby for a share in a boat, the same boat that now cruised the Monterey coast, commanded by a young American sailor who was ignorant of the real value of the craft beneath his feet.

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How I Became an Evacuee Margaret Abruzzi One and a half million British children were evacuated to the countryside when war was declared on Germany in September of 1939. On May 2, 1945, evacuation was ended throughout the British Isles. Sadly, 38,000 children were unable to return to their homes. How could it be that these children were unclaimed, in effect, abandoned? A large part of the population was terribly poor, having just come through the Great Depression, and now faced homelessness and hunger; further impoverished by war, they simply got used to the absence of another mouth to feed. The government paid a stipend to foster parents for food and clothing. Many parents had been killed and of course couldn’t be traced, but others simply moved away and didn’t want to be tracked down to reclaim their children. During evacuation, some children had a miserable time, being treated like slaves; others were loved and treated well as I was. Yet another group of evacuees, especially those sent to Australia and New Zealand, were very happy with their new situation and preferred to stay with their foster parents. My father was stationed in Wales and it was decided I would be safer there. My mother had accompanied me, stayed for a few days, and then returned to London to work, without saying goodbye. I felt abandoned since nothing had been explained to me. At that time, it was felt that the less said, the better, and emotions were constantly tamped down. My parents came through the war okay; my mother stayed in London and my father finished his service and was demobbed (honorably discharged) at war’s end. However, London was in such a terrible mess (lack of schools, for example) that I stayed in Wales until I was seven years old (1946). I was fortunate to have found a home with May and Will Jones, loving substitute parents. I spent school summer breaks with them long after the war was over. Kidwelly in South Wales (Cydweli) is a place of great beauty never to be forgotten.

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I was born at a time when bombs howled out of the night sky, exploding like so many random volcanoes. During the Blitz, my parents kept me safe in a tiny top-floor apartment with a view of chimney pots poking into the gray smoky London skies. So far, three years into the war, our neighborhood of nondescript brick terraces in North London remained intact, unscathed. Across the road I could see a park with swings and roundabouts, but it was empty, no sound of children at play or the chatter of mothers sitting on the benches. They were evacuated to the countryside like Dad’s small brothers and sisters. Uncle William, ten years old, was so upset when they tried to pin a label on his coat he lashed out at the warden and smashed the window of the bus. • • •

Dad was in the Royal Air Force, stationed in South Wales. When he was gone, my mum became quietly sad. She spent hours looking into the grate of the coal fi re, forgetting to turn on the lights at dusk, forgetting me, but she cheered up when Dad was due home on leave. The day he was to arrive, I clambered onto a chair and stood with her at the window, our eyes fi xed on the street below. I was too impatient to sit still for long and wriggled down onto the floor. She saw him first, ran down the stairs, skirt floating, while I bumped down on my short legs and half slid the three flights to the front door. He swept us into his arms, held us close. His blue woolen uniform felt scratchy on my face. He gave Mum a long kiss, tousled my hair, and bounced me up the stairs. The next morning the dark circles around Dad’s pale blue eyes had almost disappeared. He took a long bath, singing away about the white cliffs of Dover. His fine yellow hair stuck out in every direction when he emerged. I sat with Mum at her dressing table, beside her on the satin upholstered bench. She sprayed perfume from her silk-tasseled bottle, gave me a puff too. Dad stood behind us and we all three stuck out our tongues at the mirror; Dad crossed his eyes to make us laugh. I put on my white ankle socks and black patent Mary Janes. Mum smoothed her skirt to cover her knees.

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“Right, my lovelies,” Dad almost sang, “put on your coats, we’re going to visit Nan and Granddad.” I rushed to climb the stairs of the double-decker, with Dad’s help, and sat up in the front seat, princess of all before me. We passed row upon row of identical terraced houses, each with an area, airy in the front, below street level. I peered down into these secret places as the bus swayed around curves. I saw bicycles, potted plants, birds in cages, even a parrot, and best yet, white rabbits. As we got closer to my grandparent’s house, I got up from my seat and stared at the bombed-out houses. Some were sliced in half like a dollhouse, different wallpaper for each room. I spied a toilet, chain dangling, and a bathtub teetering on the edge of an upstairs floor. The slight breeze in the damp air caught swirls of smoky dust and settled them gently on piles of broken bricks. Mum called for me to come and sit down properly. “Isn’t that Alfie Miller’s house?” said Dad. “It was.” She lowered her voice to almost a whisper. “I’m sorry, Bob, he passed away, wife and kiddies too.” “No,” he said. “No, no, not Pam and Alfie. We were in school together. And their kids?” Mum nodded her head. “Sorry, my love,” she said. Dad swallowed hard, then he shouted at me.“Come here this minute and sit down with us like your mother told you.” He gripped my hand as the bus trundled through the wasteland, some houses miraculously standing, others phantoms, empty spaces like missing teeth. That night, when I was supposed to be asleep, I heard Mum and Dad talking about the danger of living in London. Dad thought I should be somewhere safe in the country. “I don’t think so, Bob,” Mum said. “Not yet, Margaret is barely three, almost a baby. I can’t give her over to a stranger.” • • •

Our tiny living room was fi lled with laughter when Dad told jokes to his friends. The time came when he had to go back to war. He kissed Mum goodbye and she was crying. I heard the quick sharp slap of his boots on the linoleum as he sped down the stairs, the bang of the front

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door and the clap of the doorknocker on the rebound. Mum sniffled into her handkerchief as she watched his jaunty march down the road and around the corner. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry,” she said. “How would you like a toad in the hole?” An egg was a rare treat for breakfast; our ration was one a week. Mum tore a hole in the middle of a piece of bread and put it into the frying pan of sizzling lard, cooked it a bit, then broke an egg into the circle. She let it cook for a while then flipped it over. The bread was now a golden color and the egg in the middle looked like the sun. I felt much better. She brewed a pot of tea and made me hot cocoa. We sipped our steaming mugs and made a plan to keep busy so we wouldn’t miss Dad as much. “When does Dad come back? We’ll see him soon, won’t we?” “Right now, I’m thinking about a film we might like to see. The Gaumont is the place. It’s your favorite, with the fountains and the goldfish.” Apart from having to say goodbye to Dad, this was turning out to be an excellent day. We sat in the dark of the cinema. Mum folded up her coat so I could sit on top and see the screen over the bald-headed man in front. When the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lion roared, Mum made out she was the lion prepared to eat me. With each bellow of the lion she nuzzled into my neck. I giggled until the bald-headed man said, “Shush, quiet.” The newsreel showed marching troops, Germans bursting through more borders, and our soldiers shooting at their planes, dramatic white flashes against the night sky, a sweating gunner frantically slamming in shells. The screen flickered to a story about evacuees, labeled like parcels, smiling and waving as they were led onto a train, the narrator’s voice a deep baritone, serious but cheerful. We laughed at Abbott and Costello and were enchanted by Snow White. She had black hair like mine. When the Queen said, “Who is the fairest?” and later changed into a witch with a horrible red poisonous apple, I had to disappear under the seat, so Mum took me home. • • •

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The memory of this night is as vivid today as the reality of over sixty years ago. The up and down wail of the air raid sirens interrupt my dream. Mum tiptoes into my bedroom. She tries to wrap me in a blanket without waking me. I sit up, excited that I’ll be able to see Timmy, Miss Gay’s gray tabby. Miss Gay is our downstairs neighbor; we sit with her whenever there is a raid. Mum is her usual casual self, like it is the most normal thing in the world to be in the middle of a bombing raid. Tonight is different though. I hear a deeper rumble above, a more rapid cluster of explosions and the return fire, boom, boom, more urgent than usual. The bombers are right over us. If Dad were here he could tell us which kind. We are in Miss Gay’s apartment. She busies herself, adjusting the quivering gas lamps, making sure the blackout curtain is in place. Even though it’s midsummer, there’s a chill in the night air. My mother and Miss Gay chat sporadically of sad things over a pot of tea. I stretch out on the floor with a picture book of the Royal Family. Snatches of conversation sift downward. “A short life but a happy one.” “Not a mark on them; all sitting at the dinner table, the concussion you know.” Mum and Miss Gay seem oblivious to the booms and thumps in the darkness. It becomes quiet for an hour or more, measured by the clock on the mantelshelf. The air raid seems to be over and I close my book, ready to go upstairs. Timmy creeps toward me and sits purring by my side. I hold my breath and keep still. Until now he has always avoided me, clever cat. I slowly put out my hand to pet him and smooth his fur, soft as thistledown, my lightest touch. He purrs contentedly, paws tucked under his body. Timmy springs up, alert, bristling, his fur stands on end, eyes dark and wide. He bolts under the couch and shrinks against the skirting board. Teacups are carefully set down, sentences unfinished. A faint rumble grows louder. A monstrous plane is directly overhead, then a long shattering scream. An unbearable quiet smothers the room. A few seconds later, the very earth shudders, the floor shifts, windows rattle as they do in a gale force wind. We hear glass tinkling somewhere. We wait, eyes raised to the ceiling, where little pieces of white plaster sprinkle down onto a brightly polished mahogany table. Miss Gay’s face is pinched and white. I put my

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hands over my ears, and shut my eyes tight. Mum grabs me up into her arms. She is rigid, holding me so tight she’s squeezing my breath out. We expect the explosion, but none comes. The mantelshelf clock ticks on. None of us move except Timmy, who startles us by jumping onto the back of Miss Gay’s chair. If we don’t move, the explosion won’t come. The insistent gong of the clock strikes four. One long, steady piercing note of the “all clear” tells us the raid is over: we are safe once more. Upstairs we find our bedroom windows blown out, glass strewn on our beds. “We’re lucky, must have been a dud,” said Mum. “That was too close for comfort.” • • •

Mum decided to take me to South Wales so we could be near Daddy. She packed my small suitcase: knickers and vests, my favorite pink dress, and my crumpled copy of Snow White and a few comics. I couldn’t leave without Desperate Dan, the Texas cowboy. He could pluck a German plane out of the sky and tie it in knots with his bare hands. I put my gas mask in a cardboard box with a string strap so I could slip it over my shoulder. I would carry my doll, Betsy. Mum kept me close as we stepped down from the bus and walked into the cavernous space of Paddington Station.The steam engine snorted and hissed, the engineer’s face, lit by the glow of the furnace, was blackened by coal dust and shiny with sweat. So many platforms stretched into the distance I couldn’t count them all. I saw a line of children threading their way through the crowd and they were all labeled—evacuees. I wasn’t one of them because I was gripping Mum’s hand tight and we were going to Wales to visit Daddy. The possibility of losing Mum in the crowd made my throat dry and I could barely swallow. I clutched my doll and told her not to be worried because we’d be seeing Daddy soon and he always made everything right, like the prince who brought Snow White back to life. • • •

Kidwelly was a tiny station, one platform and a ticket booth. The train chugged around the bend and left us in silence among the hills of Wales.

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The air was fresh, heavy with the scent of honeysuckle from hedgerows lining the lane outside the station. I saw seagulls flying ahead of us into the twilight and a slight breeze gave a hint of the sea. “Now let’s see, “ said Mum, consulting a crumpled piece of paper. “This is Quay Street, then we need High Street, and Priory Street should be right after that.” It was dark when Mum knocked on the door of number 14, a pebble-dashed cottage with a short upper storey. A rosy-cheeked lady in an apron unlatched the door and beckoned us into a large kitchen. A fire glowed at the far end with an oven attached to one side. “Yes, welcome, welcome,” said the lady. “I am May Jones and this is my husband, Will. Now then, sit yourselves down and I’ll make a pot of tea.You must be tired.” “Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Jones,” said Mum, very polite. “Hello Mr. and Mrs. Jones,” I repeated, as I was taught to do. “Well now, please call me Aunty May and you can call my husband Uncle Will.” A large ruddy-faced man who seemed to fill the kitchen rose from an ample chair in the inglenook to shake my hand formally. I liked his broad smile and lilting voice when he said, “Your Da is a friend of mine. He’s told us all about you.” He turned to shake Mum’s hand, “Hello Mrs. Dodd, nice it is to meet you and the little one.” “You can call me Margey,” said Mum, and I knew that she liked them. .

• • •

One morning I woke to find Mum beside me in bed. She propped herself up on one elbow and stroked my cheek, smoothed my hair. “Can you hear chickens?” I said. I jumped onto the rag rug in the window alcove and saw chickens scratching about in the backyard.Without waiting for Mum, I got dressed and ran downstairs to explore. Aunty May was in the kitchen slicing apples. “Good morning, little one,” she said. “Bore da, cariad fach, it is in Welsh.” She put down the knife, wiped her hands on her apron. “Can I see the chickens?” I said.

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She unlatched the back door and took me out to the nesting boxes. We collected eggs, some still warm and pearly. She showed me the apple orchard behind the chicken coop and I picked apples fallen on the ground. I dashed back to the cottage to show the basket of eggs to Mum but she wouldn’t look at me. She stared into the fire in the kitchen, her suitcase by her side. She took my hand and led me out the front door, knelt down to take a wisp of hair out of my eyes and captured it in my hair slide, the one shaped in a blue bow. She held me close and I smelled her perfume. She kissed me on the cheek. “You’re safe here. I have to go back to London to get a job. I wish there were jobs here, but there aren’t.” She said, “Be a good girl,” and walked away. The flowered hem of her best dress flared out at the knees. Across the road was a meadow with cows bordered by a river and beyond that an enormous castle on the crest of a hill. “Mum, stop!” I shouted. “A castle! Look at the castle!” She wouldn’t look back, not even when Aunty May ran out with floured hands to wave goodbye. “Come help me with the pies,” said Aunty May, so we went back inside after Mum disappeared from sight. I handed the butter to her and she worked it into the pastry. I carefully placed pastry strips on top of the chopped apples to make a crisscross design. • • •

In the middle of the night, I woke in the dark because of the quiet: no sound of sirens, no boom of guns, only dark silence. I sat in the window alcove and pulled aside the curtain. The stars were brilliant in a deep indigo sky with the sliver of a crescent moon poised above the castle. I wanted to see chimney pots, Dad’s face, and feel Mum’s arms around me. My sadness broke full flood tide. I heard feet plodding across the bedroom next door. I flung myself back on the counterpane. “I want my mummie,” I said between sobs as Auntie May strode into my bedroom. “You’re keeping us awake and your mam isn’t here so if there’s nothing else wrong, try to be quiet. It is safe you are here and mam will

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come when she can.” She shut the door. My chest shuddered as I tried to hold my misery inside. I lay back, bereft, on my soft pillow with its faint scent of Mum’s lavender. I heard a whispered discussion outside my door. After a few minutes, the latch clicked up quietly. I sniffled and murmured, “Mummie.” Aunty May sat by my side for a while, hands folded. She lifted up the window over the backyard and the curtains fluttered in the cool summer air. She trickled water into a cloth from the jug on the nightstand and smoothed it across my forehead. “Do you know how to make toad in the hole?” I asked. “I could show you, it takes just one egg.” “Eggs we have a plenty cariad, and together we’ll make Welsh rarebit.”

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Majestic Theater: A Landscape of War Alice M. Azure

My mother was a woman who, as I see it now, never knew anything but war, whether one defines war as a political catastrophe or personal nightmare. First it was the continental separation from her mother and father. In Norway, her mother sunk into a mental illness of no return while her father pursued a cabinetmaker’s trade in America. She returned to this country while she was a teenager, and found herself an immigrant. World War II interrupted her newly married state and put the full burden of raising three small children upon her young shoulders. The man she married came back from World War II a changed person, and dealing with him was perhaps the most brutal war of all—the breakup of a family. The black umbrella over her entire life was alcoholism—a war in which she was never to win a permanent victory. Just after Christmas 2005, our eighty-three-year-old friend, Richmond Smith, invited us over to his home in North Preston for lunch. During the last six years, we had become acquainted with Richie—as we called him—while enjoying live jazz nights at Ashby’s in Mystic, Connecticut. I looked forward to the visit because he lived in an old colonial house over three hundred years old. Many times he had described its interior to us, so I was loaded with curiosity about the many fi replaces, lowbeamed ceilings, floors with plank boards through which one could see the cellar light, and the special kitchen designed by Richie’s late wife, Joan. Shortly after we arrived, he showed us around the house, which was as charming and as wonderful as I had imagined. Hanging on to a rope handrail, we sort of pulled ourselves up a steep staircase, following Richie to his second floor bedroom. Prominently displayed in the area where he kept his office, there hung two large pictures of F6F Hellcat fighter planes

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flying over Guam. Richie, a fighter pilot during World War II, was in one of them. Downstairs, we were served glasses of sweet wine and ushered into the sitting room, where we settled into old, comfortable chairs. However, small talk was not to be the order of the afternoon. Richie knew my companion had been a naval commander who had done a tour of duty aboard the destroyer USS Laws in the South Pacific. In no time at all, the conversation, now highly animated, was ranging over the South and Western Pacific Theater of World War II—Gaum, Mariana Islands,Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and many more. I couldn’t keep up with it all because whenever I find myself amidst talk about World War II, my mother’s image always takes front-and-center stage of another kind of theater. Catherine Pedersen was born October 22, 1919, in West Springfield, Massachusetts, to Christian and Sophie Pedersen. Auntie Florence, Mom’s sister, was already two years old. Three other children had died in early childhood. Due to Sophie’s deteriorating mental health, in 1923 my grandfather sent his family to Tregde, Mandal, in Norway so that relatives could provide needed care to his wife and daughters. It wasn’t until 1936 that my mother and Auntie returned to America—back to West Springfield, to a second floor tenement on the intersection of Elm Street and Central Street, the latter sometimes called Tubbs Hill. This was home to my grandfather, aunt, and mother until Mom married Joseph Alfred Hatfield. Despite the English name, his cultural background was French and Mi’kmaq—sometimes known as Acadian French or, nowadays, simply Métis. Dad was a raconteur of considerable color and energy. As my mother loved to be entertained, his stories must have made her laugh hilariously, a trait of hers I fondly remember to this day. But if she was taken up by his storytelling, it had to be his music that charmed her heart. No one could play a harmonica the way he could. As Mom loved to sing, I can imagine Dad playing for her a variety of songs with all the sweetness or gusto he could manage to blow into his harmonica. I wonder if “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” or “Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy” were among the tunes he played for her, as both were among the many songs that Mom always sang to her family.

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My parents were married in 1939 in East Long Meadow, Massachusetts. Soon they left the little Elm Street tenement and moved way up to the northwestern corner of Massachusetts into the lovely hills of the Green Mountain area, where my father found employment as a dairy farmer. We lived in North Adams, then Williamstown. When World War II caught up with Dad in 1944, he was shipped off to Europe. Mom had to move back to Elm Street with Pa, as we all called our grandfather. By then, I had a sister, Carol, and a brother, Fred. I was four, Carol was three, and Freddie was two. My first lucid memories of my mother are of her walking everywhere with us in that first real theater of our early family life—the Elm Street neighborhood.Whenever we went out, which was often, she always looked pretty, even glamorous, especially when she had on her makeup. Curly strawberry blond hair, red lips, rouge on her high cheekbones, penciled eyebrows, and high heels—all these I can still see in my mind’s eye as I walked, ran, skipped, or hopped alongside of her. Many times, Auntie Florence accompanied us. She must have come up on visits from New Haven to spend some time with Mom. Auntie’s husband, Henry Slozek, was a surveyor, so he traveled around with a lot of highway construction projects. I have several old pictures of various poses of us kids with Auntie or Mom at a small memorial park wedged between Park Street and Park Avenue. Other times—especially in hot, humid weather when the three small rooms of the tenement became unbearable, not to mention Pa’s radio blasting out ballgame scores to his hard-of-hearing ears—we would head for the little wading pool and shade trees of the West Street Playground at Pynchon Park in Springfield, just across the Connecticut River. There were always the trips to the A&P grocery store east of us and across the Elm Street tenement. That’s where I saw my first lobsters— stacked the way lettuce and apples are arranged in today’s produce displays. Mom’s ration stamps weren’t good for lobsters, however. It seemed she always needed sugar, flour, or coffee. If Elm Street was the backbone of my mother’s neighborhood, then the center—the heart—was Majestic Theater. When I walked south to and from kindergarten at the Park Avenue Elementary School at the

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intersection of Elm and Park Streets, I had to pass under the theater’s three-sided, massive marquee with big black letters. I couldn’t read the words, of course. I only knew what was written there made my mother happy, which sometimes meant a night out with her to watch a movie. She took me to see Bambi once, but I wasn’t interested in the movie. During a trip to the bathroom, I didn’t return to my mother’s seat, but explored as much of the ornate theater as possible, winding up on the stage smack against the big screen! I don’t know when Mom started to drink. Maybe it was after she married our father. From many family stories, we learned that alcohol had been a constant in his life as a north woods lumberman in Maine, New Hampshire, and New Brunswick, Canada. There is a story about him and a priest who wanted to enroll Dad in a seminary. My father’s answer was to slap his ax and a bottle of whiskey on the table. “This is what I choose,” he replied, probably with no more intent than to display a bit of teenaged defiance to an authority figure. Whatever my father’s frame of mind was in that day as he answered the priest, those words carried a chilling prescience of his life to come. Certainly my mother’s own father had a penchant for beer, especially during the family card games at night or during an afternoon’s ball game on his radio. At any rate, the combination of our grandfather’s and mother’s occasional morning hangovers and three young children must have been taxing at times to the businesses inside the tenement’s mezzanine or to the manager of the gas station on the corner of Elm and Central Streets. One morning my sister and I watched our brother throw our pet cat out the bedroom window. I am told I was the one who fashioned a little parachute for kitty out of a handkerchief! The gas station man brought the tiger-striped cat back upstairs to us. I don’t remember how Mom or Pa got themselves out of bed. But I do remember the spanking after they found out the guy had yelled and yelled at us from below our open, secondstory window, trying to stop us from our nefarious deed. Mom absolutely loved animals! Anyone who knew her for the slightest amount of time understood her fondness for animals. No matter how poor we might have been, there was always room for a cat or dog. Sadly, the little cat that we maltreated disappeared. We learned some hard lessons that day.

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Another early morning, we found a half-empty bottle of wine on the floor by Mom’s bedside. How much of the stuff we drank, I don’t know. But after awhile, I did suspect we were making too much noise laughing at Freddie’s inability to stay on his feet. So Carol and I shooed Freddie into the big walk-in closet and shut ourselves in, pretending in the darkness that we were at the Majestic Theater, watching the comic antics of our brother. It never occurred to us that he was drunk! The wide, unpadded wooden staircase of the Elm Street tenement was its distinguishing feature. From its front street foyer, where all the mailboxes were lined up in rows, the stairs ascended to the mezzanine where there were a number of dimly lit offices.Visor-capped men, hunched over their desks, inhabited some. One room, a barbershop, was always bright. From the mezzanine, the stairs narrowed up to the second floor, where our three-room apartment was situated over some of these businesses. Of course we children never wasted an opportunity to make noise on the staircase. Our loud stomping up and down creating some pretty good echoes. I imagine our accompanying screeches and laughter didn’t endear us to the business tenants, either. One day I was standing alone at the top of those stairs when a dark soldier came in from the street entryway. He was dressed in army fatigues and balanced a large duffel bag on one shoulder. All in one memory, I knew he was my father, but he didn’t seem happy to see me. Grim-faced, he ascended the stairs and walked right on past me into our apartment. Not a word. How long had he been gone? Two years? Had I changed that much? Why weren’t Mom, Carol, and Freddie at the top of the stairs with me? Didn’t they know Daddy was coming home from the war? Years later, I learned that he wasn’t returning willingly from the war or from Europe. There were rumors about a letter he had sent to my mother, saying he would not be back, that he was in love with someone else. His military superiors thought otherwise and sent him home. Earlier this year, 2006, I was reminiscing with my sister Joan about our father’s homecoming from the war. “I’ll bet you a buck you just happened to be the first person to see him because he didn’t bother to tell Ma when he’d be home. Coming home didn’t matter to him. He would have scowled at Freddie, Ma, or Carol had they been the first to see him.

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He was probably pissed he had to get back to reality and family. I have no doubt he was deeply and violently affected by the things he’d seen in Europe during the war, but he was also a vile person and didn’t want to come home to a needy wife and three kids. Whether or not the Czech or French woman was on his mind is moot. He was prone to violence most of his life.” Life in the little tenement on Elm Street became grim. Being hard of hearing like my grandfather, I never did make out the angry words above the loud, bad noises at night. One morning I picked up some torn pieces of blue chenille, washed them, and started to hang them on the clothesline at the back porch. Mom ran out when she saw what I was doing and snatched the pieces away from me. I still remember the bruises on her face and eyes. Soon we were able to move into a unit at the Veteran’s Project near the intersection of Baldwin and River Streets, still in West Springfield and not far from Memorial Avenue School, where I entered the first grade. I remember our unit’s address—11 Coast Guard Avenue. The project was southwest of our former Elm Street place, just past the railroad tracks, not a long walk from Pa’s apartment. There must have been some peaceful—maybe even happy—times after that move, for my sister Joan Elizabeth was born in March of 1947. But the spiral of violence and abuse against all of us escalated to such an extent that its bile spilled out of me when our next-door neighbor asked about the weeping she heard at night through the very thin bedroom walls. Eventually Dad was sent to prison and my mother divorced him. We three older children were placed in a church-run children’s home in Cromwell, Connecticut. Mom and Joanie moved back in with Pa at the Elm Street tenement. Later in 1951, Joanie joined the three of us and about sixty other children at the Cromwell Children’s Home, where each of us remained until our high-school graduation. Mom remarried and started another family—Sandy, Cindy, and Billy. She, her husband, and my new brother and sisters continued to live in the same general neighborhood, except the boundary expanded over the Connecticut River to the North End of Springfield, Massachusetts. To this day, we seven offspring of Catherine

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Pederson Hatfield Bovat—who passed on March of 1992—remain in a good relationship with one another. Few opportunities go by without sharing memories and stories of our early life in the Majestic Theater neighborhood. Sometimes, without warning, we find ourselves slipping into some bouts of hilarious laughter—our tribute to her spirit. A female relative who lives on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation once told me about a special ceremony she attended for her son. She, as the returning warrior’s mother, was summoned to participate in a special ceremony before the soldier was allowed back into the community. Without being told any particular details, I understood that one purpose of the ceremony was to purify the soldier from the contamination—the violence—of war. A similar story with a bit more detail was told by a Code Talker in Valerie Red Horse’s excellent documentary, True Whispers: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers. One veteran of Iwo Jima said that, upon returning to his family on the Navajo Reservation, he had to undergo a ceremony to get rid of the bad spirits, dreams, and evil that had infected him during that particular battle. I believe in the healing power of such ceremonies.That’s why I can’t help but wonder if life would have been better for us had there been similar ceremonies available to our father after his return from World War II. Of course, I can’t ever know that for Mom and Dad. But I do know that the need for healing goes on for some of us who are related to Joseph Alfred Hatfield, our father. A main objective of many ceremonies is to sweep away hatred, evil, and negativity. While much has washed away, at times, images or feelings manage to leak back. So the prayers begin again. Throughout this somewhat regular need to forgive, I am happy to have the friendships of many other warriors who did not succumb to evil. My gentle and congenial friend, Richmond Smith, a former fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater of World War II, came back home to hearth and family and to many years of love and personal peace. That day when we visited with him in his wonderful home, his happiness was indeed infectious.

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Recsk: Not Even Ghosts Wish to Visit Here Again Emöke B’Rácz War leaves me rigid and cold at heart. Just a three-letter word, WAR makes my heart, mind, and soul go fl at and opaque. Nothing whole to view but shrapnel of thoughts, unable to assemble the pattern. It becomes horrifi c and I run out of myself. I am only a daughter of war victims and survivors. My family in Hungary has had to live through that glorious World War I and World War II, the Cold War and Internment Camp of Recsk 1950–1953, not to mention the 1956 Revolution for a Democratic Society in Hungary. Exile and silence. One thousand years of geographically charged location where the tribes fought all the battles between East and West and for East and West. There are no terrains further from our selves or our souls for this tribe of humans. I am a listener in the family of storytellers. Grandfathers, godmothers, and great-aunts tell the fragments like medicine with small amounts of poison that can be ingested and therefore maybe the rest of the story also heard. I have had my poison-eating time in my life. I have listened and I am reporting back from death-labor camp.

Recsk 2006 September

The sun is shining above us all. The clouds gather to look down upon us and obliterate Hades for the day. The local Recsk Gymnasium Band and four church choirs paint the canvas with music. I feel out of place, out of time, and saddened by the music and wreaths I observe around mounds of dirt signifying the torture chamber, the solitary confinement, and the ditches that men stood in naked for days even in winter times. Yes, I am

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almost separated from myself. But I stay for my father and his friends who suffered and walked out of here but never really survived their spiritual deaths. There are many people (oh, three hundred or so) who are lining up and chattering away but the two men standing next to me are silent to the negative end. I notice the weight of that around me and turn to greet and acknowledge their presence. They both are about my father’s age. I introduce myself and recognize one of the names, Kiss Daniel. Yes, Kiss Daniel, the youngest lad in the labor camp Recsk whose fingers were burned off by the coal stove in the torture barrack for being the youngest and most defenseless. His crime was being a student and walking in the wrong place at the right time for arrest. I look for signs of my father’s friends but they are all dead; not even ghosts wish to visit here again. I am here for them. I have heard and imagined and have not heard enough to forget.This is where and how my suffering begins. To know what was is to have a chance at understanding. To have white noise and white space in a historical context that drops years and decades out of life is grounds for “craziness.” I have suffered the anxiety without name or limitation for the last fifty years. I have been aware of the “unnamed” atrocities that were committed in those wars that this family has suffered, died of, and survived. Father has never burdened his three children with his experiences. His response was always that that was the past and nothing can change that, and asked us not to go asking or looking for it. He could not relive it through spoken words, nor could he imagine us imagining humanity’s inhumanity. Now, all the storytellers have left. I am begging memories to fit my life. In dreams, surfacing from my father’s room or grandmothers’ oration, I am healing those unspoken memories of my ancestors. I am chanting peace and loving gratitude into the nights with each breath I take. I pray for the path forward for peaceful men and women who dare to be human and make choices filled with integrity concerning this place we call our own: EARTH.

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Recsk, Hungary 1950 to 1953 A fragmented life, father sitting at the dining room table in my memory with alcohol breath and hollow eyes The thoughts and memories remain silent No, I do not want to talk about that time Like a mantra he repeats under his breath and denies himself release, imprisoned for life every one of them. Father was like a volcano All his life, the pain and betrayal, Torture vibrates in every bone and the flesh He does not cry out now or then The stories of deeds of his internment Come like bullets when they are gathering At his table for a visit, six of them, To visit and try not to talk about that time But never is it without the shards of time. Remember when B’Rácz called the guards’ Attention on himself…time and time again He knew his limits and did his most To careen the pain and punishment Away from his frail and sick friends Serving for no reason, without judgment In this forced labor camp called Recsk. Recsk was like Siberia The Gulags around the world sapped young men Of strength and vitality Nightmares of the physical abuse Remained to remind them of an era

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We do not talk about We do not know about We can not image why, how Nations punished those who stood against the tide Crimson, black, bile green souls Enjoying their power with guns at their side The guards walked around like ghouls Sowing their fear…here take that, and that. No food for a week Stand in water in December naked Tied hands behind your backs Now take that. Another month in solitary Again and again, his cries silent and self imposed. Basalt mine, cracked hands, axes flying Some bodies falling out of line He picked them up daily and carried them Back to their bunk beds, gave them his food Acted up to direct the punishment on himself Endlessly The whip came down on his shoulders That held his son gently…years later Rotten pieces of vegetable in water The sustenance of prison, he chose to go without Toilet paper needed to be stolen to fix Words, poems that could not be memorized He stole them and got a week outside in a ditch The capillaries in his ankles died Years went by and seven amputations later He died. He took the bad breath of an era with him

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Without spreading it onto his children Silently he went Even then. There was only one time my father said Only once the alcohol loosened his lips They beat me so bad that I did not know if I was a boy or a girl That’s all he ever said to me I did not know if I was a boy or a girl And he laughed a short breath That was under the Parliament before they took me To the forced labor camp. To give your youth for Democracy is what was called for and was taken. Fear for lack of power ruled the time and the land The villagers near by knew and looked the other way And even today the smell of shame lurks their hearts Even today, the ghost of Recsk haunts the hillsides. A national park now, commemorating many lives given Destroyed for a moments of indecision of a government School children pile out of buses and cannot imagine What was given for their freedom in Recsk. Andrassy Ut 60 was the beginning torture chamber That now is a museum in Budapest called the Terror Haz. My mother and I went, stood in line for hours three times Before we could enter and faced oil snaking around a tank, black mirror reflecting all our mesmerized faces And the room where they hung them upside down from a hook in The ceiling is intact, beating them with water hoses full blast Pulling their nails off their hands and feet

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The hot iron that was used for prodding All displayed like still in use for Branding animals…their cries still in the air. My mother and I ran out of the room breathless Knowing what went on in there, brought it to life with force for both of us 40 years later in a life created by this man. The solitary tomb was no bigger than a cave for a midget The father that came out of there was a ghost of himself The children were shielded from the pain and suffering The toys and the bread on the table every day We could not imagine We did not know this man’s past And understood less what sent him into fury In our childish ways we expected everything Brightness, happiness, good health for the man we held as our father. The time was cut short for us to get to know What was and remains buried in the past Buried but there like a guard on duty, armed and ready To shoot at a whim, at any movement, his life held in prison even when the era was gone and never spoken of again.

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CHAPTER 3 MEMOIRS OF GUARDED REFLECTIONS

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The Collectors Janet McAdams Several years ago, my sister Emily came back from a camping trip to one of the Florida Keys, a place known for its rich and unusual flora and fauna, having learned the shocking aspects of snail collecting that I depict in this poem. It haunted me; in the same way that learning Audubon’s beautiful paintings of birds are paintings of dead birds haunted me. A few nights after she told me, I had an odd dream: a house with an umbrella stand made from an elephant’s foot, a woman in a yellow-stained, Victorian-era dress, and a garden outside, where I walked side by side with a snail, a companion, the curve of its shell rising to just above my head. Our dreams collect the flotsam and jetsam of the unacknowledged world. They gather together that which seems ungatherable. A dream can point me toward an understanding. The poem clarifies and can, with some luck, transmit that understanding to others. It was a surprising journey, from a burned snail hammock to the wars of the last centuries, the gold teeth and skin lamp shades of the Holocaust, the skull of a great Indian warrior taken by a hobbyist. As I wrote “The Collectors,” I came to understand that the need to collect and own that which is too beautiful or too alive or too different is intricately connected with our fear of death. i Audubon in a Waiting Room

But the birds in the prints are dead, she said. A dozen birds for the one bird you see. He raced against earth pulling the body toward it.

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The end of flight: owl or heron feathers dropping down, flesh sagging along the wires that hold it steady in the picture. At the doctor’s office she pointed out glassy eyes in the flat print facing us, where we thumbed magazines for shades of lipstick, sex tips, creams to give our skin a certain youthful glow. Skin loose on the bones, her hair a half-gone wisp beneath the scarf wrapped round and round like a turban. At least, I thought, my body hasn’t turned on itself, won’t snuff me out before I’m willing to lie down and stop kicking. ii Dream written down in Wolf Hour

Never a wing’s scales in miniature, clinging like dust to fingers: the monarch’s brilliant orange, a swallowtail’s lapis blue or butter yellow. Shells litter the path of uneven walking: past stuffed owls, trees so rootless, you could knock them over with a breath of wind.

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One snail, grown enormous, stays beside you, moving along with his muscular foot. iii Catalog

Open it, the bursting door: elephant’s foot, shrunken head, Princess Venus, Lemon Cockle, the Lightning Whelk, the Hawk Wing Conch, stuffed fox listing the way an old man might lean when they’ve carved out his organs. Elephants, they say, encircle the wounded. The one injured by spear or misfired gun. In the foot’s dead hollow, umbrellas rise like ugly misspent flowers. Ugly flowers for the cold English rain and parasols to keep your fair skin from turning the color of a woman who scrubs yellow stains from the armpits of blouses. Blouses you wear for tea, for visiting a god tacked up and wounded.

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iv Telegram to Sleeper

Oh you who sleep still sleep in the room of finite treasure— v Instructions for Snail Collectors

On every other Key collectors took a dozen snails then torched the hammock after them. The snails more beautiful than jewels grew rare as emeralds, as secret places. Remember never to take more than your fair share. Use alcohol instead of formalin, which fades the tree snail’s dark red bands. Look in hardwood hammocks: the Pigeon Plum or the Wild Tamarind. It’s not so hard to find, if you know where the Liguus nests. Check the blue-flowered Lignumvitae, the tree so strong that settlers named it Ironwood and saw their axes turn.

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vi Petition

Let your mouth fill with dry wings, your bed with sharp ends of bone, a tooth hollowed out rattling in the canvas glove you pull on for gardening. Let your feet find the path of broken shells, bits of ivory, the finger bones of Sioux children, the broken skull of Osceola, stolen for a talisman, teeth without their gold fillings, bits of skin flaking from lampshades, the cracked binding of a book fat with the story of a boy and his dog Jack or Blue. Oh sweet adventure with pirates and map, a trunk so stuffed with gold it will blind the one who cracks it open. vii Call

They say the prey of an owl never hears death coming. Only in the air behind you a change less than weather, a voice not asking: Who?

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It’s late today, only a slant of sun disappearing into green gone to black in the darkness Who that voice will never ask. Late she says, Late, she says, and checks her watch thinking of a stew she might make for dinner, whether the milk is too sour for the morning’s porridge.

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MIA, Foreign and Domestic Kimberly Blaeser Our lives find their destinies, their directions in strange maps drawn of blood or history. For me, repeated family stories impacted me more than any socalled factual textbook accounts of events or historical eras. I understand the experience of Indian peoples, fashion my identity, in terms of these embedded memories. This poem touches on that sense of legacy—here embodied by Uncle Clifford. I mean to allude to his own inheritances as well as mine, what drove him to act as he did, and how his small heroism and the family’s sense of loss both become seeds for things to follow. He was perpetually missing when I grew up. My Uncle Clifford, lost somewhere between the life boat and his downed ship. “He made it out,” reported his boyhood friend turned military comrade. “But he turned back went searching, I guess, for our missing men.” I still see him swimming long stroke after long stroke arrowing toward the horizon of some far off ocean. Propelled away by that Antell trait—

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is it pride or compassion? that keeps getting us into trouble generation after generation. And the veteran who returns recites the melancholy story at Kohler’s tavern on Friday nights, a pack of Pall Malls rolled up in the white t-shirt sleeve of the arm that raises his glass: “And I never saw him again,” he lies as the memory of Clifford Antell parks himself on the stool at the far end of the bar. He was that stranger’s head half turned away in a crowd somehow familiar. The man I would walk toward heart-thumping already reaching out to tap the shoulder of his navy seaman’s jacket. The one whose turning full face always meant disillusionment. Even though the white cross was placed over an empty grave before I was born and stone was carved 1925-1943 to enclose him,

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I still regularly brought him home as a valiant POW, as fresh-faced hero newly recovered from amnesia. But I have since learned that no injury or war could cause any of us to forget the names and stories that made us, and that my Uncle Clifford is still out there somewhere swimming between a sinking ship and a life boat with destiny tucked like a limp body beneath one arm.

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The Coffee Table Book of War: A Memoir Daniela Gioseffi I was eleven years old and I didn’t want to look at the big shiny photographs of corpses on a muddy battlefi eld, mouths agape, dripping blood, eyes blank, arms spread, legs at broken angles—helmets strewn with guns in the filth and guts. I shut the book but the pictures lived in my sleep. At eleven years old, I was not yet steeped in the huge and horrible wars of the bloodbath of history.The photographs of rotting bodies wasted by guns, bombs, grenades disgusted and haunted me. I couldn’t breathe looking at them. I tried to bury the book of wars, but it took my joy with it wherever I hid it under other books of love poems, fairytales, and rhymes that used to make me happy. The book of corpses haunted my nights when the moon poured in the windows of my lonely room, where ghosts of war dead seemed to weep in every shadowy corner. I hadn’t wanted to look at pictures of mass graves piled with thin bodies; hollow faces; mouths drawn wide in fear and pain; arms and legs akimbo; bones absent of skin; skeletal mothers; bleeding fathers; smashed children all piled in huge ditches, one upon the other like garbage in a dump. Though I couldn’t stand to look at The Photographic History of War, I thought how much worse to be there in the actual, to be one of the bodies, perhaps still living and buried alive under the dead. How much more terrible to lie on the battlefield in pain, dying alone slowly—and so I took the book to my “Social Studies” teacher at Passaic Valley Junior High School, carried the heavy book up the hill a mile-and-a-half with my other weighty school books, not wanting to open it again. I waited until the Social Studies class was done. I went to the teacher’s desk and thumped the big book of pictures in front of him, pushing it toward him. “Would you take this book I found on my father’s shelf? He’s dead and I don’t want it in my house!”

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Mr. Thomson picked it up and looked at the title. “It’s an expensive book. Why don’t you want it? “ He asked smiling. His congeniality made me angry. “Because it’s ugly and stupid. It makes me sick. I can’t sleep because of it. When you taught us about war, you didn’t show it to us! How can we know what war is if you just talk about it in plain words and don’t show us how it looks? I don’t want this book in my house! I will never forget what war looks like again.” I said all of this, refusing to cry though I thought I might. The teacher looked down at me, quizzically, and took the book, but thought of nothing to say to me except, “I’ll keep it on my shelf for you.” The sunlight gleamed on the river as I walked home from school that day. The grass shown with yellow dandelions. I breathed better and the walk home was lighter, absent of the heavy book. I didn’t want to know about millions of murders, but the book could not be put out of my life. I learned of more wars, and endless massacres, full of bony corpses with pain etched on their jaws. I could never put the pictures out of my head, but had to live with them, always there, in my mind. The book of lynchings with black bodies hanging from trees in the Southern sun like strange rotting fruit added horror to the book of wars. And the photo in a bookstore, in a book titled Unsolved Crimes and Murders, a picture of a young woman on Long Island tied to the ground spread-eagled by stakes, raped and then cut in half at the waist by a machete, added more horror to my sleep. Now, I’m sixty-five and still can’t sleep well thinking of war photos: crematoriums, skeletons in mass graves; women, children tortured for sex; atom bombs falling over Hiroshima and Nagasaki sizzling people out of their skin, vaporizing them to dust; bodies rotting in the streets of Algeria, the villages of Darfur; the news photo of a Vietnamese man wincing, gun held at his temple by an American soldier pulling the trigger; The World Trade Center exploding before my eyes and raining dust of bodies down on me in my city; huge air raids over Baghdad raining fire; suicide bombers exploding their own bloody flesh over murdered children, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers blown to bits; screams of the US prisoners of the “War on Terror” terrorized and tortured all over the earth. In my nightmares,

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an Afghan child cowers in my bed or is blasted limbless; a Sudanese or Iraqi mother huddles in dread; a land mind explodes, blowing off a leg of a Cambodian baby toddling through a flowering meadow, chasing an orange butterfly, a flutter-bomb, to her blasted death. Pieces of her once beautiful, little, young, and perfect body fly everywhere in bloody bits. No one has taken the haunting book of war out of my head. There is only a walk in the forest to breathe the earth and smell the light coming through the pines that can close the book of murders for a little while. There is the glistening blue-green lake rippling with wind to soothe away the photos of the tortured for a while.There are my lover’s arms around me assuring me that I live, and the labors of nonviolent people, the ceaseless peace marching of millions all over the pockmarked earth, the beautiful, innocent, wide-eyed children born anew into arms of loving mothers and fathers, only always to learn, again and again, the endless living hell of our shameful history of billions of murdered dead that my grandson, born this summer, will have to learn to live with in his head.

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Patch Work: Picturing Vietnam Rebecca Blevins Faery As Vietnam opens itself to the West, the foot soldiers of style are becoming intoxicated with its aroma. —“The Mist off Perfume River,” New York Times magazine, Sunday, November 21, 1993

1.

“Itself ” is what is on the page, but I read it as “herself.” The photographs that carry much of the meaning in this article, that do much to accomplish its mission of seduction, confi rm my intuitive gendering: nearly all are of women, beautiful women. They welcome the viewer’s gaze variously: with apparent indifference, or with inviting smiles, or with a frightening vulnerability. Above all and always, they are exotic; they are desirable. Vietnam opens herself up, and today’s foot soldiers of what the Times calls “Indo-Chic” are intoxicated with her intimate aroma. And then the other pictures, the old ones, resurface on the pool of memory, reconfigure themselves, forming and shifting like images in a kaleidoscope. It is a chill November Sunday morning, bleak but bright, the steelgrey sky arching high overhead as if to draw itself away from all that transpires on earth. But the clouds could descend at any moment, bringing snow. I am curled on the sofa by the window, caressing a good cup of coffee, reading the paper. This article, though, these particular images, unsettle my pleasure in the moment; I both succumb to and deplore what I see and read. It is a startlingly neocolonialist vision. Inevitably, this “take” on Vietnam recalls another one; these romantic pictures bump rudely against those others stored inside my head, pictures distinctly lacking anything I would be tempted to call romance. The article means to retool Vietnam’s

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image, recruiting readers of the Times to its project. The gentle watercolor “map” of Vietnam, surrounded by Laos, Cambodia, China, and a soft blue wash of sea, is of a country unstained, unscarred, and undivided. Nothing awful could have happened there. I am meant to see what I see, and in some shadowy, unregenerate part of my heart, I do: I want the beauty offered to me in the full-page photograph of Thuy Duong’s exquisite face; I recognize the temptation to see in it the soul of the country itself, to imagine that in possessing the one, I could possess the other. This is easy for me to imagine because I am the inheritor of a colonialist culture, and such a move, in which desire for a woman who embodies a place gets conflated with desire to conquer and possess the place itself, is familiar to me. I also want the wispy mauve silk top Thuy Duong is wearing. It costs $650, says the caption. Which also tells me that Thuy Duong is a waitress in Hanoi. I wonder if they gave her the silk top. There is more. There is no end to my desire, and no end to the objects offered to gratify it: silk pajamas by Ralph Lauren, linen coat with mandarin collar by Armani, wool gabardine tank dress by Chanel, silk slip dress by Donna Karan. All adorn the slender bodies of Vietnamese women, photographed in Vietnamese settings. All of these clothes cost many hundreds, some several thousands, of dollars. Both the clothes and the bodies are vividly eroticized: women holding hands and walking in a rice paddy, women standing on a sampan on the Perfume River, a woman herding geese beside a field, a woman reclining in a hammock. In case I miss the point—which I am hardly likely to do—the article makes it plain, in large type: “Without revealing much skin, Eastern dress is subtly sexy. The slit on the side or up the back, the little mandarin collar and the frog closures are like erotic flash points.” And food is there too. My senses are recruited—visual, olfactory, gustatory, sexual—and Vietnam is eager to sate all my appetites. In fantasy, I walk down a narrow alley in a crowded city, still deeply scarred but full of vitality and the declared will to forget, breathing the pungent aroma of shrimp sizzling on an open brazier, seasoned with lemongrass and small hot peppers. Rice simmers in a heavy black pot. Spring rolls filled with cold crabmeat spiked with lime are mounded on a platter in an open

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doorway. Fiery chili dipping sauce fills a bowl beside the platter. I could recreate it all in my own modern American (“transnational”) kitchen; the recipes, tested by the Times, are here for my pleasure. I could imagine myself in Vietnam. Or, even better, I could go there. The article reassures me that “Americans who travel to Vietnam…find a gracious welcome.” Tourism is the country’s newest growth industry. Many of the visitors are vets, returning for another tryst with a country with whom the earlier affair turned decidedly sour. Was the US impotent? Or not impotent enough? In any case, the Vietnamese have all but forgotten the war, the article says; it’s time we did the same, and forgave ourselves (and, implicitly, them?) so we can return with open hearts and open wallets. Time we revisited our memories, told ourselves it wasn’t so bad. I’m okay; you’re okay,Vietnam’s okay. And now she is opening herself up, just for us. But the single photograph of a man wearing clothes I’m supposed to want to buy, for myself or perhaps for the man in my life, reminds me of all that I sometimes wish I could forget but know I never will. The photograph is small and, in contrast to those of the women, in black and white; the elderly man modeling the clothes is bearded and looks faintly like Uncle Ho. He is wearing black pajamas. These are made of linen, not cheap cotton, and they aren’t cheap. Designed by Isaac Mizrahi—or rather, borrowed, or appropriated. “Western designers are putting their own spin on the cheongsam, the sarong, and the pajama, adding slightly more structure and definition to what is essentially languid and simple,” says the article. Black pajamas will always mean something else to me. And the mist—off Perfume River, or rolling in from the China Sea, or hovering over the Mekong Delta, or settling in the valleys of the Central Highlands—that mist which this article claims is now part of the erotic mystery of Vietnam, like the ao dai, the traditional Vietnamese costume for women that “hide[s] everything” and at the same time “hide[s] nothing,” that mist which embraces the “emerald banks of the Perfume River” where “young women pedal their bicycles…their long ao dais fluttering in the chill morning breeze, their fair skin [fair skin!] shielded from the early sun by elbow-length gloves and conical bamboo hats,” that mist which

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collects in sensuous beads on the beautiful face of Thuy Duong in the photograph, which appears in every film I’ve seen of the war—that mist was the very sign and symbol of the condition of blindness in which US soldiers fought, unable to see when the “enemy” was there and when it was not, unable to tell “friend” from “foe,” as unable to read the landscape as the political scene. The mist threatens to blind us again as we are urged into another form of colonialism: not choppers, guns, napalm, land mines, and spilt blood this time, but venture capital, tourism, an avid and insatiable consumerism. 2.

The split, divided subjectivity of the postmodern self makes perfect sense to me. I’ve lived it; probably most of us have. Arguably, neocolonialist wars like Vietnam helped to produce this divided self. As I hold in my hands in November 1993 the Sunday Times article repackaging Vietnam, another, earlier self, another woman I once was, comes into focus. I am a woman with a past; she is part of that past. Now I am a middleaged, long-single mother of grown children, a politically committed socialist-feminist writer and teacher, student and critic of American cultural history. The other woman was, roughly a quarter-century ago now, painfully young, a “waiting wife” married to a career infantry officer, a West Pointer who served two tours of duty with the First Air Calvary Division in Vietnam, mother of two preschool children, burgeoning feminist, secret war resister. What is the right metaphor for these juxtapositions? I struggle with how to name this essay. “Collage” isn’t quite right; it suggests randomness as a source of meaning, an accidental quality in the coming-together of images and discourses. I settle on “Patch Work.” It’s the pattern I want, and the spirit of recirculating, rehabilitating old materials: pieces from the fringed and tattered remnants of a fractured life, carefully placed so pattern appears—wagon wheel, log cabin, bear paw, wedding ring. What pattern emerges when I place my two selves, and the two Vietnams, side by side? What is the larger frame, or quilt, within which each of these pieces of narrative finds its place and its meanings? Re-membering is what I want to do. I don’t want my pictures of Vietnam, the memories I carry like a

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weight inside my head to be covered over or erased by pictures like those in this Times article. Genres, too, blur on the postmodern landscape. That is plain in the cultural work (to borrow Jane Tompkins’s apt phrase) of figurations of Vietnam in “The Mist off Perfume River”: information becomes entertainment becomes advertisement. And in the essay I now write memoir/ remembering/analysis/argument. Patch work. 3.

Picturing Vietnam. It’s always an enterprise with a purpose. When I think about it, I realize that Vietnam has always been feminized for me. She was the woman for whom the man I had married left me, twice. I couldn’t compete with her erotic attractions, the sexual pull that pointed toward the possibility of the ultimate orgasm: death and annihilation. And yet I identified with her. My life, too, was twisted and scarred by the masculine thrust of the US military intervention that inserted itself with such violence into her very flesh. Flashback. It is the autumn of 1966. I am sitting in my friend Joan’s darkened living room—more accurately, her mother’s darkened living room, because Joan and her small daughter, like many of the women in the room and our children, have returned to parental nests while our husbands are in Vietnam. My own daughter, not yet two, whenever she’s asked,“Where’s Daddy?” runs to the globe in the corner of the room, spins it, then places the point of her small finger precisely on a tiny purple spot: “Daddy’s gone to ’Nam,” she says sadly, prefiguring in her baby speech what will later become part of the slang idiom of the war. My son is an infant, not yet a year old, too small to know, or care, I think, though I may be wrong. Tonight I’ve enlisted my parents to babysit while I enjoy one of the occasional nights out of the “Waiting Wives” group. Earlier, I fed and bathed and kissed the babies and settled them in their beds. In the absence of a real father, they kissed the photograph of a uniformed Daddy goodnight, as they do every night.Then I joined my friends, a dozen or so women who understand as no one else can do the conditions of my life, because they are living it too. We have had dinner and wine in a restaurant, in a small room for

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private parties. Now we have adjourned to Joan’s, where we will share the slides our men have sent us, pictures from Vietnam. We are eager to see this place, see what it is like. The beam of light from Joan’s slide projector pierces the darkness and illumines the wall, and one by one, we watch the pictures of Vietnam: aerial views of endless jungle; men in camouflaged fatigues; men standing in front of base buildings, smiling men standing next to blank-faced black-pajama-clad women who, the letters tell us, do their laundry, or next to smiling black-pajama-clad men who, the letters say, polish their boots and their brass, clean their quarters, negotiate for items not available through military channels in exchange for things that are, men who, the letters say, the husbands call their “boys.” There are countless pictures of monkeys, monkeys everywhere, in trees or perched in windows or above doorways. And, always, there are choppers, the ubiquitous choppers. Joan clicks to advance the images. Her husband is a doctor with the Fourth Infantry Division. She’s my favorite among the women of the group; I like her because she’s wry and funny and resists easy pieties about the war. Later, her only brother will be killed in Vietnam, and she, like so many others of us, will be divorced from the husband for whom she now “waits.” But tonight she’s happy, providing the slide show that pictures Vietnam for us. Then an image appears for which all of us (except Joan) are utterly unprepared. An enormous erect penis, vastly larger than life, appears on the wall, thrusting upward from the open fly of fatigue trousers. Silence, thick with startled surprise, falls on the room, on this gathering of womenwithout-men. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a penis, most of us, and we are arrested by a combination of pained embarrassment and desire. Then another penis, and another, and another, appear on the wall. Our silence gives way to nervous laughter, then to hysterical glee. We howl and wipe our eyes, lean and roll against each other in fits of merriment as penis after penis flashes in front of us. The pictures are from Joan’s husband, who is studying penile lesions among American soldiers in Vietnam, lesions from exotic Asian venereal diseases, contracted in the flesh markets of Saigon, Bangkok, Hong Kong. Or in the dense jungles, at the edges of the rice paddies, in the margins

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of search-and-destroy missions in Vietnamese villages. The penises—red and brown—are all immensely erect, iconic, looming ready for action. Militarized phalluses, transcendental signifiers of male power in that mysterious, multiple, fluid, evasive, finally unknowable country, which is a purple dot on my daughter’s globe. Joan grins broadly at our initial nervousness and then at the eruptions of raucous laughter, the release in the room of a diffuse sexual energy and subversive irreverence. We sit and watch for an hour, recirculating the pictured penises, laughing loudly as we crudely note size, shape, potential. Eventually the pictures are no longer funny.The evening winds down, and one by one we leave, limp and drained, for home and bed, alone. Recalling the evening now on the screen of memory, I wonder why all the penises were so erect. What was stirring their lust? I remember a story I heard many times during the Vietnam years, told again and again in military circles by men who had been in the war, both trapped within and agents of its ideologies, and who lived to tell its stories.This one I have understood as a myth or legend with enormous symbolic and explanatory force, one that captures and condenses the energies at play in the war, driving the US’s blind persistence and ultimate failure in Vietnam as well as the ferocity of the people’s resistance. The story goes like this: a small group of soldiers on patrol come upon a lone young Vietnamese woman. She is beautiful and desirable. Is she VC? As usual, they can’t tell. But it doesn’t matter; they want her, and she’s willing. She smiles and gestures seductively, offering herself. She opens herself up to them, and they are intoxicated with her aroma. The man who will go first is young and hot, tumescent, eager. His erect penis thrusts outward from the fly of his fatigue trousers. He bends over the woman, whose eyes cloud momentarily. He thrusts into her…and screams. The woman has concealed a single-edge razor blade inside her vagina. What happened to her? I asked the first time I heard this story, my throat tightening with fear because I already knew the answer. For luring them into her ambush, for being not what they thought she was, for so precisely locating their vulnerability within the very sign of their power, of course, they killed her.

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4.

But I’ve left something out here. In fact, I belong in the picture too. Flash forward four years. It is the spring of 1970, the spring of peace march on Washington, of Kent State, of the American invasion of Cambodia. I am once again a “waiting wife,” this time living on my own for the first time in my life and loving it. No letters have arrived from my husband in several weeks. When the headlines in the Washington Post blare the news that the US has invaded Cambodia, I immediately know why; I haven’t heard from him because he’s there. A week or so later, a letter arrives which confirms my fears that I am married to a man who has invaded Cambodia. The news is worse than I had imagined: he was the G3 or operations officer, in charge of planning and executing the invasion. Worse yet, when I tear open the envelope, a dull, dark square falls out and onto the floor. It is a photograph, black and white, taken from a helicopter, of a clearing surrounded by thick jungle, a terrain that is about to be a landing zone for the helicopter-borne troops of the air cavalry division the man I married serves with. Across the bottom of the photograph, “LZ Rebecca” is scrawled in white ink. The letter explains how the man I married has given me the “honor” of having my name permanently inscribed in the military record of the topography and conduct of this war. I hold the photograph in my hand, and the blood drains from my head with a suddenness that leaves me faint. So vividly that even now I find it hard to describe, I understand at this moment and in my very flesh that I too am the terrain on which this war is being fought. Vietnam and I are one; I am the symbol of all the war presented to defend. I am the token of exchange. I am the scarred and tortured landscape of the invaded country; I must receive the soldiers silently and with resignation as they leap from the hovering choppers. I am forced to open myself up to the piercing phallus of American military might. Years later, I will read in Louise Erdrich’s novel Love Medicine about the Vietnamese woman prisoner who points to her own Asian eye fold and then to that of Henry Lamartine, the Chippewa soldier in camouflage fatigues who is guarding her, holding a bayonet to her chest. She says to him, “You. Me. Same.” Now, seeing my name on the topo photograph,

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I understand my conflation with the landscape of Vietnam; I identify with the invaded country: You, me, same. But my skin is white. I am an American. And the other name I carry is the one the man I married wrapped me in, the man who blighted a Vietnamese rainforest clearing with my first, my true name. Him, me, it? 5.

So Vietnam opens herself to the West again, intoxicating us with her aroma. And we open—what? Our hearts? Our wallets? Either way, combat or commodification. Vietnam gets consumed. Again. The Times article resurrects and repeats the old, aching question: “Why are we in Vietnam?” The answers are different now: because, the article says, we can “experience true glamour” there; because “there’s something otherworldly” about the place.” But residues of that other “other world” of Vietnam, the one many of us remember, are evident even here. The Times quotes one US visitor to Vietnam who says, “What exotic destination isn’t stained by conquest and a hint of something brutal?” It’s part of Vietnam’s allure. My response to re-member: to refuse the sadomasochistic overlay of this revival of colonialism, and instead to revive those older images and re-present them, to resist all the ways of deaths, destruction, environmental devastation, and appropriating interventions are eroticized. “Erotic flashpoints,” the Times calls such glimpses into Vietnam. But I’m not buying. I won’t be had again.

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The Magellanic Clouds of Vietnam Grace Cavalieri “The Magellanic Clouds” is an unusual title, certainly. All I know of them is that they are in the Southern Hemisphere, very alien to my sight, very far away. Like Laos and Vietnam, places that existed certainly, but out of my vision, away from my paradigm...in another hemisphere I could not fathom. What I did know was being with three small children and ready to have a fourth; other Navy wives driving me to the hospital; and my husband arriving at the hospital gates in his flight suit in 1964 the day after my fourth daughter was born. While in Vietnam, my husband lost most of his friends in downed aircraft. He survived to suffer the turmoil of guilt and grief. And so did we. Eleven years after returning home, he was finally able to visit the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. He did not want to see the names chiseled in marble: he had to see the names chiseled in marble. Twenty years after that day, I wrote this poem.Time moves slowly when it is pulled through the human heart.There is no rushing it. It has no place else to go. How far we traveled, sweetheart… Stephen Spender When you came home from the minutes of war sick from passion and duty you lived in the past and the future anywhere but here.

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You walked in suspicious of desires and other rites of loss. “Promise me you’ll only dream dreams of me,” I’d said but that spoke to a life where death had not yet reached and a time smaller than your experience. It took eleven years of walking for you to reach the marble names afraid you’d find yours on the list and afraid you wouldn’t. Fated to be alive when your friends were dead, you smoothed your mournful clothes and turned toward the Memorial.

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I found Buzz Eidsmoe’s name you called. This is why I was afraid to come afraid to see it. It’s here. I see it. I can remember their faces but not all their names. You talked about perspective, the marble of memorial, the angles simple unadorned contained by a sun shining on black surfaces surprisingly radiant like a recipient of love.

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Johnny Stack Sheila Massoni Johnny Stack, my sister’s first boyfriend, was a Vietnam War veteran. Upon returning home to New Jersey, Johnny committed suicide. He was a good kid. It’s the aftermath, February snow, Johnny Stack is seen walking from the parking lot to the river… He is taking his clothes off. During this brief diagonal or maybe agonal stroll, the new owners of the tiny 200-year-old spy-glassed window home at the bend of River Road see this, yet they do not call the cops, they say later they didn’t know. Johnny must be going to practice his walking on water skills, the Passaic River is frozen solid. He is going for a dip. Sure, in this area of New Jersey where Lyndhurst borders North Arlington we all go for a nude dip in the tidal filth of the Passaic River. The colder the better, firms the fat, tones the mind. Johnny was in my sister Ellen’s class, her first boyfriend. Class of 1969, his brother Joe was in my class, 1966 and an occasional date. The family came from someplace in Eastern Europe, the last name Eustachewich sounded like earwig, hence the nickname Stack stuck. Suicide doesn’t happen much where his Mother is from, she in her kerchiefed head,

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devastated, she doesn’t speak good English like we do ha-ha. I do not remember his having a Dad, but they owned their own home. The idiots of the house didn’t drop a dime on the cops, didn’t know, didn’t care. February, this kid’s stripping himself, walking across the snow, daytime, good visibility. I think, I hope to Jesus Christ, I barrel by your place someday, see smoke coming from the spy window, and keep going. Oh, I thought the family was doing indoor marshmallows for the kids. I haven’t thought about Johnny and Joe in way too many years to mention here. But since Iraq, I have, and I cannot stop crying. All the people had to do was call the police. The town is only one square mile, half of which is a cemetery, happy ending. Johnny saved. Cured at Bergen Pines County Hospital or the VA in East Orange. Mrs. E lives happily, so does John. Ellen doesn’t have a real cold ice spot in her over this. Now that my crying has surfaced, let me tell you Johnny’s body rose too, all the floaters do, it’s the gas.

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Dodge Charger Laura Tohe In 1993, my son and I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC. My eleven-year-old son made the astute observation that even one name was too many for this memorial. As we looked at the names of the veterans, I couldn’t help but think that my brother’s name should have also appeared on the marble wall. He too had been a casualty of a war overseas, at home, and to himself. For Elred, Laurene, Julian, and Lorissa About ten years after my brother returned from Vietnam, he bounced around from veterans hospitals to veterans homes. One summer I visited him at the veterans home in Home Lake, Colorado, and invited him to have lunch in Monte Vista. As we ate, the people in the local diner eyed us over their coffee and lunch. The tension in the room recalled memories of the attitudes toward Indians in border towns near the Diné (Navajo) reservation where we grew up. We grew up playing marbles, “army,” “cowboys and Indians” (yes, we wanted to be the cowboys, because they always won), and for breakfast he made my brothers and me whatever color of pancakes we wanted with red, green, blue, and yellow food coloring.“What color of pancakes do you want?” He’d ask and spill a few drops of dye into the batter and then place a red or green stack of pancakes before us, like he was some short order cook in a truck stop diner. Though we fought every day, sometimes with punches and hair pulling, he was the only one of my four brothers who offered to play with my toy kitchen and me and later as teens, he asked me to dance to rescue me from wallflowerhood at one of the summer dances at the Gallup Armory. We danced furiously in a wide berth, bumping into couples in our wake. One spring about a year before he ended up at the veterans home, a sheepherder found him near the rez in the Arizona desert where he had

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suffered a seizure during one of his binges. My brother was not a violent man, yet the violence he lived through in Vietnam became internalized. From the veterans home he wrote letters to me in elegant calligraphy, the curlicues carefully rolled like baling wire unraveling. He wrote that he was the youngest veteran there. That he wanted to get back together with his first wife and raise their children, who longed to know him, to call him shizhe’i’, “daddy.” That he wanted to get his life on track one day at a time and go to law school. I hoped and wanted this and more for him. By now the alcohol that he used to stave away the nightmares had ravaged his body and mind to the point that his dreams would not be realized. The trail of bottles violated my brother’s young life year after year. As a Boy Scout he had been elected to lead a troop of young scouts into the Ch’ooshgai Mountains to survive one night in the forest. He returned to the camp leading his charges intact and unscathed. Later he dropped out of high school and joined the US Army and was among the few selected for Special Forces. He sent a photo of himself wearing a green beret on his shaved head. He trained to parachute into the perilous jungles of Vietnam sprayed with Agent Orange before the army admitted that it was toxic and caused nerve damage. I imagine him as young Diné flying with nylon wings before falling into the jungle of the current enemy of the United States. In Vietnam he met and brought the monsters home that broke into his dreams suddenly and violently. The seizures that also came scared my grandmother and mother to their cores. He was to live with these terrifying nightmares for the rest of his life. My brother was generous in spirit and with his money. He was not another Indian stereotype cast into the role of the alcoholic Indian: he was an intrepid man who lived life courageously and sometimes foolishly. With what money he had left from his military savings, he bought an orange Dodge Charger with a most powerful engine.The Charger seemed to levitate as it roared the distance from Window Rock to Gallup at 100 miles per hour, breakneck speed on a narrow two-lane highway. It took a mere ten minutes to get to Yatahey Junction, an adrenaline rush for his fast and furious life. Perhaps he tried to outrace his monsters of war. But the monsters always knew where to find him. And eventually they released him a month after he turned forty years old.

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In the spring my mother would say, “That’s the fence your brother put up. Between the both of us we barely had enough strength to finish it.” We looked at the stakes that struggled to stand up and hold the chicken wire. I preferred the orange Dodge Charger and my brother holding tightly to the wheel, his eyes on the road, and a smile on his face.

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A Woman Accompanied by the World Matilde Urrutia The following is an excerpt from Part One of My Life With Pablo Neruda, written by his widow and translated by Alexandria Giardino. It is set among the harrowing days of the coup that swept the military junta into power in Santiago, Chile, on September 11, 1973. From behind his now-clichéd dark glasses, military chief Augusto Pinochet directed his army to overthrow the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. Neruda and Allende had long been friends and political allies; the loss of Allende along with the overwhelming brutality of the coup crushed Neruda. Hours after the coup, he fell ill and never recovered. He died on September 23 of a heart attack in his sleep. Despite the extreme repression that followed the coup, thousands of mourners risked imprisonment and even death to march through Santiago’s streets accompanying their beloved poet to his crypt. September 18, Chile’s Independence Day, which we have always celebrated patriotically with our friends, draws near. This year, although September 18 will be sad, a few friends come to Isla Negra anyway. They bring alarming news from Santiago: some of our friends are in hiding, others are in prison, still others are dead. Pablo receives this news like daggers plunging into his flesh. On the afternoon of the 18th, he is feverish; all day I have been trying to contact the doctor to ask him what I can do. After many failed attempts, I finally locate the doctor at home in Santiago; he promises me that the following afternoon he will send an ambulance to Isla Negra to transport Pablo on the two-hour trip to the Santa María Clinic in Santiago. The following day, I have everything ready and waiting for the ambulance. Pablo is sad; he has a faraway expression that to this day I cannot explain. Our Chow Chow, Panda, refuses to leave Pablo’s side. The night before, she didn’t want to leave our bedroom either. I think that last

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night was the first time she had ever tenaciously disobeyed an order. She wagged her tail, rolled around on the bed next to Pablo, and then lay down and put her head between her front paws as though begging to sleep with us. And there, in this posture somewhere between thankful and prayerful, she stayed. Panda is the first one to hear the ambulance approaching, and she starts to whimper. I stick my head out the front door to see what is happening and am surprised to find that indeed the ambulance is arriving at this early hour. Since we already have everything ready to go, we load quickly into the ambulance. As we are leaving, I realize that Panda has curled up and hidden in a corner of the ambulance. She doesn’t want to leave Pablo, whom she loves very much. Pablo and I travel often, and Panda has never jumped into our car without being called. Someone from the house comes out to get her from the ambulance. Her cries are strange, painful. She already knows… We take the same route from the coast to the capital that we have traveled many times before with much joy and laugher. Usually when we drive along this highway, we spend the time making serious or frivolous plans for what we will do in the city. This time, however, there is a heaviness about us: Pablo has a terribly sad expression on his face; I, making an extraordinary effort to pull him out of his sadness, talk about the construction of the new library in our house at Isla Negra. It is going to hold Pablo’s book collection, which at that very moment is being shipped to us from France. We talk about the library’s huge windows. Pablo loves rooms with great big windows and a lot of light. I warn him, though, saying,“That side of the house gets a lot of light. Be careful, light is bad for books.” Slowly, I distract him, but as we approach the Melipilla Exit, we come upon several national police. They stop us and demand to see our identification. “Where are you coming from? Where are you going?” they ask. One of them says to me, “Get out of the ambulance, ma’am. We have to search it.” I look at him in shock. Get out? Me? Don’t you see that Pablo is ill, that I am holding his hand, that he needs my strength? How can I leave him alone? Don’t you see his sad expression? Can’t you see how he feels the weight of so many crimes being committed, of so much blood being shed right now in this country that he has so often defended?

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Don’t you realize that this is Pablo Neruda, who has made the suffering of the people his own, including your suffering because you too are a part of the people, just like him and just like me? I look at the officer. I say none of this. I have barely enough strength to smile at Pablo, then I get out of the ambulance in silence. How does their search go? I never find out, but when I get back in with Pablo, he has tears in his eyes. He isn’t crying for himself or me, but for all of Chile. His prophetic insight never blinds him to the truth: dark days are descending on our country. We have always thought of Chile as a civilized country. We consider Chileans enemies of violence, upholders of the law, people who detest bloodshed; when such things happen, Chileans will protest vehemently and courageously. I have heard Pablo speak this way whenever he has spoken of his country. Now we are overwhelmed, mute, and it is all just beginning. I keep wondering if it isn’t just a terrible nightmare. When we arrive at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago,“the guardians of silence,” as Pablo calls nurses, are waiting for us. A doctor shows up as well. He has an anxious look on his face; he obviously has many, many problems to handle. Not that it lifts our spirits much to think of it, but who isn’t suffering? Soon, some of our old friends arrive. I greet them by begging them not to tell Pablo any more alarming news; they know, for example, that our house in Santiago has been flooded, looted, and burned. They explain to me that, luckily, plumes of smoke rising from the tallest trees in the garden had alerted the neighbors, who called the fire department. The firemen arrived quickly, so the fire only destroyed a few trees, a storage room, and two small bedrooms. Among the first friends to arrive is the Mexican ambassador to Chile. He insists that we should take Pablo out of the country. President Echevereía of Mexico has offered to send a plane to transport us, along with whatever we want, into exile.That same day, I speak with Pablo about the idea. He won’t listen to me. “I will not leave Chile. My fate is here.This is our country and my place,” he states. I do not tell him of the destruction of our house in Santiago. My friends press me to, though, because they think Pablo must be warned that he could suffer greatly now. In Chile, people on the Left are no longer given either consideration or respect.

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On September 20th, the Mexican ambassador returns to the hospital with a few friends of ours; they try once again to convince Pablo to leave Chile. I finally tell Pablo of our house’s ruin. We have a long, agonizing conversation.We weigh the danger of staying, and, above all, I insist on the impossibility of his receiving adequate treatment for his illness. [In 1971 Neruda had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which was responding well to treatment.] I am delighted when Pablo, finally acquiescing, says we will go to Mexico for a short time, taking only what will be indispensable for such a trip, because we will return to Chile no matter what. I go back to Isla Negra with a list of the books that Pablo wants to take along with him. While I am at the house gathering together a few items, the telephone rings. It is Pablo. He asks me to return to the clinic immediately and then utters mysteriously, “I can’t say more.” I imagine the worst. Frantically, I close the suitcase and run out the door. I am insane with worry that I will be detained along the way to Santiago. “We have to go as fast as possible,” I say to the chauffeur. I have no idea how we manage not to kill ourselves on those roads. Every other moment, I shout at the chauffeur: “Go faster! This car isn’t even moving!” For me, the minutes have become infinitely long. It seems we might never arrive. I race to Pablo’s hospital room and sit by his side, exhausted by the nervous tension. Pablo is agitated and tells me that he has spoken with many friends, that it is incredible that I have no idea what is happening in our country. “They are killing people,” he says. “They bring in mutilated bodies. The morgue is full of dead bodies. Hundreds of people line up to reclaim them. How can you not know what happened to Victor Jara? [A well-known Chilean folk singer and an active member of the Left.] He is one of the mutilated. They destroyed his hands.” How hard I have tried to prevent him from finding out all the terrifying news of the past few days, and he thinks I am ignoring everything. My mouth is so dry, I can barely speak. This bleak portrait that Pablo has painted for me is exactly what I have been trying to save him from by prohibiting visits with his friends. Now he knows everything. His pain, his fear, his anguish, his impotence—all of it is reflected in his face. “The body of Victor Jara, mutilated, how could you not know? Oh, my God! If this is how they kill a songbird…and they say he sang and sang,

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which riled the soldiers,” Pablo says. More and more insistently, he repeats himself. Everything he says penetrates like a knife to my heart. My throat clenches up, but I know I must not cry. I keep thinking I have to calm him down. Finally, when I am able to speak, I reassure him, “I don’t believe everything they say. They have exaggerated everything.” “How?” he asks me. “The ambassadors from Mexico and Switzerland were here. Do you think they would not be informed?” I feign indifference, “No matter what, I simply don’t believe all of that.” I talk with him about other things.We reminisce about May 3, 1952, when we were married in a ceremony by moonlight, and our honeymoon in Capri.There, Pablo placed a ring, engraved with that date, on my finger. It was our first, and our real, wedding. There, we promised that, whatever might come to pass in our lives, we would never separate. Now, in a gentle but firm voice, Pablo informs me that he will not leave Chile and that he wants me to make the same decision. I understand that everything he loves is here and that he cannot bear to be far away when his people are being persecuted so cruelly. ”We’ll stay,” I tell him. Pablo is calm. Our conversation eventually, and unfortunately, brings us to reflect on our return to South America in 1952. When we had reached the port of entry at Montevideo, Uruguay, Chilean officials awaited us: Pablo had been in exile and he did not yet have the paperwork to return to Chile. “What a horror dictatorships are!” Pablo is screaming at me, “How horrible! The persecution!” He becomes feverish again. A tremendous despair has once again taken hold of him, and it fills his eyes with fright. It is as though he were seeing the bodies thrown out onto the streets, the others floating in the Mapocho River, not one, but many, just as I have actually seen. Impassioned, he carries on talking feverishly. He tells me again he will not leave Chile, that he has to stay with those who are suffering, that he cannot flee, that he has to witness what is happening in his country. I am alone with him, with no one to call; our friends have already gone home because of the 6 PM curfew. I feel helpless in my efforts to calm him. His desperation becomes mine; the same pain passes through us both. Where

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am I going to find the strength to comfort him? He drops my hand and grabs at his pajamas, ripping them and shouting, “They’re shooting them. They’re shooting them.” I furiously ring the call button.The shift nurse comes running in to find Pablo in this agitated state. “We’ll give him a tranquilizer,” she says indifferently. She gives him an injection and leaves. Once again, we are alone. He begins to calm down. I am sitting by his side with my head next to his on the pillow. I can feel his feverish warmth. We are together, protected. We are one body; nothing can separate us. With this sense of security, this illusion, feeling him so close, practically inside of me, I feel him fall asleep, and he sleeps through the night. I also sleep for hours. The next day, Pablo continues to sleep. I am happy to leave him be so that he will not suffer, so that he will not ask me for the latest news. To sleep is to forget, and I want him to forget the many macabre events happening right now. By the [next] afternoon, Pablo has still not awoken. I become anxious. I call for Laura, Pablo’s sister, and ask her to stay the night with me in the hospital. My close friend Teresa Hamel also stays. But I am not thinking that Pablo might die; my capacity for suffering stops at that threshold, and I don’t want to see what else could possibly happen. Not even for a moment do I think Pablo is going to die. But I wonder how I can stay alone during a time of so much horror, of such anguish, a time in which they have burned and looted the houses we live in and destroyed the unique pieces of art. I wonder what might happen to me next. Not long ago, Pablo’s doctor had assured me that Pablo was battling cancer quite successfully, and I had recently seen Pablo full of life and enthusiasm. Why now, all of a sudden, would I think of something as terrible as his death? It is September 23rd. Here in this hospital room, we three sad and silent women sit. My eyes do not leave Pablo. Suddenly, I see him grow a little agitated. “Oh good,” I think, “he is going to wake up.” I stand up. A tremor passes through his body, contorting his face. I draw close to him. He is dead. He has never recovered consciousness; he has slept the entire day before his death.

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• • •

We arrive at the small plaza at the base of Cerro San Cristóbal. From all sides men and women emerge; the people come out to join this cortege, to say good-bye to their poet, a man who thought so much of them, who fought so hard to see that equality would one day return, that they would live with justice. I see a woman emerge from a humble house; she is carrying a bouquet of flowers and wearing a veil. She is crying, saying many things I do not hear. We move on. As we pass streets, people pour out from them and join the procession. Military vehicles appear carrying soldiers who have their machine guns pointed at us. But they hold back; they clearly want only to scare us. It doesn’t work. At every turn, more and more people join with the procession and they raise their voices together in shouting, “Pablo Neruda! Present! Now and forever!” Everyone marches, seemingly unaware of the message of terror that the soldiers want to convey with their machine guns ready at every corner. I look behind me and see multitudes of people. Many women are crying. I see a man who catches my attention. He has a round, dark face; his mouth is clenched in pain. He clutches one red carnation to his heart. His expression is steely. This one doesn’t cry; he waits. We arrive at the cemetery.We are many, and so are the soldiers.They draw close to us. We are surrounded by rifles and machine guns. What a militaristic display for the funeral of the most pacifistic man in the world, of a poet! It is a hair-raising funeral. The people know what this display means. They have already lost many loved ones. There is so much blood on the streets of Chile, and for this, the people’s display of such valor is doubly emotional. They are here shouting: “Pablo Neruda! Present! Now and forever!” I will never forget this moment. Their faces show a mixture of pain and rebellion. Each one of them feels the horror inflicted on so many friends and family: arrested, disappeared, tortured. And in this moment of suffocating darkness, like a shout for freedom, one can hear, “Pablo Neruda! Present! Now and forever!”This shout brings me a ray of light, of hope; this is a people full of life, and those who use their boots to suppress them will have a very hard time. Soldiers, this is the voice of the people. I am sure that everyone is afraid, but this is how they will meet their destiny.

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I hear a timid voice sing, “Arise, wretched of the world.” Many voices join in: “Arise, prisoners of starvation.” “Are they going to shoot us?” someone asks me. I look at the people, all of them with heads held high in defiance. It is beautiful to see their courage. My tears have dried up. In this moment, something very strong has been born in me: it is the awareness that I am not alone. Pablo has left me an inheritance: these people. I also lift up my head. The pain I feel inside is great, but I am not alone. Now, I am a woman accompanied by the world.

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A Snapshot in Time: War in Ireland Eavan Boland A place, a moment. It is the late 1970s. During the 1970s I lived in a suburb south of Dublin. The windows of our house looked to the hills. We were on an incline, in the shelter of a small neighborhood. Travelers from all over Ireland had once stopped there to take a well-advertised goat’s-milk cure.

To the east was the coast. If we pointed the car in that direction we could drive onto the crackling surface of Sandymount Strand. There Stephen Dedalus walks and broods at the start of Ulysses; there he says, “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” To the south were the roads, which wandered to the interior—Meath, Waterford, Kilkenny. To the north were other roads. They traveled ninety miles, all the way to Belfast. The physical journey was short; the imaginative one was infinite. Our house was part of the new expansion of the city. All by themselves, these suburbs signaled a new Ireland.The previous decades had been hard-pressed and introverted. Now here at last was the outward-looking place which had been promised: American books and French wines. Cars, fragrances. They crept to the edge of the old nation. They beckoned and enticed. We were southerners, citizens of the Republic. Belfast was a city over which the Union Jack still flew. In the final year of the sixties, a rift between the Northern Irish communities became an abyss. With every month, the north spiraled deeper into violence. The bombings, sniper fire, and internments were confined, with few exceptions, to the counties at the top of the island. But the other violence—cultural, political—spilled out and began to stain the whole country. A place, a moment. It is the late 1970s. I am up at 7 AM. I have

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small children. The morning is chilly. I am in the kitchen, looking out my window at a suburban back garden. For the first five minutes, as I turn on the kettle, watch it steam, pour coffee, I can stare at it uninterrupted. Then I turn on the radio. Guns and armaments fill the kitchen. Hoods, handcuffs, and armalites—the paraphernalia of urban struggle slides easily in and out of the newsreader’s voice. A blackbird flickers down into the grass. I can see neighbors’ rooftops. The voice continues. An odd thought forms in my mind, painful and inexact. I look around the kitchen, lost in contradictions. Then I realize what it is. My coffee is the instant variety, closed in a glass jar made in Huddersfield. My marmalade comes from London. My kettle from Holland. My knife from Germany. My radio from Japan. Only the violence, it seems—only that—is truly Irish.

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In Search of a Larger Truth: Eritrea My Ithaca Louisa Calio Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, is located in the predominantly Muslim north of this East African nation. It is the seat of the two Niles and the ancient Nubian culture, which is now considered to predate Egyptian culture. A multicultural crossroads for over thousands of years, it most recently was home to millions of refugees from neighboring nations including Eritrea, to the north of Ethiopia, which is partially bordered by the Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Red Sea. A former Italian colony (1890–1941) and a British colony under its caretaker government (1941–1950), it was annexed to Ethiopia at the end of World War II to exploit its strategic location on the Red Sea. For over thirty years, Eritrea fought for and recently attained its independence. In the late 1970s, many Eritrean refugees were forced to fl ee as a result of the escalation of bombings in this primarily agrarian country. One of the first nations to receive them was Sudan. In Wonders of the African World, Henry Louis Gates Jr. writes, “Nubia today denotes not just the geographical region of northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. It has come to stand for all that has been lost or stolen from the historical record of Blacks…until the West and the rest of us knows Africa we can never know ourselves.” When one is awakened by such a soul call, we may find ourselves moving to faraway places or, in my case, taking a journey to Sudan in 1978. On arrival, I met all my ancestral fears in the form of an immigration offi cer who was offended that I was a woman who dared to travel alone, but much had prepared me and despite his efforts to bar my way, after many hours of interrogation and delay, I entered. I had come to the place of the long view of history, the Sahara, a desert where one seeks to know her own soul and the causes of her history. I was immediately aware of where the feminine struggle originated—the sense that women are not seen as fully human becomes quite physical when they appear as walking carpets and covered mummies. These women were seemingly invisible,

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and soon to be made even more invisible by a return to Islamic fundamentalism in the region.Yet, it was clear the women were bringing in the new; it was so strong a feeling wherever I went that I began to think this may have awakened the fear behind a return to fundamentalism. As an Italian American, I felt a deeper connection to Eritrea, which was once a former Italian colony. I had a profound empathy for the trauma of culture loss, diaspora that my ancestors lived through, as well as similarity from a shared culture that drew us together in inexplicable ways. Going to Sudan brought me face-to-face with many refugees; families seeking an escape from refugee camps from the horrors of war, the pain of separation, and the confusion of cultural clashes. I helped bring one family to America. Kassu Tsadik, the woman who inspired this poem, unselfishly gave her children up to a new life, to save them from the death and destruction of a thirty-year neocolonial war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that still flares. She and many other women I met in Khartoum kept an amazing grace even during the worst days of their lives filled with good-byes. Kassu came to America only once to see her children and me. She was literally saying good-bye to them in Sudan to save them from a worse fate. In a world of war, she embodied the wisdom of the feminine: generosity, peace, and a willingness to surrender what is right versus wrong for the love needed to heal. For Kassu Tsadik, courageous Eritrean mother Eritrea My Ithaca Khartoum Telatta, a refugee camp (1978) Weeks pass, and the young men and I grow closer. We visit refugee camps regularly, and on one particularly bright day, a day when people and objects appear closer and more luminous, we meet an old and beautiful Eritrean woman.

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In the purple light of dusk we sit inside a small concrete hovel sipping the thick sweet coffee she offers. Still wearing the traditional pristine, white muslin dress and veil of her ancestors, she appears insular and separate from external surroundings; I watch as she moves gracefully, despite the confinement to joyfully scoop the dark coffee beans into a small black iron pan she roasts over a charcoal flame, making a fresh pot for each round of servings. She smiles warmly as I ingest the delicious aromatic brew. Her hospitality and generosity have remained, even under these circumstances the simple ritual we share binds her to me and to all those who have stayed compassionate while living in hell and under fire. Although we cannot speak a common language, when it’s time to leave, these words come to me in a deep impress: Fix your eyes on a thousand, thousand stars in the black dome of sky, stars that do not shine, but spit hell fire. Look on the sweet earth, parting, exploding, earth our fathers worked with sweat. Look, but don’t walk on it It may become your gravesite tonight! See the flowers, rose petals, Only thorns are left. This is my song today, yes.

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Think of those you love dearly Now think of losing them, multiply this 4 million times And surely your loss will have touched mine My name is Eritrea; my name is South Africa, Somalia, Iraq my name is America, before and after the European… I am an Eritrean, although I was told by your country, I am to be Ethiopian. I am sure you were not told of this. The scars of many tears cover my face —my struggle an endless battle cry. Was my beauty the cause of this or the buried treasures within that attracted so many of them Italian, Turk, Arab and Greek? Too many to name have come and ravished me. Taking, taking so much greed! How I would prefer to speak to you of our customs and dress The netsala women wear covers my head The table we set is seated with eight —we share one plate. Our land is also shared—divided by lot We are many kinds of people and speak many languages. How I long to tell you of our cool highlands our capital—Asmara—as it was our desert, touched by the Red Sea the sea that led Moses to freedom shall see freedom in me Red, red now with the blood of my children. Wars are interminable separations My children are all refugees or dead Who will pay this blood debt? We are still fighting the wars of possessions: my gods, your gods, my land, your land, my race, your race.

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We remain locked in the jaws of separation each regretful act justified by past dreadful deeds ever recreating the patterning of pain. We are not yet making unity; we are not yet making peace. Each branch of learning remains at war as we remain caught in contradictions. Today I will call myself human being will you join me? All of the colors make one light why stay in the dark? The speed of light is very great Just imagine where we could be! We each need the same basic things: a blazing sun, a golden glow around everyone, enough to live, enough to eat, to love. There seem to be many paths before us, but all the paths really divide into two. Which will you take? The glitter of fool’s gold has been a false light for far too long.

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Lebanon, Summer 2006: A View from Cyprus Lisa Suhair Majaj The following piece records day-by-day responses to the Israeli assault on Lebanon during the summer of 2006. The war decimated thousands of lives, brutally destroyed Lebanon’s infrastructure, reactivated political tensions within Lebanon, and brought back bitter memories of previous eras of war. Within the space of a month, twenty years of painstaking restoration had been destroyed. My response to the events was deeply personal. I was terribly worried about friends and acquaintances in Lebanon and sobered by the vagaries of fate: my family and I had planned to travel to Lebanon a few days after the war began, and had we had slightly different travel dates we would have been among those masses of people trying to fl ee the war-stricken country. The images on my television screen made me relive old memories of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which I had experienced personally as a college student at the American University of Beirut. Meanwhile, reading and watching news from a variety of countries made me vividly aware of the disparity in how events were reported from location to location. The edited journal entries that follow were originally posted on the website www.velocity7.com/poetrybootcampblog, where I was a blogger with two other poets. The blog became a space where I could share my anguish over the events as well as let readers know how events looked to us from Cyprus, a small island once again on the world map as a result of war. July 16. I can’t believe what I’m seeing on my television screen. I lived in Lebanon from 1978–1982, and evacuated out amid the Israeli invasion of 1982: what is happening now is wakening old and painful memories. For days I have been frantically trying to follow the whereabouts of various friends as they seek escape routes. Some have managed to escape through Syria. But one tells me that a whole family of her relatives was killed in a bomb shelter in the south when an Israeli bomb fell on them.

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I find it astonishing that the US and UK can reject the call for a cease-fire. But clearly there are larger plans afoot, and the lives of civilians and the fate of a country are irrelevant in the face of those plans. These days I am crying for Lebanon. Once more it will be destroyed while the world watches and nods their heads sagely and then turns to the sports section. July 18. Many of our friends are still stranded in Lebanon. Others have made it out. The flood of refugees to Cyprus is increasing; hotels in Larnaca are flooded. I haven’t been sleeping much, too dizzy from the news. I continue to be stunned by the targets that Israel is bombing. Hospitals. Christian areas. Towns way up north that can’t in anyone’s wildest dreams be included in the “buffer zone.” Tonight I watched footage of a boatload of evacuees: lots of unaccompanied kids under the age of ten. One little French-German boy had lost both parents; he himself had been hit in the spine and they brought him off on a stretcher. I’ve seen some terrible pictures out of Lebanon of children’s bodies, burned beyond recognition, totally mutilated—stuff to haunt your nightmares. But almost more disturbing was something forwarded by an Israeli peace activist: pictures of excited young Israeli schoolgirls writing messages on the missiles that were about to be fired into Lebanon. I heard today that the Israeli shells have targeted food supplies: wheat silos and vegetable storage units. I’m worried about the elderly parents of a friend who were intending to fly out of Lebanon the day the crisis started, and had emptied their apartment of food. Now they’re stuck there in a city of empty supermarkets. There was a cartoon in the Greek paper on Sunday: people in bathing suits at the beach, looking up at the sky startled as the Grim Reaper, with his scythe, flew overhead on a missile. Indeed, here we are, going on with our lives and our summer pastimes, while others, so near, are dying. A women’s organization in Nicosia is planning a candlelight vigil, with poetry. What good will it do? Who knows? We raise our voices because we have few options, and because we hope that words are better than bombs.

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July 28. More friends were airlifted from Lebanon, and we took them to Paphos, a seaside town two hours from Nicosia. We thought that would be far from the refugee crush, but the town turned out to be full of evacuees. At breakfast we sat next to a table with two women and three young children, all from Bint Jbeil. One of the women was weeping quietly, her eyes red, her mouth a strained line. Her companion shook her head sadly. “She’s crying continuously,” she said. In Nicosia, the news is full of collection efforts. People are donating food and medicine to send to Lebanon; others are taking diapers, suitcases, sheets and mattresses to the refugee centers. Evacuees are housed in stadiums and schools, and also in old refugee camps left over from when Cypriots were refugees after the 1974 invasion by Turkey: a sad irony. The only bright note of the past days was this: two Lebanese kids housed in a refugee camp near a village had a birthday, and the entire village threw them a party. July 29. Today we went to Larnaca to meet yet more friends who have evacuated.This time it was my college roommate, from the American University of Beirut, with her three daughters. Although their house in Beirut was in a relatively safe area, the bombs were clearly audible: the girls panicked every time a plane went overhead, and the little one clung to her mother all night. So she felt she had to leave. The journey through Syria was frightening, she told me, because the Israelis were bombing all trucks on the road: they were extremely tense until they crossed the border. My friend has been through civil war, Israeli invasions, and bombardments. She just wants a normal life. But now she and her daughters are refugees. Last night I was remembering another college friend: Rula. A kind person with a sweet face, curly hair, and a round figure, Rula lived down the hall from me in the dorm. I was the odd ball out: an American whose Arabic was lousy; a Christian; a Palestinian.Those were the days of the civil war, and things like religion and national identity mattered, crucially. But Rula didn’t care that I was all the wrong identities; she invited me over for tea, pressed homemade food on me, invited me to her family home in Saida. I haven’t heard from Rula for twenty-four years. During the 1982

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Israeli invasion of Lebanon, she was at her family home in the South when I fled Lebanon on an open cargo boat to Cyprus (a trip that took days because the Israeli Navy intercepted us and took us to Israel for interrogation). After I got home to Jordan I tried to contact friends in Lebanon, but it was extremely difficult. Then I went to the US for graduate school. I wrote letters to Rula, but never heard back. About a year later I learned that her house had been bombed and destroyed during the invasion, her brother had been killed and she herself had been badly burned. I never found out what happened after that. My letters went unanswered, and eventually I stopped writing. Now I wonder: is Rula alive, in the south, under the bombs? Is she frantically trying to keep her family safe? Is she a refugee somewhere, living under the trees in public parks, or in a school with 5 bathrooms for a thousand people? Or is she dead? I wish I knew how to get news of her. I would bring her to Cyprus, offer her a place to stay, cook for her: try to repay the hospitality she showed me back when I was a lonely 18-year-old, and she offered me the gift of friendship. July 30. At my mother-in-law’s house we watched the news, horrified. A residential building in Qana had been bombed. The dead were mainly children. We saw small limbs of children sticking out from the rubble: an arm, a leg attached to a foot. We saw a man carry his small daughter, dead, in his arms, as he gasped over his shoulder, “Go, see the slaughter.” We saw many people carrying the limp forms of children. We heard a man on a stretcher whisper: “it was 2 AM. They started bombing.” We saw a man cry out, “Isn’t it shame for the Americans, shame for the Israelis, shame for the Arabs?” No words for the grief these images rouse. The news said the dead were poor and disabled people. They had no means to leave, and anyway, the roads were being bombed. So they put white sheets in their windows hoping to indicate that they were not militants. In vain. July 31. Tonight I went to a vigil with my four-year-old son. We watched women light candles spelling the word PEACE. I didn’t want

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people to chant or be angry: I just wanted to grieve quietly. Back at home a friend called and told me to turn on the news: Bint Jbeil. The images before me defied comprehension: nothing but rubble. Imagine a house of cards flattened. Entire towns in South Lebanon are just gone, obliterated, nothing left but names on the map. I thought of the destroyed towns of Palestine, over five hundred of them, wiped off the map, only the cactus left at the perimeter. A reporter interviewed one old woman who had lived for six days under the rubble. Her face was lined, drawn; she reminded me of old Palestinian refugee women in Jordan when I was growing up. She complained that her stomach hurt. Wouldn’t your stomach hurt if you’d lived for six days underground and emerged to find the entire world you’d known flattened? They carried her away in a stretcher. She looked like she was eighty years old—or maybe one hundred and eighty. August 3. Tonight I got an email from a Lebanese American poet whose family is from Bint Jbeil. He saw his eighty-year-old grandfather on TV yesterday, emerging from the basement of his house after three weeks of bombings. Imagine getting news of your family like that! Yesterday’s news showed pine coffins being loaded onto a truck, ready for the corpses of Qana: freshly cut, plain, almost crude boxes, many childsized. Nearby was a refrigerated truck with corpses: body bag after body bag. Aid workers stood by ready to bury the bodies, but the bombardment was too heavy, so they had to wait. I read of a dilemma facing some Red Cross workers. A ceiling had collapsed on top of an old woman, and the concrete was pinning her down at the waist. They couldn’t get her free, and they didn’t know what was better: to cut her body in half so that they could take her in two pieces to the morgue, or to leave her there until they could come back with heavy equipment. If they left her there, they ran the risk of wild dogs eating her. As if it isn’t bad enough to die: you have to fear wild dogs eating you. This weekend I’ll take my Lebanese friend to visit Episkopi, the village my husband is from. The beach there is rough and beautiful, with cliffs echoing at the end of the beach, hang-gliders dotting the sky (the cliffs make a good take-off point), and windsurfers etching colorful patches on the water. When the wind comes up you have to be careful not to be

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pushed down the coast toward a spot where an ancient quay, underwater these last thousand years or so, makes treacherous currents. I’m hoping the wind and the waves will wash away some of the sorrow of these past weeks, or at least make it possible to go home and watch the latest news update with something more productive than angry despair. August 4. My poet friend wrote with more news of his grandfather. After surviving three weeks of bombing without food or medicine, the next day he died. Sometimes words are useless. August 8. We spent the weekend at the beach without news. Even though the salt clung to my skin like dried tears, still there was wind and sunlight glancing off water and the throbbing rhythms of the coast. I had the sense that I could throw my gaze out to infinity and it would soar freely, unobstructed by history or anything human—which at that moment was desirable. But then it was back to the television and the Internet. Over lunch yesterday with my friend we watched the Lebanese prime minister on television, his voice jagged with raw emotion. I’ve never seen a politician break down like that. It was hard to go on eating hot dogs, sitting at a table with people who don’t know when they will be able to go home. My husband’s friend, an engineer at the university whose work involves the simulation of fluid flows, has plotted the trajectory of the oil spill resulting from the Israeli bombardment. His research group presented their findings to the Cyprus government, which sent the results to Lebanon, Israel and the European Union. The hope was that Israel would allow a cleanup to occur, and that the European Union would provide funding. Israel didn’t agree, and the oil is spreading. But here’s the irony: historically the winds turn around mid-August. If that holds true, the oil will end up on Israeli beaches. My nine-year-old daughter is getting worried about the effect of the oil on fish and wildlife. On the beach near Episkopi there are turtle nests protected by environmental groups; we are waiting for the eggs to hatch and the baby turtles—an endangered species—to make their way back to the water. My Lebanese friend’s twelve-year-old daughter said yesterday, “It’s

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awful that people are dying, in Lebanon and in Israel both. I think they should stop bombing. I want to do something to make them stop. And I want to go home.” August 11. I’ve been working on a poster with some other Arab American writers: a call for a ceasefire that we hope can be used in a variety of activist contexts. An artist created a vivid design for us, and we’re including fragments of poems. And a Lebanese friend of mine just emailed me wondering how we can make a coalition of people across borders, something to work against this insanity that is devastating our world. She noted that there seems to be as much division in Israel as in the US—like me, she gets articles written by Israelis calling for a stop to the violence, but meanwhile the leadership is marching ahead inexorably. How to create a coalition of humanistic voices that can actually DO something? That’s the rub. We’re all so puny in front of a tank or beneath a warplane. Yesterday I received a photo collage on Lebanon. It was searingly powerful: images of Lebanon before and Lebanon now, set to music rent by the sound of tanks and bombs. Midway through I stared in shock: among the pictures of evacuees were the children of friends: two sweet faces, in helmets, about to get on a helicopter. My personal connections to this war are exhausting me. I can only imagine how it is for the dispersed Lebanese, whose country it is and whose pain I cannot fully experience. And for those actually there? Impossible. It doesn’t look like there is any end in sight. And so we continue, day by day, as the number of dead and homeless on both sides of the border grows. So simple to call for ceasefire! So simple to just stop shooting and start talking. But no, that wouldn’t fit the master plan. I’m hoping the turtles will hatch soon. I want them to go home to the sea. I want them to swim freely in their natural habitat, unthreatened by destructive humans who still, after all this time on the planet, haven’t figured out the basics of how to live. August 12. Here’s an image that I have been turning around in my mind for some days: swallows—at least twenty to twenty-five of them— nesting in a vine in Episkopi, in the corner of an old house that is now a lovely bed and breakfast. We walked in late at night and the swallows were clinging like pale fruit to the vine, their white bellies vibrating in

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the shadows. It took a few moments to realize that those were birds, not flowers or whitish leaves. Once I realized the vine was alive with birds the whole corner took on a vibrancy, an animation: the birds trembled and rustled and moved slightly, their bodies shifting in the late-night light. It was a beautiful sight. Swallows return each year to the same place to build their nests: they are creatures of habit and constancy. Outside our bedroom window in Nicosia there is a swallow nest that a family of swallows patiently rebuilds each spring, the parents fetching bits of paper and string and twig to fill the gaps left by the winter winds. There is something wonderfully life affirming about swallows: they bridge seasons and years. When I saw the swallows clinging to the vine in Episkopi, I felt a small surcease of sadness, a small flicker of hope. In the morning when I checked, the swallows had all gone about their business: the vine was green and empty. But now I know where to find them, late at night in the village. They come back to their nests; the turtles find their way back to the sea. Surely refugees too can find their way home, across borders and blockades? Hope is a small candle lit against despair. We hold onto it tightly: it is better than the alternative. August 16. Since the news of the ceasefire I have almost not wanted to know more: let it just be true, I find myself repeating silently, let it just be true. This is just the beginning, not the end of anything, especially not for those whose lives have been destroyed. But beginnings are better than nothing. My Lebanese friend called me today wanting to know the number of Middle East Airlines. She isn’t sure when the airport will open, but she wants to be on the first plane home. She intends to go south at once, to help. I want desperately to join her, although that probably won’t happen, given my family circumstances. We’re still collecting foodstuffs here in Cyprus to send to Lebanon. People are still in need. The ceasefire is not a Band-Aid. But the convoys south say it all: People want to go home. There is not much that can keep them away. I am struggling now between anger at what happened, and hope that it can be repaired. Let the politicians have learned something, at

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least! But having listened to the heads of state speak I have little hope of that. What hope I have lies in the common people in every country, who can see through the political machinations to the essence of what we all want: the right to live without fear. Yesterday I saw a picture of rubble in South Beirut: jutting concrete slabs at impossible angles, and wedged in between, a child’s Pooh bear. It was a heartbreaking image. It will take time to move forward, no doubt, for everyone affected. But we have to. Peace requires hope. Conclusion: A United Nations-brokered ceasefire went into effect on August 14. However, the ceasefire did not result in the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon. It was not until September 8 that Israel lifted its naval blockade of Lebanon. It was October 1 before most Israeli troops withdrew from Lebanon, and December 3 before Israeli troops finally withdrew from the border village of Ghajar.The scars left by the summer’s war are deep. In late November there were still two hundred thousand displaced Lebanese. The shattered infrastructure and economy have not recovered. Political tensions within Lebanon have escalated: in late January a standoff between the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and the Hizballah-led opposition erupted in street fighting. Recently I exchanged e-mails with a professor who had invited me to speak in Beirut. My winter schedule looked difficult, so he suggested instead a fall 2007 date, barring, as he put it, “unforeseen invasions and the like.” His comment brought a sad smile to my face; to live in Lebanon has always required a dry sense of humor. The view from Cyprus continues to be a painful one. Lebanon, a country I have loved for decades, a country that shaped my transition from youthfulness to adulthood, teeters once again on the brink of trouble. From Cyprus, we watch the news, we wait, and we hope.

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CHAPTER 4 DIFFERENT KINDS OF WAR: BATTLES ON THE HOME FRONT

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How Could It Be? Nancy J. Jackson War can take many forms other than nation against nation. Many personal wars are fought; one that is being fought by millions of people is the cancer war. Once it begins, the battles are numerous. When first hit with the word cancer, all the air left my body. I walked around feeling like I had been slapped by one of my dearest friends and didn’t know why. I compared this to being the little child on the playground who nobody would play with, like I wasn’t good enough to participate in this game (life) anymore. I didn’t know why, or what I had done, to suddenly be kicked out of the world for which I had worked so hard. A few weeks of screaming, crying, and then I felt anger. THIS is when the warrior spirit came to me. She takes over at times. When I am walking down that basement hallway to the radiation room, to be shot full of deadly rays, it isn’t me walking that hall…it’s her. When I sit there at chemo sessions and let them begin the drip, drip, drip of pure poison into my main heart artery, I have already stepped aside and left the room; she’s taking it. Ever heard the expression “time to put on your fightin’ britches”? Well, the warrior spirit puts them on me and carries me through. To fight, a warrior spirit must be in your soul. The following poem reflects my feelings upon being diagnosed. As you read it, I wish for each of you a warrior spirit for your own personal battles, whatever they may be. As I held her close, keeping her safe from all ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night, rocking her gently, singing Puff the Magic Dragon to her softly, feeling her sweet baby breath in the hollow of my neck‚ it was there. Inside me. Growing. It meant to kill me.

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Silently. Hawk flew over. How could it be?

I had looked through every row of corn and knew there was nothing to harm her as she ran naked through the corn plants, tiny toes caressing the warm, smooth dirt, a plump soft honey baby behind appearing as she stooped to touch the earth. She was safe, happy, in her element, at one with all‚ and it was there. Inside me. Growing. It meant to kill me. Silently. And hawk flew over. How could it be?

A crisp autumn day and he entered the world with a cry as the golden orange leaves fell, a beauty to behold, damp baby smell, hair as soft as a downy chick. When eyes twinkled with a joy, like a promise he promised to show me in the coming years, it was there. Inside me. Growing. It meant to kill me. Silently. And hawk flew over. How could it be?

In the hot sultry days of August he opens his eyes for the first time and I see the soul of an old one. So brand new, tiny kitten whimpers and mews but then the eyes make contact and it is clear, we have known each other before. Hello, old friend. And hawk flew over as panther came to me, ready to assist in a battle

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I had not heard of yet. Blue heron was waiting to bear my pain away when needed. No longer silent, exposed in a lab, the war begins.

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You’re White Christine Stark Many prostitution and pornography rings create scenes that are replicas of historical racism, such as slavery and genocide. Some of these rings are white supremacist or network with white supremacists and reenact historical, racebased trauma on the women and children in the rings. Other abuses include electric shock, brainwashing, medical experimentation, physical torture, rape, gang rape, and impregnation. Perpetrators include business and government offi cials, doctors, police, and church offi cials. Listening to survivors of prostitution and pornography rings is strikingly similar to listening to survivors of boarding schools. Boarding school survivors were abused by clergy, police, and business and government offi cials. Some of the children were prostituted. Other trauma suffered at the boarding schools include beating, rape, poisoning, murder, mind control, electric shock, starvation, being left naked in subzero weather, and medical experimentation (removal of organs and exposure to radiation.) The perpetrators and the traumas are essentially the same. Most of the survivors of prostitution and pornography I know are Indian or have Indian ancestry. I believe this is a result of the government and church preying upon Indian communities for centuries. Due to that predation, Indian communities have been and still are vulnerable to and targeted by rapists. Also, some survivors of boarding schools may not have been able to escape the perpetrators and therefore the perpetrators continued to entrap their families, sometimes through generations. Other survivors of boarding schools may have become perpetrators themselves and brought their children and even grandchildren into the rings. These rings are like cancer. Once they develop in a particular place (such as a church on a reservation), they replicate their disease from generation to generation. I wrote this piece to put the core experiences of my life down on paper. I wrote it to bear witness to the atrocities committed on this land. I wrote it for those who did not survive. I wrote it for those still being hurt in these ways. And I wrote it for the ancestors.The truth matters.

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you’re white the nine or ten year old white boy down the block shouted when I told him the leather wrapped in sinew around my neck was a medicine bag I’m Indian I said and the group of children huddled around my dog rolling on his back legs flailing like a furry cockroach stared children just children asking honest questions not a group of grown men in a circle tightening a noose around a child me a child me it was so long ago I have to remember long ago but it’s happening now in my head I’m Indian! the boy looked surprised at my insistence it’s happening now in my head those men circling around me drawing the rope tight I have to remember they’re just children asking honest questions Well where’s your Indian stuff he shot back one of the black girls grabbed my dog’s paw out of the air and shook it In my house I should have educated them but I was choking on the memory couldn’t explain to him or the other children about genocide about the abuse in my family about mixed blood I wanted to get home to the turtle rattle above my bed the sage bound with a red strip of cloth the pow wow cd I’d just got back from the reservation three whole days of fitting in being whole being true no one telling me I’m white no one questioning if I belonged no doubt banging in my own head like chunks of ice in a small glass a drink the medicine of choice in my family part Indian on both sides some of us had dark skin year round some burned bright red in the summer some a buttery gold Why does she stay out in the sun people said about my grandma she gets so dark least she could do is cover up I’ve been told by one two three four or more other Indians that I look Indian look like a mixed Indian a mixed up Indian the ones they grew up with on the reservation their cousin their friend on the east coast a dark haired round faced singer from Fargo but I still have panic attacks that I can’t be an Indian that it will be taken from me those attacks are as bad as the ones about the incest child prostitution pornography organized crime my family’s legacy race isn’t one strand of a braid it’s not even the color of the hair it is the hair and even though I am a buttery skinned woman I can’t ever untie it or separate from it even though I can pass everywhere I go I tell everyone I’m Indian! it’s who I am how I know the world my spirit the spirits of my ancestors the history of my family when I was four I wanted to

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run through the woods old growth two hundred year old firs in northern Minnesota to find the Indians live with them away from the abuse a world I didn’t understand or want to be part of Indian blood on both sides I was born into a white supremacist prostitution pornography ring organized crime my father called me a papoose even when I was a teenager he slung the word at me and now after fifteen years of no contact with him I am safe enough to feel sad that he his red skin would call his black haired prize such a name that he would hate himself enough to become a nazi in the woods of Minnesota where there are miles of thick forest for hate filled men to do what they please where the spirits of the trees and rocks and moon and the pock marked memories of the victims are the only witnesses to the rape torture murder which seem so outlandish to such a civilized just place like white Amerika the victims must be insane our minds twisted around poles unable to tell reality from imagination they believe we need the white man’s medicines and labels to straighten out our minds they don’t want us to talk they don’t want us to believe the feelings in our bodies the memories visions scars they don’t want us to read the history books about what really happened when Columbus hit these shores fifteen million dead in four hundred years severed Indian heads left on village poles millions raped shot starved dismembered given pox infested blankets cheated out of land with decrees from Jefferson and Jackson long haired Indian scalps hung in dens as souvenirs Indians hung from trees marched hundreds of miles over snowy mountains or through the desert which would later give Hitler ideas on how to exterminate the Jews But no there couldn’t be organized rape murder white supremacy here now on this land they say and I wonder what they think this country was founded on independence day 1863 a group of white boys in Hutchinson Minnesota kicked an Indian man’s corpse in the streets It’s a Indian! It’s a Indian! then stuffed lit firecrackers in his nostrils and mouth until nothing was left they say they don’t believe us baby rape murder organized rape rings couldn’t exist not here in the US of A such a civilized just country maybe somewhere else where brown skinned people live like South Amerika or in the black jungles of Africa and we say no here they happen here they tied me up called me papoose and squaw and put a feather on my

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head gang raped me a dirty little Indian girl woo woo woo! let out the war whoop they took pictures of it all tried to make me never want to be an Indian make me want to pass keep me from my spirit from my ancestors the spirits of the earth and sky turn me into one of them a red blooded white supremacist but my connection to the trees and moon and ancestors was stronger and I say genocide still happens here in so many ways in rape rings in the woods in legislation white washed history books on the street corner in line at the grocery store they want to wipe us out us Indians what happened to me and the others held hostage beneath the moon has been going on for five hundred years and they say no that never happened you’re crazy impressionable childlike your memory is unreliable you can’t trust yourself stupid girl and then they find the pornography which they have been doing frequently the past few years because there is so much more of it and when they see the pictures of the babies being raped they write in their newspapers The toddler’s eyes seem so glazed as if that is a curious way for a baby to react to rape they do not write about the penis ripping apart her insides or the man behind the camera and I know after five hundred years they have learned nothing

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A Glimpse into the Life of a Levantine Suranee Mariettha Perera I could hear Sanjey softly breathing while he lay sleeping next to me. Sanjey, my knight in shining armor, my husband, my best friend. In a country such as ours, Sanjey could have easily found a wife who was untouched and pure, a virgin who his family would not be ashamed of. I remember the words his sister once said, “She is not pure. Only God knows how many men she has lain with while she lived in all those countries. I forbid you to have anything to do with her. What will people say?” Yes, I thought, amused, whatever would people say? Sanjey’s sister is an example of the many Sri Lankans who believe that marrying a person who is not “pure” brings dishonor to one’s family. Sri Lankans like Sanjey’s sister have one thing in common; they ridicule women whom they find to be a threat and try to strip them of their humanity with their hurtful words and abusive actions, which cause an everyday war. But Sanjey’s sister and those like her never bothered me. For the life I lived and the abuse I endured as a child made me immune to their verbal and abusive attacks. This life, my life, my story, of which I wish to share a part. I was born in 1969 in Sri Lanka, an island that was once known as “The Isle of Paradise.” My birth, in my mother’s words was a “bad omen.” I knew deep down that she blamed me for the circumstances that led to my parent’s divorce. I guess that’s one of the reasons why she left me when I was barely a year old. I didn’t see or hear from my mother again until fi fteen years later, when I turned sixteen. My life during the years prior to being reunited with my mother was an experience in itself. Right after my mother walked out on us, my father, along with my two brothers and I, moved in with my dad’s parents. My grandparents were one of the affluent couples in society at that time. I was to learn later in life that my father’s decision to move in with our grandparents was a

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wise one. For it was that decision that saved us from knowing the “pangs of hunger.” We were living in an era that some called the dark ages. An era which came into being as Sri Lanka, the Isle of Paradise, was handed over to Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, who made a historical mark in the world by being the first lady to become Prime Minister of a nation. Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s party, The United Front Coalition, came into power with the promise that the “government managed distribution would make goods in everyday use widely available to all Sri Lankans at cheap prices.”1 Unfortunately, she and her party failed in fulfilling her promise. Her broken promise resulted in many of my people, adults and children alike, in certain parts of our island, suffering from malnutrition, for “rising trade deficits, coupled with limited foreign assets and questionable international credit worthiness forced a precipitous retreat from these promises. In the span of three years, Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government was forced to cut subsidies and raise prices for staple foods. Wheat, milk and sugar were rationed and the distribution of free rice was eliminated. Shortages and distribution bottlenecks meant hours of waiting in long lines for food, an experience that many Sri Lankans still remember.”2 My father and so many others ended up having their children stand in those long queues, along with them, usually as early as four in the morning. Can you picture children as little as three years old standing in a queue for hours at an end just to get some bread, rice, or milk? When I was two and a half years old, my dad made another decision: a decision that was going to change my whole life. My dad was offered a job in an aviation company in Singapore as an engineer, which he gladly took. I still remember sitting on my father’s lap as we (my grandparents, my two brothers, and I) drove to the airport. I had no idea that we were driving to the airport to see my dad off. For it was only after he picked me up and hugged me while telling me to be a good girl until he sends for me did I know my father was leaving me. I remember screaming and crying and kicking as my grandmother pulled me away from him. I grabbed onto him with all my might but it didn’t help. In an instant, I was in my grandmother’s arms with tears rolling down my cheeks and gasping for breath from all the crying. I watched as my father climbed up those steps

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leading into the airport, and then, he was gone. I was heartbroken and so scared, for my father, who was my world, had left me. It wasn’t long before my brothers and I joined him in Singapore. Before our flight I remember my grandmother telling me to be a good girl and that my father had found me a mother who was going to love and take care of me. As she said these words, her beautiful almond-shaped brown eyes were filled with tears. I was to learn later in life that my grandmother had begged my father not to take me away from her. The so-called “mother” my grandmother was talking about—the one who my father had found to love and take care of me—well, she never did love or take care of me. No, she pretty much terrorized and abused me. Although the scars have healed, the memories of those painful times still linger and are clearly sketched in my mind. As I sat staring at my father and his new wife, the excitement that I felt, knowing I was going to be reunited with my father, vanished. My stepmother stretched out her arms signaling me to come towards her; I didn’t budge. I wanted so much to like her, but something within cautioned me to be careful. That something was what I called my instinct. Animals are born with a rare gift, to survive by their instincts. As a three-year-old, I, too, happened to possess that gift. My brothers were sent to school immediately upon our arrival in Singapore; I had to wait for some time. It was a very lonely period for me while my brothers were off at school and my dad went to work. My stepmother would lock me out of the apartment and make me stay up on the rooftop, only letting me back in just before my brothers got back from school. Rain or shine, it didn’t matter to her. I distinctly remember hearing voices coming from our apartment while I spent my days on the rooftop. The voices turned out to be my stepmother’s and the other sounded like a man’s. I guess my stepmother had found someone to ease her loneliness while my dad was away all day working to earn the bread and butter, which was needed to fill our stomachs and give us a better life. My stepmother seemed to have a passion for sleeping with every man that came her away. This I was to learn many years later. I wonder if my poor father knew about this. One of her other favorite pastimes, when she was bored, was to

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attack me. If I mentioned something and that something was not to her liking, she would wash my mouth with hot spices or soap. If she caught me doing something that irritated her, she would rub oil on my legs and reach out for a cane or belt and begin whipping me. I still wonder, after all these years, was my father clueless of the abuse that I, his child, part of his flesh and blood, endured in the hands of his wife, or did he simply not care? My days spent on the rooftop had taken a toll on me, for I began suffering from seizures. It was so bad that every time I had an attack, I could see the furniture moving and strange visions. One vision was that of the Virgin Mary. It was the scariest period of my life. The doctors had no idea what was wrong with me. My father found it hard, so very hard to believe the things I used to utter every time I went into one of those “seizures.”Then one night I awoke drenched in sweat. As I looked towards the entrance, which leads to my bedroom, I saw the most hideous looking creature with long shaped horns staring at me with red, fiery-looking eyes. I, a three-and-a-half-year-old, sensed that this creature had come to take me. As I looked to my right, I saw a white shining light and as this light became more visible, it took the shape and appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peace enveloped me, a peace that I was to experience quite often later on in my life. When I looked toward where the creature was, it was no more, and as I looked to where my savior Lord Jesus was, he too was no more. I remember falling back to sleep, a very calm and peaceful sleep, which I had been deprived of ever since I began having these seizures. No one believed my story the next day or thereafter.To them, it had been only a dream. But to me it was real and I, even today, believe it to be so. I never experienced a seizure again, for Jesus had come to me in the middle of the night and saved me and released me from my suffering. I started school right after my recovery. I enjoyed it thoroughly and excelled in all my subjects. I was a fast learner. My teachers were amazed. But as I was being introduced to the world of reading, writing, math, science, English, etc., the children of my age back in Sri Lanka were not so lucky. For not every child was instilled with a proper education. Education equality did not exist in Sri Lanka; it was divided, for the children of the rich “derived larger benefits from the system than the children of the poor. Larger benefits such as being able to afford what the ‘poor students’ could

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not: ‘uniforms, stationary, transportation to and from school, etc.’”3 Another problem that these children faced was the lack of qualified teachers. Since “rural schools were more widely scattered, with poor facilities and inadequate equipment, especially in the sciences, teachers preferred not to work in the countryside, and many rural schools did not even go up to the level of twelfth grade.”4 The result, I was to learn years later upon my return to Sri Lanka, was that my country’s education system “could not meet our national aspirations whilst on the other falls short of the UN Convention provisions. There was no national system of education that suited our culture and society that met our needs for economic development. Discrimination in education existed and persisted.”5 In 1979, after living for about six years in Singapore, my dad was offered a job in Indonesia in one of the world’s largest oil companies.They paid him a huge salary with all the perks. My dad decided to send me along with my brothers to visit my grandmother for a couple of months before we met him in Indonesia. To my dismay, my father had our stepmother accompany us on our trip. The thought of my grandmother’s reaction to meeting her new daughter-in-law for the first time never crossed my mind, for I was only eight. We were from the Sinhalese community, whereas my stepmother was from the Burgher community. The majority of the people in the Sinhalese community felt far superior to those of the other communities in Sri Lanka, the other communities being Tamil, Muslim, Burgher, and Malay. To welcome a son/daughter-in-law from another community into your family circle was one of the worst nightmares for most parents. I recall asking my grandmother years later what she thought of my stepmother on their first meeting. With a smile she told me she was not at all impressed. “Burgher or whatever, she was inhumane, my child.” Yes, those were her words and how so very true they were. I got my first taste of poverty when I had to tag along with my stepmother to visit her parents. They lived in a three-bedroom house, and it was one of the few houses in that area. My father had sent money for them to build that house. But what my father and grandmother didn’t know was that this house was unlike any of the other three-bedroom houses that we were accustomed to seeing; this house was disgustingly unclean. And there was no bathroom, just an outhouse. I was very amused, for it took

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me a while before I was able to correctly position myself whenever I had to use it. But it wasn’t the outhouse that bothered me; it was sleeping on the floor on a coir mat that made me furious. I was not used to this kind of treatment and they—my stepmother, her parents, her sisters, and brothers—seemed to get a kick out of tormenting me this way. It wasn’t long before my whole body was covered with sores.They never bothered to use medicine and the sores got worse. The pain became unbearable. But one day as I was sitting out on the porch and looking far off into the distance, I saw something that looked like a hut. Then I noticed three children coming out from it and they were laughing and chasing each other. They stopped their play when they saw me and signaled me to come and join them. I jumped at the chance and accepted their invitation. At first we had a communication problem, for all they spoke was Sinhalese and I spoke English. But after a while, we pretty much understood each other. We played hide and seek and cricket, and they even taught me how to climb trees.We had a lot of fun and I was exhausted from all the playing. I guess they sensed I was tired, for we ended up going to their place to rest. When I entered I could not believe my eyes.Their house was a small room with walls made out of mud clay, and they had everything that seemed to be their life possessions in that room. I saw an entrance on the left, which I learned later was their kitchen. Their mother was standing there holding a cup. She came toward me and offered it to me. As I drank it she looked at me and her eyes were moist. She touched my cheek and said something. It took me some time to realize that she was asking me if everything was okay. I shook my head and lifted my shirt and showed her the sores on my body. She put a cloth on the ground and told me to sit and she went into the kitchen. My new friends looked at my sores with curiosity and astonishment.They were saying something while at the same time shaking their heads. Their mother came with a bowl filled with some liquid and a cloth and started cleaning the sores. It was excruciatingly painful and I did my best not to cry, for I knew my three new friends were watching me carefully and wondering how long it would be before I would burst into tears. To impress them I held the tears back and pretended it never hurt a bit. I would remember this day for the rest of my life, for this was the day that

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a family that was very poor and ever so humble took me in and tended to my wounds, which if left unattended much longer would most probably have turned into something that even the doctors in Sri Lanka would have found hard to cure. I spent every day with my newfound friends and their mother, who continued treating my wounds until I was healed. One day my stepmother told me that we had to leave and go back to my grandmother’s. I was both happy and sad at the same time. Happy that I would not have to endure any more torment from my wicked stepmother and her family, but sad that I would have to leave my newfound friends and their mother. I made my way to their home and told them I was leaving. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the pocket money my father had given me and placed it in their mother’s palm. I told her I will come to visit them again and when I go to join my father, I will ask him to build a house for them. Their mother just smiled and she said these words, “Epaa thaathate karadara keranna baby, oya hondate iganaganne, etokotta baby lokku wella lankawete awahama, and api wage duppath minissun-te udauw kerranna puluwang” (“Don’t trouble your father, baby. You concentrate on studying hard and when you are big you can come back to Sri Lanka and use the knowledge you gained to help the poor who are just like us.”) Baby was the word most folks who were poor called a child from a better financial background than they were. A word they used as a mark of respect. I promised her that I would do so and left. On our trip back to my grandmother’s my stepmother made me promise her never to tell my grandmother or my father that I had to sleep on a coir mat or about the sores on my back, and she swore if I ever did, I would have to face the consequences. I obeyed her and never mentioned it to anyone. • • •

Right after this, we moved to Indonesia. I had no idea that in my new school I was going to step into a world where I would learn to live as those of the Western culture. A culture that made me realize that I was not like most others, a culture that made me accept the fact that I was no other than a Levantine. My second year at school was when I became a victim of racism.

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I was invited to a slumber party by one of my classmates. Our driver dropped me off at my friend’s house, and I made my way to the door with my backpack. All the other girls in my class were there, but they didn’t look too pleased to see me. Our little hostess began introducing each of us to her mother, and when it was my turn to be introduced, her mother quipped, “Oh, is this the one you told me about? The one who comes from that little third world country and who’s the only black child in your class?” Then to me, “You must be very happy that you got the chance to associate with children of the white society.” It may be twenty-seven years since this happened, but I still remember those words. Everyone began laughing; I felt dizzy and bit down on my lip ever so hard to stop myself from crying. I gathered my backpack and left. I was just ten years old, but there was no way I was going to let them break me; I was a human being too. That night I vowed to myself that I would always fight with every bit of knowledge and strength I possessed to make sure that no one else would be made ashamed of who they might be. I grew up that night, for I knew I had to. I had no mother, and my father was too busy with his work. My stepmother? Well, the things she did to me—I was defenseless and knew I had to accept the fact that I’d have to endure her abuse as long as I lived with my dad. I walked all the way home that night, all alone and wondering to myself what had I done wrong.Why didn’t anyone care about me? As I lay in bed that night, my thoughts went to my mother. I wondered what she was doing that very moment; was she thinking about me, and, most importantly, why she had left me.

NOTES 1. John M. Richardson Jr., “Problems of a Small State in a Big World: How Global Economic Trends and Great Power Politics Have Impacted Sri Lanka,” June 4, 1996. www.american.edu. 2. Ibid. 3. N. Manoharan, research officer, International Peace and Confl ict Studies, “Education System in Sri Lanka, Part I: The Problem,” www.tamilcanadian.com/page.

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4. US Library of Congress, “Education,” http://countrystudies.us/srilanka/46.htm. 5. Upali S. Jayasekera, “Education: Not Privatization but Reforms Needed,” The Island, April 5, 2005. www.island.lk/.

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Indigenous Women and the Legacy of Oppression Victoria Ybanez Native American women live interned on their own land in the middle of war every day of their lives. When we think about war, oftentimes we think it has to be declared by the president of the United States to be real; indigenous women live with the continued Nation-to-Nation conflict that began with the onset of colonization. For centuries, indigenous women have been the victims of war that continues today. The current-day status of indigenous women is the product of a historical legacy brought forth by colonization and genocide. Repeatedly, non-Native people say “it is time for indigenous people to move on” or “let go of the past in order to finally heal” and such. Unfortunately, they are mistaken in thinking that this war has ended. Today we no longer have to defend ourselves and our families from the killing brought about by battles and massacres, yet Indian women are still raped, battered, and killed. For indigenous women, the solution is in the looking back. Remembering the genocide that transpired and the place indigenous people come from to help create vision for the continued survival and resilience of our indigenous communities is an important part of restoring balance. Our past is part of who we are, it is carried in our ancestral memories, and we must always honor who they are and what they continue to teach us. Originally, indigenous women come from a place of strength and beauty that is the very essence of what it means to be a Native woman. Reclaiming women’s natural place in society, we will be the center of change in our society that will help our communities restore their balance and harmony. The land now known as the Americas once was occupied by a large number of indigenous societies. Depending on whom you talk to, it can be estimated that somewhere between 20 million to as many as 120 million native people occupied this land prior to the onset of colonization. On Turtle Island,1 indigenous societies believed in the interconnection of all

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things. Everything was connected to everything else, like the threads of a spiderweb, in its fragility, when one part of the web was damaged, it hurt the strength of the rest of the web. Connectedness. Women, children, and men all had value in precolonized communities, each with their own responsibilities to the people as a whole, to the four-legged, the winged, the land, and the water. The value of women was central to existence of precontact indigenous societies, and in our looking back, we can recognize that women are central to the existence of indigenous societies today. There is an indigenous proverb commonly know among Native people: “If the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being of the women is intact, so too is that of the family, community and society.” While women were valued as sacred, indigenous societies would remain intact. Indigenous societies prior to the onset of colonization had natural values about the sacredness of women. Widespread across tribes, women were seen as having the ability to create life. In many indigenous creation stories, by giving birth to a child, women gave life to the People. Women were the caretakers and the hearts of their families; their voices were pivotal to the survival and successes of their families and their communities. They were valued for their wisdom as a whole and were involved in the governance of their tribes in many ways. Most tribes saw the strongest, most active, articulate tribal women as closely paralleling the traditional female holy beings. Indian women were accorded great status for their achievements in agriculture, hunting, and hide and meat preparation. Indian people felt that such abilities were divinely sanctioned, hence of the utmost respect.2 Historical framework for violence against Native women I can forgive but there are certain aspects of my history, whether it’s solely as a Cheyenne or as an Indian person, that I cannot forget because Native Americans never want to go back and relive the horror. —Henrietta Mann, Cheyenne3

Colonization brought about a change that would forever change indigenous societies and cannot be talked about without exploring acts of genocide. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, genocide is

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the systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Further, genocide is defi ned by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately infl icting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Whether the colonizers of Turtle Island perpetrated genocide against indigenous people can be controversial. Most Native people find little difficulty accepting this fact; however, many non-Natives find it difficult to believe that the European settlers and explorers, as well as the citizens and leaders of the United States, could willfully commit such horrendous and calculated acts of violence. The stories of what transpired in Native America reflect extensive coordinated actions intended to bring about the demise of Native people. As we take a closer look at Article 2 of the UN Convention on Genocide, it illuminates a startling reality of indigenous history, and we can see how indigenous women were targeted to bring about the submission and collapse of Native societies. It frames the magnitude of violence that transformed Turtle Island. From the time of first contact to the late 1800s and the turn of the twentieth century, indigenous populations were killed at the highest rate of any population on this soil in the history of the United States. Looking across the land, we can find numerous accounts of massacres in which women and children were killed, often unarmed and defenseless, such as the Kern River Valley massacre in 1863, the massacre of Cheyenne and Arapahoe at Sand Creek in 1864, and the massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee in 1890, to name but a few. According to author Andrea Smith, when a Native woman suffers abuse, it is an attack on her identity as a woman and her identity as a Native. The issues of colonial, race, and gender oppression cannot be separated.4 Tactics of violence and control targeted Native women specifically. Beyond the actual killing of women, there are numerous accounts of

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women having their genitals removed, tobacco pouches made from their breasts, strips of flesh being tanned to make reins, decapitation, and repeated rapes and torture. Indigenous women’s bodies were defined as dirty and vile by the colonizers, available for sexual exploitation and disposable. Native people have a century-long experience with boarding schools that promoted forced assimilation and were designed to remove culture and tradition from the tribes. This practice lasted from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Children were forcibly removed from their families and placed in boarding schools that continued the abuse. Some elders talk about having their children pried from their arms and taken to boarding schools, their hair cut and bodies scrubbed as if to scrub off their skin color. Mothers were removed from being able to raise their children, being able to give them guidance, teach them what it means to be female, and what it means to be part of a family and community. Instead of the love and support of a caring mother, a caring family, institutions during this time raised many Native children. Additionally, we have to consider how eugenics was enlisted in the continued genocide. No one even today knows exactly how many Native American women were sterilized during the 1970s. Some estimate around 40 percent of Native women of childbearing age. This can only have an enormous impact on the continued survival of Native people. Current day status of women I would be glad to go back and live in the areas where my greatgrandfather Cochise lived. I would do anything to live that way again, the way my people lived years ago when there was no fighting and they were free in the land they loved so much. —Elbys Naiche Huger, Chiricahua Apache5

In our society today, women and girls are victimized and murdered at alarming rates. Shockingly, it is of little concern to the public. Not only are we not doing enough to counter this wholesale destruction of the lives of so many women and girls, we’re not even paying close attention.6 Native women are ignored in public research and violently victimized at alarming rates compared to the mainstream population.

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As an advocate, I was personally tormented when my own journey brought me to working with Nona,7 a woman who struggles every day with trying to figure out where she belongs in this world. When she was an infant, a white family adopted her. She grew up with no connection to her tribe, no connection to her birth family, and no connection to her culture. Her dark skin always kept her on the outside. She never fit in in the predominantly white community she grew up in and was subjected to taunting by her classmates that later became physical and sexual abuse as she grew in years. Her adopted brothers raped her and her adopted parents refused to believe her. Nona’s life reminds me of my own struggle with identity. My deep sense of loss of my own identity, my own struggles to know who I am, my own struggles with abuse and racism, and my challenge to find that place where I feel completely connected. Unfortunately, Nona’s life reflects the legacy of genocide carried by so many Native women today. Another woman whom I will always carry close to my heart is Carla.8 She is a woman who carries a burden brought about by our oppression. She was raped! Not once, not twice, but more than she wants to remember. Sexually molested as a young child, raped and gang raped as a young adult. She now drinks to kill the pain. When she was old enough, she started having babies, and by the time she was in her early twenties, she had five children. I believed having those babies was her way of having somebody love her. Carla has been in a series of relationships with men who have been abusive to her. Social services became involved with her life, removing her children from time to time because of her drinking and her difficulty with providing the kind of home the workers thought she should have. Carla is someone who has struggles with few to no economic resources, and with no options for moving out of poverty. She is controlled by a social service system that places expectations that are not remedied without additional financial resources. She is caught up in mire brought about by colonization and genocide that remains intact today. Many people say it is time to let go of the past and move forward. Thinking about the many women like Nona and Carla, how can we forget the war our Indian women live with day by day? I believe that as indigenous women, we do need to move forward, but letting go of the past is

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not possible. It is part of our history and etched in the ancestral and living memories that each of us carries. It explains the levels of multigenerational trauma that we live with, the levels of poverty and the complexity of barriers we are faced with in current day life. The past is carried in the way Native women are battered and beaten in their homes every day, the way systems fail to adequately offer responses that meet the needs of indigenous women and their children without further victimization, and the way indigenous women continue to slam into the barriers created by institutional racism. Overall, intimate partner violence against women has been declining since 1993; however, for Native American women the rates are three times higher than non-Native women. According to the US Department of Justice, Native women are victims of nonfatal intimate partner violence at rates of 18.2 per 1,000 compared to 6.3 for Caucasian women and 8.2 for women of African descent. 9 Native American victims of intimate and family violence are more likely than victims of all other races to be severely injured and in need of hospital care. Medical costs exceeded $21 million over a four-year period. As well, according to the Centers for Disease Control, Native American women are twice as likely to be murdered by a family member. Since 1984, I have worked to end violence against women. My heart and passion is in helping our Indian women find ways to heal from centuries of genocide and oppression while finding connections to their strength and beauty. Current day strength of indigenous women Look where we are today on this reservation, we’re tired of being considered the poorest county in the United States and we’re tired of what some describe as substandard education—we’re just plain tired of living the way we have been for years and we can’t depend on anybody else but ourselves to make sure things get better. —Eileen Iron Cloud, Lakota10

The future of our indigenous communities is dependent on the strength and resilience of Native women. We continue to survive in spite of

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genocide and oppression. Indigenous women were and continue to be the backbone of indigenous societies. Native women are our hope and our strength. Indigenous women have been organizing to bring about change; they are working to change the layers of oppression that force so many Native women to be subjected to violence; working to change the conditions on their homelands; working to bring voice to tribes and Native communities. The power and strength of Native women’s leadership can be seen in the actions of so many amazing and courageous women.11 Native women have been leading the work to develop shelters for battered women for their own tribes. They have been developing advocacy programs and tribal coalitions addressing domestic violence and sexual assault. They have been working to raise public awareness in their own communities. Native women have organized and brought about changes to the Violence Against Women Act to ensure that the needs of tribes will be addressed. There is so much more to be done, and if we work together, we can educate and provide help to those who are in such dire need. Native women are leading and giving voice to our realities! NOTES 1. North America was and is still called Turtle Island by many indigenous people. 2. Rebecca Tsosie, “Changing Women: The Crosscurrents of American Indian Feminine Identity,” in Unequal Sisters (New York: Routledge, 2000). 3. Serle L. Chapman, We, the People of Earth and Elders, volume II (Missoula, MT: Mountain Press, 2001). 4. Andrea Smith, Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005). 5. Chapman, We, the People. 6. Bob Herbert, “Punished for Being Female,” The New York Times, op-ed column. November 2, 2006. 7. Stories of women reflected in this essay are compilations of women I have worked

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with during the more than twenty-three years I have been involved in helping to end violence against women. I have compiled stories in such a way as to protect the identity and privacy of women. All names are fictitious. 8. Ibid. 9. Shannan Catalano, PhD, BJS statistician, US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Intimate Partner Violence in the United States. 10. Chapman, We, the People. 11. I would love to be able to name all of the women who are dedicated to the work to end violence against Native women, but there are so many who are engaged in work with their own tribal communities, in their regions, and across the United States and across multiple Tribal Nations, that this is impossible. To name a few: Tilly Blackbear, Karen Artichoker, Tina Olson, Brenda Hill, Eileen Hudon, Peggy Bird, Nicole Mathews, Deb Blossom, Eleanor David, Sandy Davidson, Carma Tucson, and Shelly Miller.

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Surfacing Michele Ramos I wrote the following poem when I was a young mom with two children, living in the woods in southern Rhode Island during 1984. I have never intentionally written a poem; instead, they seem to arise and need expression. The poem is a prayer from me to all of my sisters: for all women who have suffered from any type of war, whether it be physical, metaphysical, cultural, addiction, abuse, or the inner demons of oppression, grief, loss, and disconnection. We sit exchanging tales of joy and pain our coffee cups balanced carefully so as not to expose the trembling. My sisters We look into each other’s eyes each other’s hearts for a glimpse of recognition. It is said that when a dolphin starts to sink Others come to bring her to the surface to breathe again feel the warm sunlight And so our womanstrength buoys us back. May our song be one of hope and wisdom May our suffering bring us always closer to ourselves May the laughter and tears and the giving and taking flow freely When I find it is only another me Looking out of my sisters’ eyes.

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The Cure Emily Ferrara As mothers, we are warriors in the daily task of protecting our children from harm. Shortly after my son’s birth in 1984, he was diagnosed with aortic stenosis, a congenital heart defect. He underwent open-heart surgery as an infant and was followed by cardiologists for years, the spectre of valvereplacement surgery ever on the horizon. We were in yet another period of watchful waiting when he died suddenly and unexpectedly. I had waged a nineteen-year war with my son’s heart disease and now was convinced that “if only” I had been a fi ercer mother-warrior, insisting on intervention sooner, he would still be alive. This poem was written in the wake of his death, as I grappled with the finality of this defeat. You flew home at the lunar eclipse, your heart in repose finally perfect, finally cured. No more valve gone awry, aortic root overblown, unbeknownst to medicine and my careful vigilance. There is nowhere to hide from your absence. I drown in spaciousness. I am motherhood unbound.

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Visceral Carolyn Dunn As a woman, and as a woman in a constant state of war, I am aware of not only the wars in the world, but the wars in the interior world as well. The daily wars, between partners, spouses, children, families, communities, that refl ect the society in which we live is what interested me the most in terms of women and war. The idea that our words can cause the most hurtful of all missiles is what caught me…the fact that we have to wear body armor, internally and externally, at home and in the world, is what this piece is about. Please refrain from abusing the space between your thoughts and your words, she said, as ash rained down like snow falling upon the calloused and well worn crevices of earthen decay. Bones finely ground from words that took upon lives of their own littered the sparkles In the sidewalk as she loved, running from the divergent paths of humanity, blotting out

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the sun. Your words ring true, sunken arrows pointing to the heart. Blood red, the arrows mix with the decaying life caused by split hero twins: Uranium, Chromium, atoms and hydrogen Packed into a missile. Laden war of words and then, fired, lit the sparkling ground in flames, burning until nothing remained of their love. Spoils of war, he announced, stepping upon the sparkles and grinding them dull. Unladen, she took flight, the mirrors of one million souls lighting her way home.

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Birthplace, Women’s Maximum Security Prison, Date: 1985 Regina Krummel Presently, in 2007, I am leading four groups (using poetry) in a maximumsecurity prison institution in New York, trying to assist the women inmates to survive and to function in incarcerated conditions. In this poem, I reveal a life experience through the voice of a pregnant woman in prison who is about to give birth to a female baby. The war inside this woman is generational in that her mother who suffered from domestic violence passed it to her. Here I am again this is my home. I’ve been here before I was born here. My mom held me in her warm, cherishing arms. She sang me a lullaby. We were close like one… Mom stayed, I was sent away at age one. Drifting from home to home never adopted. Cried a lot in one home I was in, forgot the name. Always a problem

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I screamed and scratched a lady who badmouthed Mama. Mama loved me. How can I know? Fought off my bastard father who came at her, tried to kill her and me inside Mama. Yes, she wouldn’t give me up to his explosions and his rage. She ended him. His cruelty was silenced over… She had me, gave me life in this prison, the psychotic section. She died right here in this prison. I was fifteen. They never told me ’til she was dead. I was in my own breakdown then. I always hoped I’d be sent here, find her love again her beautiful spirit her deep laugh. She died here of cancer— it devoured her lovely body. I’m carrying a girl child for my Mama and me.

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Naming her Makeba after that African singer Mama loved to hear. I have a picture of Mama out on the lawn with five other women I never met. I ain’t got a home I ain’t got nobody but my little girl in my womb. My room is like a coffin no soft lovely pink walls, no rocking chair. My war never ends my inside screaming never stops. I gotta be up and sing my Mama’s lullaby to Makeba day and night. I gotta not surrender to the dead letter box. This raging war inside it’s gotta stop for my baby. So she can leave find a real life I never knew.

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Fall, 1998 Terra Trevor On a crisp December morning in 1984, under a bright blue sky in Seoul, Korea, a wide-eyed baby was readied to leave his homeland. Dressed in a pink bunting to keep out the winter chill, one-year-old Jay Kook Yung was carried aboard Korean Airlines, and he set off for a new life: adoption in the United States. When the plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport, Jay was placed in my arms and he became my son. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My story begins in 1953, shortly after I was born, when the end of the Korean War set the course of my life, because the ending of the war signaled the beginning of international adoption of Koreanborn children. After the war, everything changed. Within a country with a long-standing national tradition of pure-blood lineage, shared ethnic identity and culture, suddenly there were mass numbers of orphaned children. Many of these babies and children were mixed race and were introduced to a largely unwelcoming homogenous Korea. Single mothers were shunned. Crowded orphanages operating with scarce resources were unable to accommodate the high numbers of orphans. In response, South Korea turned to alternatives to find a solution. Korean adoption was officially born in 1954 when Harry and Bertha Holt, an Oregon farm couple, following the endeavors and individualized efforts of others, initiated the opening of adoption from South Korea. Today a growing number of families in Korea have begun to adopt, and the country is hoping to eventually eliminate the need for adoption outside the country. Yet, in 1984, when I adopted my son, Korea was a nation still struggling to come into its own. I had a profound knowing-feeling when the telephone rang the day we received Jay’s adoption referral. I was outside watering sprouting morning glories, and before I answered the phone I knew it would be the adoption agency telling me about my soon-to-be child.The first time I held Jay, immediately I understood something was far beyond ordinary about him. He was calm and centered in a

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way that let you know he possessed a great amount of wisdom; his presence made skeptics believe in angels. I didn’t know on that first day that my son’s perfect life circle would be small, and that I was being called for the highest motherhood duty.Yet, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.The amount of joy Jay brought me outweighs anything else and has made me whole.

I followed my fi fteen-year-old son into the bathroom; he opened the medicine cabinet and reached for the bottle of Advil. “Do you have a headache again?” I asked. Jay shrugged his shoulders, then hiccupped hard and ducked his head in the toilet and threw up. He wretched until his stomach heaved in frantic dry spasms. Tears welled in his eyes. For the past two days he had been having headaches off and on. Our primary care physician called in an authorization for an MRI. Jay hid the fear he felt behind a mask of quiet strength. Each day, as often as I could, I kept my eyes on Jay. I memorized his every move. I watched him talk on the phone with friends, snuck sideglances while he did his homework, as he sprinted out the door to go to school. In the middle of the night I poked my head into his room, and I could hear him hiccupping, steady, quiet hiccups that didn’t interrupt his sleep. That week Jay was elected student of the month, and he got a lead part in the school play. My idyll of familyhood continued until the MRI confirmed my worst fear—the brain tumor he was originally diagnosed with in 1991, when he was seven, was back. It was an anaplastic ependymoma, and this time its fingers spread into the brainstem. We had to decide on a plan of treatment. We contacted the surgeon who had performed Jay’s first brain tumor surgery. Surgery was scheduled. Luck held, most of the tumor was successfully resected. In less than a week Jay was out of the hospital, recovering well. But what to do about the remaining brain tumor slivers that were inoperable? He had already received his lifetime dose of whole brain radiation, and the chemotherapy

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drugs he used with the first diagnosis offered little hope of curing a recurrent tumor. There was a small chance that stereotactic radio surgery might be of some help in stalling tumor growth. We set up a consultation and began the initial treatment plan. I encouraged Jay and my seventeen-year-old daughter, Vanessa, to continue on with their ordinary routines, to live as normally as possible. Someone from the PTA at Jay’s high school called and wanted me to contribute a dessert for a bake sale. I didn’t tell her Jay had a brain tumor; instead I agreed to bake cookies. Normally Jay rose to our household dessert challenges. He enjoyed cooking and baking. He got out the baking sheets, the eggs, and measured out the flour, and then from a rocking chair he directed my efforts to produce his perfected chocolate chip cookie recipe. I placed three cookies in each plastic bag tied with purple ribbons and delivered them to the bake sale. I felt like I was on some kind of an emotional layaway plan: experience life now and feel it later. I watched Jay thumb through the newspaper. “So why do you suppose when a person dies from cancer they say he lost the battle?” Jay questioned. His face was pinched with confusion. “Don’t worry, Mom, I know dying is not about losing.” And with the zeal determined to restore order to the universe he announced, “Heaven is filled with winners.” Having a positive attitude was important to Jay. Although he had very low energy, he attended school half-day because he loved school. He helped us understand that it’s important not to think of cancer in terms of “fighting it” or “beating it back.” You don’t “struggle” or “battle” with cancer. Cancer is a journey, and it’s about living well, being kind, and about loving more than you ever thought possible. Somehow that winter Vanessa managed to take Drivers Education and got her driver’s license. I attempted to win her confidence by allowing her to drive me to the grocery store. Her capable hands gripped the steering wheel. I pressed myself into the passenger seat and clutched the armrest, my shoulders riding up. “You aren’t very relaxed,” she observed. When the errand was completed and she pulled our car into the driveway I was thankful, and my mind burst into quiet relief. Feathers from a crow were scattered under the tree in the front yard. Recently my friend Tim had told me that he

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needed more crow feathers to finish making new pow wow dance regalia. I went into the house to call Tim, then came back out and sat down on the front porch steps. The sun glowed gold and then deep red. I watched the sky for a long time.The air smelled of wood smoke. Each breath I took smelled rich, like the ground after a rainstorm. I watched the bats come out; they dipped and dived through the now-dusky sky. It was quiet except for the crickets. Jay was three months past diagnosis and he continued to feel reasonably well. He held life in his two hands and was squeezing out its sweetest juices. On good days he made himself a cup of cocoa, poured cold cereal into a bowl, and sat at the white tile breakfast bar, eating and reading. The best days were when he didn’t vomit. I kept the garbage disposal side of the sink empty, just in case. Brain tumors aren’t like the flu. There wasn’t any nausea, no warning, just a sudden wave. Even when he did throw up, he possessed complete good will and wholehearted forgiveness. He cleaned himself up, and a few minutes later he would go back to his meal. He didn’t complain about having a brain tumor; he moved forward with his life. As ill as he was, he gave the impression he’d outlive all of us. But suddenly his voice grew raspy. “It’s really weird,” Jay said, “I just completely ran out of breath.” The next day Jay had difficulty swallowing, and it was beginning to be hard for him to talk. His chest rattled when he breathed. Jay was admitted to the hospital. The doctor came to talk with us. In a semiprivate hospital room we conversed in low, private whispers, while Jay’s roommate, a sixteen-year-old boy who was an appendectomy patient, thumbed through pages of a sports magazine, pretending disinterest, giving us the illusion of privacy. The news wasn’t good.The second MRI showed that the tumor was three times as big, and Jay’s body was beginning to shut down. I blinked in surprise. Jay knit his brow as he let the news sink in. Gary and I sat feeling helpless while he was placed on oxygen and a feeding tube was inserted. “I’m not afraid to die,” Jay said, “I just don’t want to do it. But if it turns out that I have to, then I want to die at home.” I made a quick phone call to hospice and left a message for someone to call me back. Someone from hospice came to talk with us, and then

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for SIX HOURS we waited for the hospital paperwork to be completed, allowing Jay to leave. By now he could barely speak, his words were slurred, yet he was completely alert and fully coherent. He wrote notes when he wanted to tell us something. I watched Jay’s face, studied the tiny dark mole on the top of his right ear, and memorized the way his black hair shined red in sunlight from the window. It was the only thing I knew to do. It was not hard to talk to Jay about cancer. But I wondered how long it would be before he couldn’t hear me anymore. I thought about the day when his body began to wear out, about the day when he stopped living. Before Jay was released from the hospital, a nurse came to remove his feeding tube. Jay frowned, and he wrote me a note that said, “After they take it out, how am I going to eat?” My husband, Gary, blinked back tears. He reached to grab his son’s hand. My mouth remained open as I searched for a reply. “As your body begins to slow down, you probably won’t be feeling hungry,” I offered. We faced each other, not two feet apart, yet in different universes. Jay stiffened, drew back from me, then he punched me in the arm, hard. A second later he pulled me close to him and gave me a light kiss on the cheek. “We can ask them to leave the tube in,” I suggested, “Just in case you get hungry.” Twelve hours later, Jay was settled in at home. The dog gave him a welcome-home lick. A hospice nurse arrived and taught me how to care for Jay. I learned to operate the oxygen tanks.There were so many dials and valves and coils and hoses that at first it seemed too complicated. Frosty air escaped the overflow valve. Although I corrected the problem almost immediately, Jay’s dark, intelligent eyes regarded me with raw suspicion. Usually it was Jay who taught me how to make things work. He programmed the VCR, he installed computer programs, and on driving trips he read the map and gave me directions. He was patient, he always took his time making sure things were exactly right. Suddenly time had been transformed from a resource into an unseen opponent. We used the swabs hospice provides with cool water and a bit of mint so Jay’s mouth would feel fresh and clean. He relaxed when he realized the

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hospice nurse wouldn’t be poking him with needles, as so many others had already done in the hospital. Jay had grown to hate the hospital; he was able to live so much more at home. At home everything was peaceful and familiar. We placed a hospital bed in the living room, and the cord on his oxygen was long enough so that he could move about and relax on the couch, allowing him to hear everything going on in the kitchen. Through the wall of windows stretching across the living room, we watched the sky fall dark and fill with stars. Gary,Vanessa, and I curled up with Jay on the couch; all of us cuddled together in that tight space. I watched Jay’s face, and through the window I watched for shooting stars. “Do you want me to sleep out here with you tonight?” I asked, thinking that amid all the oxygen tubes, the strange surrounding of the hospital bed in our living room, Jay would feel lonely and scared. His eyes lit up and he squeezed my hand. Dressed in sweats, I settled myself at his side. In the morning he felt well enough so that he was concerned about an order he’d placed through a catalog, and he wanted me to call and see if it had shipped out. Although he had very low energy and napped off and on all day, when he was awake he was fully alert. He could no longer talk at all and communicated by writing notes to us, yet his jet black eyes spoke volumes. At four o’clock Vanessa came home from school. Her friend Ray came over. Jay and Ray played a game of checkers, and Jay won the game. They watched television for a while, and then Jay said he had a headache. Morphine needed to be administered every six to eight hours for pain, yet all day Jay had remained pain-free so I hadn’t given him any. I put on my glasses and carefully measured out one tiny drop. I practiced twice, to make sure I had the right amount and each time I let the liquid drip back into the bottle from the eyedropper. I gave Jay the tiny drop of morphine and helped him into bed, and he fell asleep with the dog curled near the foot of the bed. Vanessa left to go to a school choir rehearsal, and Gary and I sat near Jay’s bed talking softly. A few minutes later I leaned over to check on Jay. I put my hand on his arm and my stomach froze tight; I could feel him slipping away.

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“Squeeze my finger if you can hear me,” I pleaded. Jay gave my finger a light squeeze; so weightless I could barely feel it. He slept in a classic fetal position, knees beneath his chest, occupying as small a space as possible. A few minutes later I spoke to Jay again, this time no response. Fear unraveled inside me. Gently I grabbed his wrist with my thumb and forefinger and counted a pulse. At first I thought I must have given Jay too much morphine. Gary called hospice, and the nurse insisted that I hadn’t. It was an irrational feeling of me thinking of things I could have done differently that might have resulted in Jay being fully alert again. Hospice offered to send someone over, but we preferred support by telephone. Gary tried to telephone Vanessa to tell her to come home right away, but he was unable to reach her. All evening we sat at Jay’s bedside. At eight o’clock his breathing stopped, and at that moment Vanessa walked in the door. “I had a feeling that I needed to come home,” she said. “So I left right in the middle of choir rehearsal.” “Jay’s dying,” Gary called out. “Hurry.” Vanessa dropped her coat in the hall; she put her hand on Jay’s chest and spoke to her brother. His eyebrows arched, but he didn’t respond in any other way, yet we felt positive he could hear her. She folded herself onto the bed with him. A few minutes later Gary and I climbed onto the bed too. Jay lay in the center among the three of us, small, quiet, immobile, with his dog at his side. Soon after, he fell into a coma, yet we felt positive he could still hear us. All night Jay’s breathing stopped and then started again. “Maybe we need to tell him that’s it’s okay to die,” Vanessa offered. “Jay, I love you,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll do your chores and help Mom. Time is different in heaven; we’ll be there with you before you know it,” she cooed. Gary and I sat with our arms around each other and tears pouring down our cheeks. I kissed Jay on his forehead. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “Don’t wait for anything. It’s time for you to go.” We huddled around Jay and wished him a good journey as he crossed

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over to the other side. At that moment he smiled the sweetest smile, and a peaceful feeling as wide as the sky settled over us. Something warm and cozy fell across my heart. And then he was gone. Rain began to fall, pounding the roof. As quick as it had arrived the cozy heaven feeling left. Gary, Vanessa, and I agreed; it was as though a million years had passed. As though we had traveled with Jay to the faraway place beyond this life. We didn’t wonder, we knew we had gone all the way to the point of entry with him. We didn’t see the light; we felt it surround us. It pulled us, drew us in. For the briefest moment I wanted Jay to go. It felt right, like the most natural thing in the world. In that moment I was certain he was headed home. Jay had only been gone for a few minutes, and we were plunged back to earth into a stark awareness that no longer held a living, breathing Jay Trevor. Jay’s body lay still and small, and we sat with his body in the hush just before dawn when darkness gives way to light. As I held his hand I thought about my great-great-grandma who had given birth to eleven babies. The first died at four months, the second at age eight. It went on like that for years, grandma giving birth and grandpa making baby boards, digging holes, and lowering those dead babies into the ground. It was a time of measles and smallpox epidemic. My mind glimpsed my greatgreat-grandma and I felt a distant memory pulling me back. I could hear her wailing like wind coming up, crying, and swaying. I thought about how her cries probably drifted into the cabins of nearby white settlers, and I wondered if they knew the high, shrill sounds pressing against the night were from an Indian mother mourning her dead child. Decisions about the removal of Jay’s body had to be made. Although I knew I had to, I couldn’t bear to call the funeral home and have them come take him away. Gary made the phone call. Another miracle surfaced: the funeral director, though we did not know him personally, said that his church prayer line had been praying for Jay all night. He agreed to let us bring Jay’s body to the mortuary ourselves. We wrapped him in the blue flannel sheets from his bed patterned with tiny snowmen. Vanessa drove because she wanted to drive. Gary was in no shape, and I didn’t want to. I sat in the passenger seat, and Gary sat in the back with Jay’s body wrapped in a small bundle on his lap.

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We were lucky to be granted that one small grace, to take Jay’s body to the back entrance of the mortuary ourselves. I felt the boundary of time collapse around me as if it had been one very long day since greeting oneyear-old-baby Jay at the airport in 1984 when he had first arrived from Korea and we had adopted him. In the blink of an eye, fourteen years had past, allowing me the privilege of being his mother, and now night was setting in, closing Jay’s life in a full circle. All that day a long, steady stream of people came to our house. I had wanted to be still and quiet, to keep that peaceful feeling we all felt as Jay was leaving inside me for as long as possible. But I couldn’t because friends and family came to comfort us. I have no idea who was here; I wish I could remember who came. That day I didn’t want to have to behave in a normal manner and make attempts at conversation. I wanted to wail, to rock back and forth moaning and sobbing.There is a Paiute mourning ritual known as the Cry Dance. Dancers and singers, clutching strips of clothing that belonged to the person who has died support the bereft as she fills the silence for a few minutes with her “cry”—the sound of human grieving. I wished that a Cry Dance could be held for me because acting as if I had the ability to hold it all together was more than I could bear. I got through those first days minutes at a time. My chest ached so much there were moments when I thought I might die from heartbreak. The rain continued all week, and the roof began to leak in multiple places. The largest drip fell exactly above where Jay’s hospital bed had sat in the living room. If he were still in that bed, rain would have dripped on his pillow. As we sat in the living room watching television, I felt a tap on the top of my head. I turned around to look and there wasn’t anyone behind me. I wasn’t in the mood to be teased and had a feeling of someone sneaking up on me. I kept whipping my head around to catch Gary or Vanessa in the act, yet they were both engrossed in the show and hadn’t moved off the couch. I had the oddest feeling of someone else being in the room with us. “What’s the matter?” Gary asked. “Someone just tapped me on the head,” I admitted.

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“We’re watching Jay’s favorite show,” Vanessa announced. “It must have been him.” She was joking of course. A few minutes later I felt another tap on my head. “Hey,” I said. “It happened again.” When we left the house to go somewhere, after we got back home, we felt an odd sensation, as if Jay had gone with us. But obviously he hadn’t. Memorial service planning began. Vanessa gave a eulogy at Jay’s memorial service. Nearly everyone we knew from all aspects of our lives was present. A friend sang “Amazing Grace” in Korean, and elders said prayers in the Korean language. A calm washed over me I hadn’t felt in days. More than three hundred people came to pay their respects, and everyone couldn’t fit inside the chapel, so the guests spilled outside into the courtyard. Scanning the crowd, I saw the faces of everybody I knew, hundreds of familiar faces, even those who had to drive for miles. We laughed and cried together, and one by one, we hugged each of them: Jay’s friends, their parents, his teachers, our friends, our neighbors,Vanessa and Kyeong Sook’s friends, and their parents. Everyone we knew came to support us. Another friend captured all those hugs and tears on film. After the memorial service a large group of family and friends came to our home, where more friends were already gathered preparing food. The sun came out, and we filled the yard with people laughing and weeping. A basketball game was in process, and someone pulled out the checkerboard. It was the kind of gathering Jay liked best; he would have enjoyed the day, and who knows, maybe he did. A few days later we went out on the Star Dust, the boat Jay always fished from, and scattered his ashes in the ocean, in the spot where he once caught a thirty-eight-pound halibut.

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Last Night the Moon Mary BlackBonnet Tunwin (Lakota for “aunt”) was one of the most important people in my life. She gave me unconditional love I’d not known before, and she taught me so much. From her I learned amazing lessons about the world, the people in it, but most of all I learned about myself. There will never be another Tunwin for me. She affected many people, not just me; she was mother to many and a friend to numerous others. When she was rediagnosed with cancer, my cousins and I were terrified; none of us were ready to lose her. She fought this war as well as she could, but she was also raising her six grandchildren, and eventually, I saw her growing weak.To see the strongest woman I knew look so small and tired was heart wrenching. We stayed by her hospital bedside the whole time, never wanting her to be alone. The hospital stay was hard on all of us, but mostly on her. She couldn’t speak and the nurses and doctors did little to care for “an old dying Indian woman.” My cousin and I had shifts, so she would never be alone. Mine was the night shift, but I didn’t mind. I would watch her sleep, watch her breathing, however labored. I’d hold my breath, in anticipation that she would keep hers. I’d pace back and forth between her bed and the window, counting the hours, waiting for the sun to streak the morning sky and for her to be there to see it, even if she wasn’t aware of time in her pain-medicated haze. I’d hold her hand and sleep with my head propped on her bed. She’d often keep her hand on my head and stroke my hair. I’d watch her silently and wish I wasn’t so torn between wanting to tell her to stay for my selfish reasons and wanting to tell her to let go so she would no longer be in pain. Tunwin was the glue that held our odd little family together. She’d raised many of her grandchildren and helped raise others as well. She was a hands-on mother to her grown children. I was in an odd category because I didn’t need her to hands-on mother me, but I needed her nurturing, the talks we had, and the way she loved me for who I was, not who anyone wanted me to be. I needed the lessons she gave me in the Lakota way. The ones where you walk away from a

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conversation and realize afterward that you had just been taught a life lesson. I needed her encouragement, the way she believed in me when I didn’t always believe in myself. I needed all the hours we spent sitting in her kitchen, talking and laughing, the uncountable instant messages we’d have when I was away at college. I needed her life force. Not many people can share theirs, but she did. If anyone were in a bad place, all he or she had to do was sit by Tunwin and she’d make him or her better vicariously. How do you express all that you need to for someone who has so completely changed your life? I had heard that the end of cancer is a difficult time for people, so when we knew she wasn’t going to get any better, Tunwin and I had the conversation. I told her all that was in my heart, all that she meant to me, all that I felt for her and how grateful I was to have her in my life. I also told her there were going to be many people lost after she left. Myself included. I needed her for different reasons than her children, but I still needed her. Many times when I’m so heartbroken or scared that I can’t talk, I will write. At the time I wrote “Last Night the Moon,” I was feeling helpless and frustrated at her illness and the lack of quality care she was being given. It was an expression of what I wanted to happen. As the last line reads, every time she did make it to the sunrise the next day, I was grateful and relieved, for however short it might be. She always told us to be in the moment and be grateful for what you have right now. I was, and still am, willing to do this. Tears are falling as I write this, but I know tears honor those one loves. Last night I met the moon, as it crept over your head. It started at your right ear, then slowly drifted to your left. But not before it sashayed, in rainwater. Bounced off the cement, set the cherry blossoms aglow. It was the kind of moon you’d like to see.

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But there will be no moonlit walks for you, as you lie in that wretched bed. Health waxing then waning. I implore the moon to heal you, bleed into your body. Shine moonbeams down, heal your stricken side. Dissolve the respirator plaguing your mouth, restricting your voice. I talk to you visually, our hearts speak loudly. As the moon fades, my hope rises with another sun.

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Re-Waging the Battles: Native American Women’s Poetry and the Reinterpretation of War Molly McGlennen To be a revolutionary is to be original, to know where we came from, to validate what is ours and help it to flourish, the best of what is ours, of our beginnings, our principles, and to leave behind what no longer serves us. —Inés Hernández-Ávila (Nez Perce)

What good is this pen, this yellow paper, if I can’t fashion them into tools or weapons to change our lives? —Beth Brant (Mohawk)

A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done; no matter how brave its warriors nor how strong their weapons. —Cheyenne Proverb

I introduce this essay by offering three distinct quotes on Native American women and war that draw attention to the connections between an indigenous understanding of origins and language and the invocation through which Native women appear to invest in that relationship. In particular, contemporary Native women’s poetry highlights how creativity is directly linked with owning one’s original knowledge. This specifi cally means that Native poets will often frame their work, their collections of verse, by calling attention to colonization, and more expressly, the psychological and physical consequences of genocide and warfare; however, these same poets invert this negative force by utilizing creative agency. That is, understanding creative expression as sacred, Native women poets, in very real ways, engage in making present the power 238 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

contained in traditional indigenous knowledge, and to this end, refuel a battle against colonizing histories, policies, and beliefs.

In their introductions to Earthquake Weather, Indian Cartography, and How We Became Human, Janice Gould, Deborah Miranda, and Joy Harjo, respectively, emphasize the devastating effects of colonization to North American Native peoples in both intimate and public ways. Konkow Maidu poet Janice Gould offers that “displacement and dissolution” of her family due to the war against Natives in California in the form of starvation, disease, removal, and outright murder proved difficult “to piece together a family from shards of memory and fragments of cultural knowledge” (xi-xii). Similarly, Esselen/Chumash poet Deborah Miranda stresses what she calls the “twin disasters” for California Natives, the Gold Rush and the Missions, and by her accounts these institutional war crimes, which included “door-to-door murdering of Indians,” reduced the Native population from over one million to about twenty thousand (x). Finally, Creek poet Joy Harjo frames her book of poetry—like Gould and Miranda—through a familiar story; a story that marked a time she, a Native woman, could shatter at any moment: It was around the time we lost Larry Casuse to the racist guns of the Gallup police. He and Robert Nakaidinae emerged from the mayor’s office, where they had been holding the mayor hostage for crimes against Indian people. They came out with their hands up. The police shot to kill anyway. This wasn’t anything new, but now the hatred had come out into the open. It was erupting. (xvii) Within each of these introductions there is a necessity and an urgency to create, to stake the subsequent collection of poems as testimonies of survival, and most importantly, most powerfully, to contest the very atrocities that led these women to moments of creativity in the first place. Like many Native women poets, Gould, Miranda, and Harjo attend to the very personal effects of colonization. In reading their work this way, I hope to show how intimate the

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consequences of “Indian policies” have been for Native people, and specifically, women. By using the verb contest I mean to refashion how we understand the idea of battle or war—not simply to respond as a form of catharsis, but to engage in a challenge that echoes beyond the page, beyond the poet, beyond the reader, to our origins. In understanding the power in creativity, Harjo says, “To make art…is to replicate the purpose of original creation” (xviii). The power of origins, I believe, is the energy behind the contention that drives the poet’s hand to decolonizing action. It is no wonder that elsewhere in her introduction Harjo asserts, “The poet in the role of warrior is an ancient one. The poet’s road is a journey for truth, for justice. One is not liberated if another is enslaved. Compassion is the first quality of a warrior, and compassion is why we are here, why we fell from the sky” (xxvii). Harjo, like Gould and Miranda and like many Native American poets, acknowledges the continuum among the speaker, writer, reader, listener, creative spirit, and the word. This connection presupposes the political implications that inevitably result from much of the writing of Native peoples. As “warrior-poets,” Native women contest the silencing in which colonialism encases them, and through language these same warrior-poets create a space for liberation—a potentiality akin to how Gloria Bird, in her essay “Toward a Decolonization of the Mind and Text,” approaches the promise in both Native and colonial languages: We are at the pivotal moment in the act of creating a reality of encoded, not ‘borrowed,’ language. Here is the potential site of resistance, which can be the final liberating gesture of decolonization. This is, provided we can name this moment and in that recognition throw open the doors to not just envisioning, but creating a future in which we are not draped by colonial constructs. (104-105) Still, I would like to be more specific here in readdressing Native women’s poetry by asking some thorny questions: What are the connections between creativity, writing, and decolonization? What is the purpose or advantage of recasting creative expression as a form of “warfare”? How ought we understand Native women’s poetry within a strategy for both contention and healing?

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I leave these questions for a moment to contextualize how warfare has been represented in the Euro-American imagination and how Native people have been hidden from or negatively revealed within that narrative. What the United States and other colonial powers have labeled as “wars” and “battles” have most often been massacres and wholesale genocide against indigenous groups around the globe. Within the boundaries of the United States, “battles” like Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, even “policies” like removal and assimilation (e.g., Trail of Tears, Longest Walk, reservation systems, and missionization) demarcate large-scale acts of violence executed by the US government, vigilantes, and religious groups, each with the specific plan to address the “Indian problem” in America. While this might be a gross generalization, the manner in which this type of history has been told certainly substantiates claims that refer to massacres as “battles,” genocide as “policy,” and manifest destiny as “forward progress.” Moreover, this ideology that frames much of “mainstream” American history is gendered as well; through US “policy,” Native women were and are specifically targeted for erasure. As many Native studies scholars will attest, the writing of European chroniclers and early ethnographers has heavily influenced US history’s portrayal of Native Americans. The colonialist mentality that frames these documents sustains gender inequity and the necessarily subordinate position of women in society. In their pursuit to tame and secure land and resources, colonists regarded nature as “gifts from God,” having both divine and civil rights to American virgin land and its creatures, the savage Indian. Colonization and Christianizing efforts in the Americas appealed to the implicit need to subdue Native women through rape and murder in order to maintain the hierarchy of gender and power, thus eradicating Native people’s traditional egalitarian societies while upholding an imperialist agenda. Needless to say, Native women’s stories and histories have been inaccurately portrayed, often tainted with nostalgia and delivered through a lens of Western patriarchy and discourses of domination. Understandably, contemporary Native American women’s poetry reads as a powerful response to over five hundred years of colonization, writing revolution by being “original” (as Henández-Ávila’s quote suggests), a perspective that depicts these wars, these battles, with as much

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urgency as Native communities have experienced and remembered them. Thus, I’d like to end my discussion by returning to the questions I posed earlier alongside a brief close reading of individual poems from Gould, Miranda, and Harjo’s collections. Gould’s “Easter Sunday,” Miranda’s “Indian Cartography,” and Harjo’s “I Give You Back” depict forms of battle-waging, where language acts as a revenant pulled from each poet’s earliest beginnings. Gould’s “Easter Sunday” collapses a childhood memory with allusions to US military presence and with the history of California missions. On a visit with her father to the missions, the young speaker in Gould’s long narrative poem describes the lush landscapes of the Pacific coastline in springtime, “a green full of sunlight and rapid change” (41), but quickly turns to darker observations through a precarious veneer of her family-holiday trip and the stunning scenery: Here at the far end of a long, fertile valley, the military has established a base. It is difficult to understand the need for weapons or to feel cheered by the hard-faced, uniformed men, armored vehicles, and what appear to be the underground houses for missiles. No one wants to talk about the war, which explodes somewhere else with wearisome regularity each night on television. It is Sunday, Easter; the family is enjoying a rare peace. The day is beautiful and the hills sacred. It is hard to imagine destruction. (41) All of this sets the speaker up for her walk through the mission and its grounds, where she begins to work loose a history buried: At the mission, the enclosed courtyard is dry and warm, bees buzz among the cactus and purple roses. In the small adobe cells, opened for our inspection, are the accoutrements of the Franciscans, solemn crucifi xes nailed above their skinny beds. In other rooms the Indians worked, tanning leather, shoeing horses, cooking the padres’ soup. In these troughs, the Indians were fed. Beyond the mission are the remnants of hornos and corrals, the fields of wild bulbs and clover the Indians longed to eat. Under one portico, a shiver moves

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up my spine: the dead, I know suddenly, are buried in the walls, among the arches, and beneath this well-tamped earth. Across the mountains, not far as the raven fl ies, lies the ocean, the jagged edge of the continent. (41-42) Amidst a sunny Easter Sunday, a flourishing landscape, and a backdrop tainted with nostalgia, the speaker unearths a horrific reality—a narrative never told on a tour. The sacrificed lives of Native people at the hands of the missionaries becomes paramount in this poem, a part of history literally concealed in the walls, which have stood as pillars of altruism. In the final line, having recognized the terror of the place, the speaker creates a sacred site, a war memorial, exposing the true sacrilege made transparent against the unmistakable clarity of the landscape. Also a poem of California Natives’ sacrifice to the United States, Miranda’s “Indian Cartography” reveals the power in indigenous story. The speaker’s father “opens a map of California—/ trac[ing] mountain ranges, rivers, county borders / like family bloodlines” (76). As the father’s narrative continues (as the speaker tells it), he fleshes out the tiny dots on the map with not only childhood memories, but also stories of removal, environmental desecration, and “modernization.” But it is in the last stanza where the speaker evokes that which cannot be mapped, cannot be stolen: In my father’s dreams / after the solace of a six-pack, / he follows a longing, a deepness. / When he comes to the valley / drowned by a displaced river / he swims out, floats on his face / with eyes open, looks down into lands not drawn / on any map. Maybe he sees shadows / a people who are fluid, / fluent in dark water, bodies / long and glinting with sharpedged jewelry, / and mouths still opening, closing / on the stories of our home. (76-77) By reimagining these places that have fed her father’s people, places that signify beautiful cultural production and a living people filled with stories and an unquestionable connection to place, Miranda designs new understandings of how we read and understand Native people’s

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contribution to and relationship with the history of “American” landscape. What’s more, by subverting the transgressions of the United States and its policies (defined by simple dots and lines on a map) with her father’s stories of an adaptable people, luminous in culture and history, Miranda balances destruction with creation, rendering Native people’s continuance on this continent. Finally, in “I Give You Back,” Harjo illustrates that by reclaiming original knowledge through “releasing fear,” the “beloved and hated twin,” she restores the balance needed in regaining her life—a life that has carried in it a history of death:“You are not my blood anymore. // I give you back to the soldiers / who burned down my home, beheaded my children, / raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters. / I give you back to those who stole the / food from our plates when were starving” (50). More than this, however, Harjo attests to the responsibility of kindling that fear which has grown to be a part of her: “Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash. / You have gutted me but I gave you the knife. / You have devoured me, but I laid myself across the fire” (51). Exercising incantation woven throughout the entire poem, Harjo calls forth the original energy of creation, of living, so that fear is not her “shadow any longer” (51). Interestingly, at the end of her introduction to the collection, Harjo states, “What amazed me at the beginning and still amazes me about the creative process is that even as we are dying something always wants to be born” (xxviii). In creative moves, Harjo makes present the injustices suffered by indigenous people by the hands of colonial warfare; she also contests those injustices by inverting power’s trajectory with compassionate but uninhibited creative expression. In a very small space, I have tried to show that Native women poets have grand aspirations—that their work is more than a form of healing, more than a platform to bear witness, more than a decolonizing act, more than space to honor the dead (though their work is certainly doing all of these things). The effects of war on individuals, families, and communities is enduring, a trauma that does not end with the death of a generation. What Gould, Miranda, and Harjo show, at least, is that while the intergenerational trauma suffered by generations of Indian people from the devastating effects of war (sold as US policy) is immediate and personal,

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the creative process contends with these effects in a public way. And from this contention, the warrior-poets refashion how to wage the battle, how to recover the power stored in indigenous original knowledge that will direct a new cycle of beginnings. Native women have always been the backbone of communities, have known how to feed their communities by any means necessary, have been instruments of fortitude during times of war; perhaps now, more than ever, we need to believe in the purification these Native women poets bring to us. WORKS CITED Bird, Gloria. “Toward a Decolonization of the Mind and Text: Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.” Reading Native American Women: Creative/Critical Representations. Ed. Inés Hernández-Ávila. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2005. 93-105. Gould, Janice. Earthquake Weather. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996. Harjo, Joy. How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975-2001. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002. Miranda, Deborah. Indian Cartography. New York: Greenfield Review Press, 1999.

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CHAPTER 5 PROTESTORS, PARTICIPANTS, PEACE: WHY, WHY NOT, AND WHEN?

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Goodnight, Mr. President Ala Riani “Good Night, Mr. President” is not one of my favorite poems, but, however, a refl ection of my younger years and my black-and-white perception of the world of politics. As a Kurd, I was obviously shocked by the silence of the world when the Kurds fl ed to the mountains away from the grasp of Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s. The Kurds were abandoned as they were of no political interest for the great West. Due to recent developments and the United States, Kurds are finally liberated. Many people refuse to listen to the notion and realize that the war in Iraq is not only bad, but also has been a source of liberation and freedom for an entire people.

Goodnight, Mr. President. As you go to sleep The night has fallen The stars all shine and blink There are children outside your door, And hungry people outside the stores. As you go to sleep With your questions and issues All tucked down in some shelf People are screaming for help And you go to bed. Dream sweet dreams. There is a girl out there Beaten to death. I sing you this lullaby reminding you,

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This is not going to pass you by As you close your eyes. Go to sleep. Goodnight, Mr. President. You think As long as your house is white As long as you’re clean and dry It will all be all right But it’s raining black And there is nowhere to hide. You will go to history How and why, a mystery. Goodnight, Mr. President.

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Those Policemen Are Sleeping: A Call to the Children of Israel and Palestine D. H. Melhem Four Palestinian police offi cers lie dead in a Ramallah offi ce building, Saturday, March 30, 2002. The five bodies (one not pictured) all with gunshot wounds to the head were lying in a dark hallway where the walls were splattered with blood and bullet holes. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

CAPTION:

Those policemen are sleeping. They lie, five in a doorway, each one neatly shot in the head, huddled like derelicts. In the dereliction of death, they cannot guard Ramallah, or Arafat, or anything or anyone. They cannot guard children or mothers or old men. Their blood, no longer confined, dances freely out the doorway toward blasted olive groves and rubble of bulldozed homes and shows its sad triumph in the street: We are fathers, lovers, people like yourselves! it cries. A few miles away Israeli children are sleeping. Dead in holiday clothes. A Palestinian boy in pieces among them. They are all sleeping, sleeping, all belong to one signature. They don’t need identification cards, or passports. They don’t need to sign in or sign up. God/Allah/Jehovah welcomes them. It’s like a festival in heaven. Pesach and Easter, cakes and goodies and traditional sayings, chanting and singing and hard-boiled eggs, bitter herbs and date cakes. All the shades sharing one earth, a single territory, the air sweet above them, the sky a heavenly blue, while the music of the spheres, like bells of sunlight, chimes each flight into heaven.

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War keeps taking, taking sucks marrow, marries the dead to the dead and the living to the dead. War is insatiable, it has a stomach for youth the delectable sweetness of babies it spits out old people it spares lives as lottery prizes. And faith? What of faith? I have faith in sunlight, in moonlight, in a dandelion that gives its bitter food and plain beauty, in a smile, in the smell of soap, in a page turned slowly, faith in the Jesus of Peace, the Muhammad of Peace, the Moses of Peace, the Buddha of Peace, I have faith in the possible footsteps of Gandhi and King. What Moloch is this who beckons Israel? And beckons Palestine? Or is it a brave ancestor who fought vainly, who summons you to his fate? Is the world better off for the killing? Cure yourselves of the past. It loves only itself. Its plagues of grief and vengeance that heavily armor the heart and seemingly coat it with mail

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can be as light as a shroud or a mirage in your vision. Another world is possible.

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We Live in Violent Times Annmarie Sauer The day the bombing started. Hoboken (Antwerp), Belgium, 2003. Vigil How many candles did I not burn for you for peace The engines on the flight path of evil boom in the corners of the room cramp the heart In the silence of the house I learn the language of a new general with a word in mind for death of every kind Love and hope are lost in smoke

As the fi rst bombers flying their deadly charge for their first so-called precision strikes over to Iraq passed over Antwerp, I felt disempowered by the killing of so many innocent lives. I felt horror at the dismembered children. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the American soldiers allowed the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad, part of the earliest cultural heritage of humankind being carried away to be destroyed or sold to private collectors. The same feelings I have every time a species disappears, be it a short-lived or sixteen-hundred-years-old plant or an insect, bird, fish, or mammal…every time part of our collective memory disappears.

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“Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live,” wrote Holmes Rolston III, professor of philosophy. Landscapes and biodiversity are dying, being destroyed at an unprecedented rate, just as the cultures and livelihoods of indigenous peoples are being eradicated. Their fundamental human right to live as they choose or have to because of their tradition and the place they live, and our fundamental human right to try and live as far away as possible from the dollar economy, is trampled. The unalienable rights of all are still just the rights of a few. Human rights are meant to empower, not the privileged and rich who are heavily polluting, but the voiceless that have to fight daily for the integrity of their body and mind and spirit. What can I do, a woman, a daughter and mother, a sister, a friend? I can mourn. I can bear witness about the threat not only of one overheated loud heckler, but also to the violence done to all our relations. We must remember and remind, speak out, write. We can’t be standing at the sidelines and be impartial. We must remember Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, the Long Walk, Darfur, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden. We can’t forget the The Rainbow Warrior destroyed in the harbor. We should honor the Old Growth Trees and those who risked all to protect them, felled for profit and left to rot in the clear-cut. Don’t forget all lives in all that is. We are the universe and the plants are our relations, the water our sister or brother, the animals and the earth are part of us. So what you think, what your culture thinks, becomes universal and no religion or cosmology is better than another. They are all tales to show a way of living well within a given place and time. Our new rules have to be caring and nonviolent, giving each man and woman and child their dignity as citizens. We all have the right to ask questions. Do think and question. Ask hard and difficult questions and try to be aware of the perversions of the language of power—a language, which in itself constitutes a violation of our mind and is violence. It is the state that owns or pretends to own the right to violence. It is the United States of America that has and uses weapons of mass destruction; it is the United States of America that accepted even a nuclear preemptive strike against perceived enemies or fabricated enemies. It is the United States of America that

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has violated the international laws invading Iraq. Violence is also imposing the death penalty on thirteen-year-old children, on men and women, and pretending to be pro-life. Violence is also the market economy, with its superfluous ugly plastic consumer goods, with its materialism barely hidden under a veneer of religion in which a god speaks directly to the “leader” at the exclusion of all others. Mass culture and monoculture are both an overexploitation of human and natural resources, driven by the unholy opposition of nationalism versus universalism, imposing our values and obliging others to produce what we need. We are a small group and we walk in the margin of the big news stories that money can buy. Yet we are many small groups working and walking in many margins. Daily we are in the now of life and connectedness. At least, some days longing for a nonviolent, just world with freedom, health, education, a decent livelihood, respect and caring for all, and sometimes we are touched by love and light. To Those Who Protest With Me

August 31, 2005 Chloride, Arizona, USA We should give some thought on how to react to provocation, threats, and people screaming, near or over the edge. The anger, the criticism stems from a deep need, and an unfulfi lled longing. So when a counter demonstrator blasts out the song “American Soldier” to disturb a peace rally, then that person implies that he or she would like to be such a hero. The pro-peace people are challenging his or her violent dream of military domination. The Iraq warmakers have bullied Americans into submitting to profit motivated militarism and the fear-based Patriot Act under the pretext of national security, consequently polarizing civilian life. Our longing for life and universal peace are on a uniting, transcendental level for the planet and its creatures, as well as for our neighbors and ourselves. We wish to live in a sane society. Where does violence begin? People are hurting and want to hurt you. The anger of the hecklers stems from fear. By our presence we signal that their worldview and acceptance of power are not generally shared.

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Thus the peace demonstrators become the target of their rage instead of their true oppressors. However, we is the word—not them and us—since we all live in this one world, since we are all related. We need to listen and talk, even if we are not heard. So: Keep cool. Be aware, look around and greet new people and vibe them out a bit. Notify the police in advance of an action—Kingman, Arizona, has some cool cops. Carry ID in case you want to be a witness. Stay with the core group and avoid being isolated. Put women in front and just be there. Sing a song for cohesion, play hacky-sack, and be sincere. Remember, violence starts a cycle of violence and has unforeseen consequences. “Yeah, bring the troops home and just nuke them!” “If you raise that arm again, I’ll break your f**king arm!” must remind us, against the odds, to always treat the other as a person. Of course violence begins at birth when you get slapped on the back to take your first breath, potty training, kindergarten, school, prison, work at minimum wage, mindless consumption and pollution, exploitation of the land, of our bodies.Violence is when the balance between men and women is disturbed, when helpmates scream at each other.Violence is having no healthcare or a place to heal.Violence is not having the freedom to choose one’s own life style in and with nature, outside of the money economy.Violence is Babylon with its perverse results.Violence is judging the other and not judging the structures that enrich the corporations and suck the life and blood out of people’s souls living under those structures. Nonviolence is togetherness without exploitation of human, beast and plants, earth or water. Nonviolence makes no victims, sanctifies life and gives us a possibility of community and joy. And apple pie…made from scratch. (Postscript: And so we had apple pie at the next weekly vigil.)

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Nationalism and Universalism

On the train Hoboken, November 2005 Some love their country, the flag, mom, the Fourth of July, and apple pie. They embrace their roots, the shared values of their country, the food, the specific holidays. Some love their state, God and Fatherland, and declare that who is not with them is against them. To show themselves and the world that they are great and strong, they’ll march in any war that is packaged well. We could say that patriotism is an innocent form of turning inward and loving what you find there. Nationalism, on the other hand, defi nes the differences and often hates or despises the other, fi nding a reason to destroy. Nationalists don’t like openness and looking out, so they declare themselves to be the best, the chosen, or what ever it may be. Obviously nationalism in this sense is dangerous. All that are deemed to touch or belittle that feeling are disliked and assimilated with the perceived enemy. That person can be portrayed as undermining the troops, as un-American even as colluding with the enemy, or just plain mislead or stupid. In small rural towns, friends will turn against friends and in utmost contempt they will close a blood circle against those who seemingly do not belong. I do not belong: My origins, upbringing, my blood is too mixed, and I am unable and unwilling to be part of a narrow-minded community. I claim the world, the people of all continents as my blood, my family and thus kindly, gently, I’ll have to speak out for universalism. On this earth, yes in the universes we can imagine, we are all related. The djinni of nationalism for centuries now has poisoned the family relations on earth and loosened the bond with each other. In creating this blood circle around each nation, of which not every one can be part, exclusion is created: them and us. Suddenly all around there are invisible lines of demarcation and exclusivity. Once the split has occurred, more splits occur and we have class, language, religion, blood, sexual orientation, gender, and handicaps, among others, that pile themselves on top of this nationalism. Thus the situation evolves towards darkness, violence, and extremism. Only remembering our planet—that tiny speck in the

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universe that is our home—can remind us of the fact that we need to live together in a respectful way. Only then can we stitch the torn fabric of society together so that we all become whole and healed. Some think their country is a giant. That might have been, but the father giant is old and loosing his hair and teeth; still formidable when roaring like the Wizard of Oz but soon dwarfed by young giants living in the East and the South. If the old giant goes on preaching death and destruction, then patricide would be a logical conclusion. However, there is change coming. Children in this world, who have not been raised in the place they were born, and away from the dominant culture, have changed. They speak a different language and have in the course of their lives learned to cross the them/us divide; building the bridge by becoming “third culture kids,” incorporating in their own “make up” all that is good wherever it comes from.These children and their children’s children, raised by parents who still had to live the split, will be true citizens of the world. They may love and call a particular place in the world home, eat the apple pie, drink the wine, or pray and meditate for a Buddhist shrine, but they know that the needs and longings of all humans are the same: We all want safety and health for our children; we all want to improve the place we live in by improving education and infrastructure; we all need recognition and friendship and want to share and help. Nobody likes being alienated by a job, nobody wants to be branded the outsider or the scapegoat; we all need to receive and give respect. Democracy?

Strasburg (Alsace), France November 20, 2006 As an American citizen I carry a burden of guilt because of the morally unacceptable actions of my government. Unacceptable because the rule of international law has not been respected, the basis for decisions offered to the allies was manufactured or unsound and because too many families are grieving the loss of loved ones. I am stating this as a simple citizen because democracy is being subverted or perverted by cronyism in the higher nominations. Suggesting a personal lawyer to be a judge at the Supreme Court is only one sad and well-known example. Our flawed

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democracy no longer has a government but a court trying to secure the succession of the so-called “Royal” family. Some parts of the press (for reasons of their own) collude with the power that is. Fox News—also called Faux News—is blatantly biased so that in watching it one is not informed but manipulated. The catch phrase of the day is handed down to the news anchors. Thus “fl ip flop” becomes a rage, as other networks are quick to jump on the bandwagon. Does all this matter? Does it matter that the Supreme Court is populated with people reflecting the convictions of the current power base, implying and advertising thus that they think morality belongs to their side only, and interpreting the laws that way? Yes, all this is an inadmissible distortion of the fundaments of democracy. If power is just in the hands of a few, state power becomes leavened with the slow poison of fascism: decline in civil liberties, intolerance and the rise of daily injustices, the stealing of the minds and hearts of people who lose control over their lives, turning neighbor against neighbor. In this light, our country has become a plutocracy, the power being in the hands of a few, of the capital that funds this power. We need to take back our country by listening to the powerless and the voiceless, by dealing with real issues like uranium mining, drilling in the polar icecap, by realizing that universalism does not equal corporate globalization. Deforestation, climate change, unemployment, corporate slavery and the pride of the powerful that they live in a “perfect world” is a heartless attitude while most citizens don’t even have decent healthcare. Over three thousand women die yearly in our country through domestic violence. Their plight is as important as the plight of the victims of terrorism, domestic and international. And nothing is done about this because violence pervades the tissue of our society. As a consequence, civil means of conflict resolution are seen as wimpy. Working in rebuilding societies and confidence building is laughed away as sissy work that the Europeans are good enough to do. For a well-functioning democracy the educational system has to be functioning so that citizens cannot so easily be manipulated and so they can make informed choices. The choice to make today is to at least bring home twenty thousand troops before the holidays, and the rest of the troops before the end of 2007. Blood begets

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blood. Violence leads to retaliation and escalation. Only nonviolent means can liberate the world of grief, loss, broken limbs and lives, mourning, fear, death inflicted by one human on another because they would not listen to each other. They forget their own humanity in looking at the other and are no longer willing to keep working to find the highest common good.When I speak about dialogue, then I do not only mean the dialogue between nations. But you and I speaking to other you-s and I-s. Ignorance leads to misunderstandings, isolation, distrust, distance between different cultures and religions, and eventually to violence. Without really knowing the others and ourselves, we begin to stereotype. This, in its turn, will lead to racism and to full-fledged xenophobia. Our safety can never be found in oil-fueled violence wrapped in the shroud of democracy. That path will only lead to ever growing instability. What could help is good stewardship of the earth because the combination of demography, climate change, and the perverse effects of corporate globalization will only lead to more and more instability, (wo)manmade disasters, uproar and havoc. The gap between rich and poor in this world has to be bridged, sustainable development promoted, poverty eradicated by going back to regional economies. This could be a basis for a healthier and more equitable world. The United States is determining in this. Will this hurt our economy? Hell yes, but if we do not take that road it will hurt our children.We have a duty of care, but right now in our democracy, among the leaders of this country, the moral compass seems broken and maybe beyond repair. What is the weight of an uneasy conscience?

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Protesting the War about to Begin: March 19, 2003 Charlotte Mandel Just before President Bush ordered the bombing of Baghdad, hundreds of thousands of Americans protested; we marched, in New York City, San Francisco, and other cities, to demonstrate public opposition to preemptive war on Iraq. At that time, I still had hopes that such public outcry would have an effect on the administration’s actions. Four years and thousands of deaths later, it is clear that this president prefers to follow his own insistently disastrous course even against the will of a public majority. This poem is an expression of my sense of ineffectiveness, inability to stop my own government’s war juggernaut as the bombing began. Lines to power Cut I am becoming Sound inside the hollow Of a clapperless bell Shoulder hitting a vacuum Wheels spinning Hieroglyph that light passes through Graffito unread.

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Apache Warrior—Apache Troop Paula Gunn Allen Watching TV coverage of the invasion of Iraq, March 2003, and I am thinking how strange they use our (Native) names for their wars yet don’t notice that more American Indians than any other group, demographically speaking, serve and have served in the armed forces. “…zone reconnaissance state of the art—tank– stabilized sight, stabilized gun 15 to whatever miles an hour bouncing along like this 23 tons of steel wrapped around a marvel of new engineering blows you away Kiowa helicopters low flying skimming not far in the dust above maybe 50 feet survey in front of the tanks maybe 6 miles out but usually closer first taste of battle, first blood” the reporter says the camera sweeps over lines of armored pumped young men making their way across the Iraqi desert Third Infantry, Seventh Cavalry “at higher speeds they fire more accurately they carry classified numbers of shells armor piercing some of them high explosive some of them”

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are you scared yet? Crazy Horse Troop just ahead, Bone Crusher just behind, flying reconnaissance for oncoming tanks the Warriors in the 7th Helicopters two women fly one a West Point graduate who survived 20 rapes thinks it’s a real hoot to be the first to see the enemy, “I can just imagine Rommel in the desert but you couldn’t do it then there were no WARRIORS in WWII they couldn’t talk to each other real time, no night sights, no moving shots, couldn’t flee and fight at the same time things are so different now you wonder how they got through but they did they were through, that is maybe because they couldn’t see none of us really knew the plan if any of us really knew the plan if we could just get there quickly establish a beachhead there” in the oldest desert of western man the movement across the desert the oasis of war as old as the sands “We thought we knew the plan but they didn’t do what we said they’d do,”

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what they said they’d do Washington said “you aren’t following the plan” “You don’t have a plan,” the commander snapped and that was true Tomahawk missile up, up and away, shot by the photographer bouncing on the hood of the Warrior as he takes these historic pictures for the historic 7th Calvary Captain somebody from somewhere Texas “you all come out of there with your hands up” like Sheridan said this commander’s precursive self said chasing other heathens in fields of blood and buffalo grass; this one 26, 27 maybe, never in battle before— and those 18, 19 year olds he leads all wound up, adrenaline high, MRE, no sleep, only the desert and the threat of gas, nightmares of World War I, the corpse and rat filled trenches, although post modern warriors lie in single holes all suited up. It’s crowded and close in there and who knows how many more days to go “we’re just doing what’s right,” the baby faced warrior claims, like we’ve always done since so long ago. “Gary Owen” was Custer’s marching song has always been the 7th Calvary’s them who were wiped out by the Sioux in different times, or course, defeated them like to be defeated now, say “Gary Owen,” the 7th will respond,

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“HOO HAA” is that from Texas, or Gary, Indiana, or maybe all the way from Geronimo’s grave? “The most important things when the shit goes down it’s good to have something good to hold on to a unit with a proud history you can write home about a motto, a battle cry of your own” I bet when they began to move troops into Iraq at the cessation of their apocryphal “Shock and Awe” some Commander said into his microphone “Heads up, people. We’re going into Indian Country.” That was how they began the invasion of Kuwait a decade before. And in battle after battle preceding through two centuries. Why not this decade, this century too.

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Figures from the Iraq War Jun’er (Translated from Chinese by Simon Patton) When the American war against Iraq broke out, the TV showed the swirling dust of Baghdad, and innocent civilians who had been hurt or killed. These images disturbed me each time I saw them, because there was something really too glorious about this land: on it was inscribed Babylon’s many thousands of years of history, as well as countless historical sites, and traces of various civilizations. No person who loved this place would want to see Babylon go on suffering the ravages of a war waged by “modern civilization.” For this reason, one day I wrote down a list of facts and figures, both ancient and contemporary, in order to call people’s attention to the cruel and tragic historical reality that lay behind them. from 19 March 2003 to the 1 May 2006 America spent a total of 45 billion dollars on the Iraq War troop deployments numbered 300,000 person—times approximately 2000 cluster bombs were used 170 Allied soldiers were killed between 13,000 and 16,000 Iraqis died in the fighting according to UN statistics, before the war started 600,000 people fled the country to become refugees Iraq’s economy shrank by 50% it is recorded elsewhere that oil reserves of 1.125 trillion barrels have been discovered to date in Iraq second in size only to Saudi Arabia and natural gas reserves of 310 million cubic metres 2.4% of the world’s total reserves the total population of Iraq is 230 million people

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the majority live in extreme poverty the national unemployment rate is 70% these people survive on government rations the history books tell us that Iraq is located at the heart of the ancient civilization of Babylon the Euphrates River and the Tigris River run the length of the country a city-state emerged 4700 years ago in the fertile basin between them in the course of history, this land has been conquered by the Persian Empire, the Arabian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and England cuneiform writing, books written on clay tablets, Assyrians, Babylonians, Jews Seleucia, Nineveh, the Hanging Gardens each one of these names was as dazzling as the misery played out in turns on this land

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Sufi Dancing with Dad Marjorie Hudson What is a Sufi? One who does not separate himself from others by opinion or dogma; and who realizes the heart as the Shrine of God. 1

On Wednesday, March 19, 2003, my father died. Hours later, America went to war. Those of us who sat at his bedside as his last breaths rasped from his throat were glad he did not live to see it. For sixty years, Dad had been working for peace. In fact, you might say he was a workaholic for peace. He worked so hard for peace his whole life that by the time he died, I was just beginning to get to know him. I knew this: He grew up in a little town near Chicago. He was five years old when his father died. The Depression followed soon after. His mother took in boarders. Sometimes, to make more room, he and his kid brother slept on the open porch, in winter. Sometimes they woke up covered with snow. Dad helped support his family with a paper route. But he never had the twenty-five cents it took to get into Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play. Kind strangers let him watch from their apartment window. Many years later, when his own kids were young, his Saturday morning tradition was all Midwestern corn: he’d pour batter into the electric waffle iron, singing the “ham and eggs song”—which I’ve never heard anyone else sing, so I always figured he made it up. Then we’d all feast, following his lead and drenching the hot waffles in Karo syrup. I also knew this: in December 1941, he stood before his draft board and claimed to be a pacifist, just after the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor. Somehow, at a young age, in a young century, poor and proud, he decided that war is not the answer. In the immortal words of Marvin Gaye, whom I’m pretty sure he never listened to, “Only love will conquer hate.” He was still a pacifist after al Qaeda attacked the Twin Towers. By that time, he’d been working with Methodists and Jews and Catholics and

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Muslims and godless Communists to speak up for peace all over the world. He’d come back from a Cold War trip to the USSR and taught us kids the word for peace, mir, and the vee sign that went with it. By September 11, 2001, one of his best friends was Said, a Syrian scholar who he’d helped create a graduate program in international peace and reconciliation. Dad spent the first years of the century in a fax war over the fate of a foundation to promote international peace. If Dad hadn’t been still strapped to machines in an attempt to keep him alive, he’d have rolled over in his grave the day we attacked Iraq. ***

As a child, I thought of the Holy Spirit as something like a top, swirled with color and spinning across the yard. I’d heard my dad preach on the Trinity many times growing up, but I’m pretty sure that particular view of the Holy Spirit was my own invention. As an adult, I’d attended at two deaths, both of beloved dogs. In each case, I am sure I saw the escaping spirit move, like a sudden flurry of air, up and away from the body. Today, after long and prayerful consideration, was the day my family had decided that Dad’s spirit was going to leave his body. Today we would unhook him from machinery, and let him go. I drove the back way to the hospital, the road along the river, my old high school bicycle escape route.Things had changed in thirty years.There was now a family-run sushi bar squeezed in between the gas station and the 7-Eleven. I picked up a mini-pack and tucked it in my bag.When someone is dying, I learned, bring a big bag with water and crackers—and whatever else will sustain you. Some things on the route were eerily familiar—around the reservoir, cherry trees bloomed, clouds of pink-white on black stems, Dad’s favorite. When we were kids, Dad would drive us through the Kenwood neighborhood, or around the Tidal Basin, to catch the rare moment when they were in full bloom, just before the petals washed away in a spring rain. Now I watched the graceful sway of branches, and the flitter of petals across the road. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and I felt it like a kind of pain. I tuned in the war news on the radio and gave in to a deepening sense of dread. Could we really be going to war again as a strategy

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for peace? I remembered the moment, just hours after the Twin Towers collapsed, when I turned to a neighbor in my church prayer service and said, What will become of all our young people? Because this means war. Daddy’s girls often succumb to a false sense that everything will be all right, because Daddy can fix any problem. Never a Daddy’s girl, I still held a magical belief—as long as Dad’s alive, peace has a chance. Now, life was spinning out like one of those dreams I’ve had for years, where I’m pressing the brake pedal as hard as I can to the floor, and the car keeps hurtling toward the cliff. • • •

Dad had a few strokes over the years, but he was going strong the day he collapsed: his home office Rolodex was opened to the phone number of an opera singer he wanted to hire to record a “hit Broadway song” he had written twenty years before; his office chair held the last book he had been reading: a guide to literary agents for his novel, a new venture; the pile on his desk included an invitation to the Swedish embassy for a special awards dinner and, last but not least, there was a letter to his senator, giving reasons, both moral and logical, not to invade Iraq: “[T]he possible consequences of such a war are frightening: alienating countries in that area such as Turkey, Pakistan, Jordan; having to occupy Iraq for many years following the war; the economic burden…higher oil prices…American casualties which are likely to be higher than originally anticipated; and the fading support of the American people.”2 He left the fax machine on, still warm, paper-clogged with an incoming report. Then he went upstairs for a nap and his heart blew up. The enzyme release level from the damaged tissue counted in the thousands. His brain began to die. But Mom found him there, and he came back, after three tries with the defibrillator. He came back, with oxygen and respirator. After a night in intensive care, his reptile brain began to allow him to breathe, with help, and his skin began to pink with oxygenated blood. Gathered at the hospital the next day, we joked that it would not be past Dad to sit up in bed and start faxing letters to the president, starting a new foundation, a new nonprofit to save the world, a new book.We knew it wasn’t likely, but nobody would come out and tell us. The doctors were

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waiting for test results. Finally I cornered a nurse: “It doesn’t look good, does it?” “Well, I’m not a doctor, but…no.” • • •

This whole process lasts around two hours and by the end, the participants are swinging their whole bodies so wildly, that you wonder why they don’t collide, especially as none of them seems to be aware of the material world around them.

It took the hospital three days to officially decide that it was hopeless. He could not possibly come back as other than this pink, beating shell. According to our local Reiki master, his spirit had already started slipping downstream, from his skull to his feet. “There’s nothing here anymore,” she said, palms on his forehead. “It’s been nothing for three days.” My family is not given to spontaneous bursts of prayer and song. But we gathered for a good-bye. We each said a word or two—my sister thanked Dad for buying her a bike he couldn’t afford. I kept thinking of Dad as a little boy—who had lost his father. When we pulled the breathing tubes, Dad’s breath became an audible, painful-sounding gag. His reflexes were gone. He would eventually choke, unable to swallow, if his heart did not give out first. But he was still breathing.We had it on good authority that he might last several hours.The ICU doctor, though, covered his bases. Just as he came by to sign the papers, he said, “Sometimes it takes days, or weeks.” We all stood there, disbelieving. How long does it take to die when you have no brain, no heart? How the body fights to protect itself: Dad’s heart was half gone—only two out of four chambers working, but they were working double time, the monitor spiking unbelievably—but only in one direction. His heart rate zoomed to one hundred sixty-six. We could see the fist-sized muscle actually leaping out of his chest cavity with the effort, bouncing against the hospital gown fabric. His heart leaped out of his chest—it’s a cliché, but it’s no hyperbole. I couldn’t help but think that he was hanging on for dear life, for one more chance to stop the peace train from derailing.

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His body became hot. He began to sweat. I clutched his hand, stroked his arm, put my hand over his heart, breathed slow and deep to calm him. Loud croaking noises, death noises, jerked from his throat.They didn’t slow down. They didn’t stop. I took a rag, and some bottled water, and began wiping the brow of a dying man whose body was going a hundred miles an hour. My sister and mother and a visiting pastor began to sing. I did not know the words. But, to drown out those croaking gasps, I hummed as loudly as I could. Then we began to read the psalms: Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil… By the time I’d made it to the parking lot that morning, I’d learned that two hundred fifty thousand troops were poised on the Iraqi border, ready for a signal. But then there was another story. The world was breaking out in peace demonstrations. I had never before seen a war that was overwhelmed by calls for peace before it began. All over the world, people had decided peace is not impossible. I was amazed. Dad took me to my first peace demonstration, back in the Vietnam War days. We sang “Give Peace a Chance” with a couple of hundred thousand other folks that cold January in front of the Lincoln Memorial. My red knit gloves made a vee sign, a shadow on someone’s back, that I clicked into a snapshot. Demonstrations were nothing new for Dad. He was sitting in to desegregate Chicago lunch counters in the forties. Marching in Selma in the sixties. Maybe he and his generation of peaceniks did make a difference. Today, the world was paying attention to peace; the world was asking for peace, the world was going on strike for peace. But America was going to war. I asked the chaplain to read the beatitudes, Dad’s favorite: “Blessed are the meek,” it starts, “for they shall inherit the earth…” • • •

The Sufi dancing takes place away from tourist crowds, in a crowded quarter containing dusty, ramshackle buildings and poorly lit, rubbish-strewn streets and alleys.

We had listened to that breath, insistent, choking, the scraping of the

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lungs and throat, for two hours. It was hard to believe Dad felt no pain, no struggle, that those parts of the brain were simply gone. This was an animal working, an animal whose spirit, our Reiki master reported now, was beginning to curve upward from the body, toward the ceiling, hanging a bit in the corner, eyeing my increasingly worried mother. Instead of wasting away, however, Dad was croaking louder. Mom had started worrying, and as she worried, she chattered about things that had already been decided: How would we arrange for the body? Would they take good care of it in the city morgue? Was it too late to get the ring off? I understood: Say anything not to hear that terrible croaking, not to ask the question we did not want to ask, but all were thinking: how much longer can this go on? And this too: what will we do without you? The rest of us squeezed our eyes shut and prayed. We all began to remember it might take days. What had the doctor said? Weeks. I opened my eyes. I took Mom to lunch. Dad’s spirit slipped out along the green ivy wallpaper border sometime after noon, halfway through our tuna sandwiches. My sister and her pastor stood suddenly beside us, faces empty, like pale moons, eyes pink and large, moving slowly, as if they had all the time in the world. We sat and talked for a while. Then we went to see Dad one last time. • • •

At the end of the two-hour event, several dancers collapse to the ground in a state of ecstasy, and for a moment they are in a world of their own.

Turning the corner from the nurse’s station, I saw a dark-eyed man walking down the corridor. It was Dad’s old friend, Said. Big, handsome, mustached, a vital presence in this thin hallway. He embraced, kissed both cheeks, smiled. We gathered again at Dad’s bedside. His body was already yellowing, the freckled Irish skin thin and blotched as the skin of a new potato. Said sat on one side, I sat across, Dad’s feet between.“Your father’s heart,” he said, “had enough mercy for the whole world. For the whole world.”

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Said began to tell us about growing up with war in his native Syria. How war makes children afraid. He began to tell us that Dad had made a difference. I started pulling Kleenex out of my pocket in clumps, pressing it against my leaky eyes. On this day, when my country was warring on Muslims, a Muslim man had come to pray at the feet of my father. Said bowed his head and prayed in Farsi, in which the only word I recognized was my father’s name. When we raised our heads, he told me it was a Sufi prayer. I asked: Are you a Sufi dancer? Images of whirling dervishes moved across my brain. “Sufi dancing? Of course,” he said. “Your father did it too. I showed him how one day. We did it together.” I almost laughed. It made sense. Dad was always trying something new, something impossible. Sending solar energy to Africa, building Habitat homes with gypsies, writing a Broadway song, and at eighty-two, writing a first novel. He saw things others did not see. His world was all vision, placed on a backdrop of need. Sufi dancers believe they can make peace by twirling to perfection. Why not? It makes more sense to dance for peace than to war for it. Dad’s pinched, waxy body lay before me, but he was long gone, spinning across the ivy wallpaper border, on his way to the infinite. Strangely, I was already beginning to know him better. Dressed in spotless white galabayas, the musicians play their mesmerizing tunes, and the dancer spins around. He is apparently unaffected by any kind of dizziness and even after half an hour of constant spinning, his face is calm and his eyes closed or turned towards the ceiling, as if he is in another world.

Our work lies before us. Let us dance. NOTES 1. Sufi dance descriptions are from the International Sufi Movement, www.sufi movement.org/whatsufi is.htm. 2. Fax to Senator Paul Sarbanes, March 16, 2003, from JEC and SAC.

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After Reading Women on War Pat Falk In the fall of 2003, I was on sabbatical to finish a book tentatively titled It Happens as I Speak: A Feminist Poetics. During this time, I read the exceptional anthology Women on War: An International Anthology of Writings from Antiquity to the Present, introduced and edited by Daniela Gioseffi. I was so moved by the power, depth, and collective vision of this book that I changed the pronoun in my own book’s title to It Happens as We Speak and tried to embody that vision in the following poem. Part two of the poem alludes to the excerpt from Maria Rosa Henson’s memoir, Comfort Women, included in the Gioseffi anthology. 1. finally the spaces are filled in as if there were a map of the world with several territories left blank as if a group of children came along and filled them in with crayons, pens, markers, filled them in with pictures and with song— familiar tools—we’ve all used them— but these are voices somehow new, urgently terribly sad testimony fills the silence dark faces startled faces filling up the page with whispers warnings, the places and the weapons vary but the terror is the same the unimagined pain the same a child’s eye burning from the inside out a young man’s hand chopped off thousands here millions there massive open graves

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2. one must stand for many she’s called comfort woman kidnapped first across the border placed into a dank dark room twelve by ten a basin to clean a bed to sleep when possible a long dim hallway leads to other doors and other rooms and other comfort women in the hallway thatched and full of stink the soldiers lining up it is late afternoon it is morning it’s the middle of the night they wait their turn leaning hunched into the wall getting ready staying warm and hard they take her one at a time the first time rupture and blood the second time ten minutes later third fourth fifteen in one first night her lips so swollen other entry ways must do soon those too swollen and bleeding she has a basin for cleaning a bamboo bed and space on the floor for a small lamp 3. numbness in a sea of words massive genocide testimonial comfort in whom do we find comfort if not in each other one among continued looming violences must stand for many as a flower fills the page with long oval leaves flowing flowing outward from a solid center : self : deeper self : connected

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I know about pornography and war I claw my way through fallout image text and lexicon I change the pronoun I to We and close the door and close the book behind me

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The Call Stacy Bannerman My husband was a forty-three-year-old sergeant first class in the Army National Guard who never thought he’d go to war. Yet, in October 2003, he was called to active duty as an infantry mortar platoon sergeant, and didn’t return home until spring of 2005. Struggling to find a way to honor my husband while opposing the war, and outraged by the administration’s lack of support for weekend warriors, I joined Military Families Speak Out. MFSO galvanized the country by breaking the traditional code of silence of military families to protest Operation Iraqi Freedom, the most controversial military action in US history. “I got the call.” My husband and I hadn’t talked about the possibility of him being deployed for months, not since President Bush had declared major combat operations in Iraq were over. I cock my head like a dog who’s heard some noise and isn’t sure what it is. I know what he said, but those four words seem to have jammed up the gears in my mind, and I am unable to process them. “What call?” “Our unit is getting mobilized. I’m going to Iraq.” He says, looking at me closely, trying to calculate the effect of his words. “No. No. No, that can’t be right.” He moves toward me and I push back in my chair. I don’t want him to touch me, don’t want any physical contact whatsoever that will cement the words laid out before me. In that instant, I understand how it is that people refuse to believe it when they’re first informed of the death of a loved one. I reach for another stack of envelopes, and force-feed them with invitations for peace and poetry workshops. He steps toward me and I roll away in my chair.We do this dance until I’ve got nowhere left to go, and then he draws me to him, closing his arms around me, and I begin to weep.

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There’s only one other person in the office, so Lorin quickly tells her what’s going on and then we find an empty room, closing the door behind us. He sits, and I cry. Several minutes pass before I can ask him to tell me what he knows, exactly when he’s supposed to go. What I want is for him to tell me why, to give me one impeccable reason for going to war. No, what I really want is for none of this to be happening. “Right now, I don’t know too much other than it looks like we’ll get the formal mobilization orders in early November. By the middle of the month, we’ll probably be going to a training camp somewhere.” “For how long?” “A couple of months or so.” “Then what?” I ask, like I don’t already know. “We’ll be deployed to Iraq. I was told to expect up to eighteen months, total, from the time we start training until we come back.” “Well, you tell them no, goddammit!” Fearful, furious, I continue, “You tell them that we just moved to Kent.Tell them this was our chance for a new start.Tell them how hard the last couple of years have been, and that things are finally starting to look up.You tell them that.” I know it’s impossible. I know I’m being childish and desperate, and I don’t care. All I care about is my beloved and me; all I care about is trying to have some sort of life with him that doesn’t include such pain. But everything about him, his voice, his body, his eyes, tells me that he’s already thinking about what to pack. Being a soldier is about honor and strength and courage for him. I admire him for those values, though there has got to be a thousand better ways to express them. He says going to Iraq will give him a chance to find out if he’s got what it takes, if all the years of training and preparation have paid off. Sitting across from Lorin, I want to pull him to me and never let go, to imprint my hands with the feel of his face. But rather than reach out, I retreat. Everything feels like too much, the sunlight too harsh, the silence unbearably loud. Lorin holds me tight again before leaving. I watch him drive away in his brand-new white KIA Sorento. Where I once saw a manufacturer’s name, I now see the military’s acronym for “Killed In Action.” When he

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began pricing cars, I lectured him for wanting the midsize SUV, but he was so excited about being able to buy a vehicle right off the dealer’s lot for the first time in his life, that my concerns about the environmental impact and our country’s growing dependency on foreign oil didn’t really register. Besides, I reminded myself, it’s his money, not mine. Now, sitting back down at the reception desk in the front of the office, I wonder if the price he’ll pay for that machine includes his life. More than two thousand flyers promoting peace have to go out in the mail today, and it’s my responsibility. It’s a mindless task and I keep track of the numbers as I bend, fold, and paste. I start to cry on the fortyseventh envelope. Looking back, I’d known something was coming; it never occurred to me that it would be war. Several weeks earlier, as I was getting ready for work, I heard Lorin yelling from the deck in the backyard. “Hey! HEY! Stacy, you’ve got to come out here and see this!” After nearly three years of marriage, he only calls me by name when he wants to make sure he’s got my attention. “What? I’m trying to get ready.” “No. Come here, quick! Hurry!” Oh, for cripes sakes, I thought, sighing in exasperation as I set my mascara wand on the edge of the sink. Pushing aside the glass slider, I stepped out onto the deck and saw him gesturing wildly toward the roof of the house next door. “You won’t believe it! A great blue heron just landed on the roof! It was like the sky turned a different color and this huge bird came out of nowhere. I didn’t even see it fly in.” His eyes were lit up, his words rushing out. “It just stood there and stared at me. You missed it! Have you ever seen one of those?” And something within me just knew. I heard a warning voice in my mind say, Get ready, it will be here soon. Now it was here, the latest act in a series of events set in motion when Lorin first enlisted in the Army National Guard in 1983. Another five hundred flyers have to be prepared for mailing, and once again, I’m creasing sheet after sheet into a trifolded piece, the same motions I’ve used thousands of times before. But I’m feeling it now like I

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haven’t before, and I pray for peace with each page. If I just do enough of these, then maybe, somehow, the war will be over and he won’t have to go. The letters that will be received by junior high and high school students throughout the greater Seattle area have become my paper cranes. The paper crane became an icon for world peace in the aftermath of World War II. Shortly after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on her home city of Hiroshima, Japan, Sadako Sasaki contracted leukemia. Determined to fold one thousand paper cranes, believing it would grant her a wish—a wish for peace—she completed six hundred and sixty-four before she died at the age of twelve. Her friends folded the rest. I glance at a postcard with Sadako’s story that I keep at my desk and, for a moment, wonder why I even bother. Her efforts didn’t stop war; nor did her death, or the subsequent deaths of millions of others around the world. People have become more, not less, violent, and there hasn’t been a single year since WWII that some countries, somewhere, weren’t at war. Does it really make any difference what I do? Even if it does, doesn’t the fact that my husband is going to war effectively cancel out my efforts? If one person is actively promoting peace while the other’s waging war, hasn’t it become a zero-sum game? I never thought of myself as a soldier’s wife, but then, I didn’t really think of Lorin as a soldier. I considered his Guard service a hobby, a leisurely pursuit that dovetailed nicely with Lorin’s interest in military novels and war movies. He got to wear a uniform and be outdoors, get some exercise, and have a little male-bonding time in the bargain. But he’s in uniform all the time now, and in the weeks leading up to his deployment, his interest has become an obsession. When he puts the DVD into the machine for the third time in as many weeks, I tell him I just can’t watch Black Hawk Down again. But there’s no escape from the war on TV or in the paper. Operation Iraqi Freedom has come into my home, and it sticks to the walls. Lorin calls from a hangar somewhere in California where he and the rest of the advance team from the 81st Brigade are waiting for their flight. After a bus ride to a small private airport, they’ve been trying to keep themselves occupied, watching The Passion of Christ, followed by Saving Private Ryan.

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I sarcastically ask, “What’s lined up for the in-flight movies? How about Born on the Fourth of July, or maybe Full Metal Jacket, and then, right before you land, you could all watch the unedited version of Platoon.You know, just a little something to get you in the mood.” I am a very bad person. Lorin calls early the next morning from an airport in Maine, waiting to board the flight to Germany, and then Kuwait. I’m keenly aware this is our last conversation while he’s standing on American ground. I tell him repeatedly that I love him, and then, sniffling, I place the handset of my princess phone back in its cradle. I start to sob; it’s not a pretty cry. Crimson lifts her head at my distress, pawing my knee. Since Lorin’s been gone, she follows me everywhere, and has taken to lying under my desk, making it hard for me to move my chair without the wheels rolling over her tail. I continue to cry, gripping the wooden railing as the dog licks my tears from the floor. After what feels like an hour, but is probably less than ten minutes, I dry my eyes and grab the dog’s leash from the cupboard. This sends her into frenzied laps around the living room, hurdling the coffee table and leaping onto the couch. The little neighbor boys are playing outside, and they run toward us, dropping their plastic swords and helmets. “Stacy, can I go for a walk with you?” Shannon asks. I say yes, and then Jordan, Hayden, and Jacob want to know if they can go, too. “That’s fine with me, but we’ll need to check with your parents.” I reply, feeling lighter already. Crimson is straining at the leash, so once they’ve all got permission, we take off at a run out of the cul-de-sac. I’m jogging about ten steps behind Crimson, and the boys are riding their beginner bikes, little legs pumping to keep up.They weave around one another, circling the dog and me as we make our way down the street. We’re just a few fezzes short of a Shriners’ parade. We spend some time playing at the park and I begin to feel better. But I spend a restless night dreaming of planes full of soldiers falling out of the sky, then of myself in a classic fifties-style convertible with the top up. I’m racing down a nearly empty rain-slick street in the middle of the

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night, trying to outrun the vehicle next to me. At a stoplight, I roll down the window and peer out across the passenger seat to look at the driver of the other car. I am racing with myself. I wake feeling groggy and vaguely nauseated, unable to shake the remnants of my night visions. The last vapors burn off in the clear morning light as I drive to Lake Forest Park for the weekly Saturday peace vigil. I see a couple dozen people with banners and signs walking back and forth at the intersection of Ballinger and Bothell Way. I slip into the jacket of one of Lorin’s uniforms, making my way toward the corner. There are four lanes of traffic, and people wave and honk from their cars as they pass by. A twenty-something white guy, wearing a kilt and a black leather jacket, silver chains, and metal studs, stands at the corner of the sidewalk. He nods tentatively as I approach, unsure if I mean trouble in my camouflage jacket. I duck my head slightly in response, trying to convey that I’m one of them, but he still follows me with his eyes. There are a few men with shaved heads and orange robes, but most of the people here are crunchy granola types. I move purposefully toward the center island where the streets converge, and a car speeds around the corner as the driver screams, “Fucking hippies!” Settling in a lotus position next to a tree with a yellow ribbon tied around its base, I sit in the middle of the graveyard. The verse I memorized in the third grade floods my mind: In Flanders Fields the poppies blow There are almost five hundred and sixty thin white plywood crosses and makeshift tombstones punctuating the triangular island, each standing about a foot and a half above the green grass carpet. Between the crosses, row on row Put there earlier that morning by members of Lake Forest Park for Peace and Sound Nonviolent Opponents of War, they represent the number of American soldiers killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom. So far. That mark our place I thought I had steeled myself for this, but now, sitting here, crosslegged in the grass, my heart is rent. And in the sky, the larks, I think of the men and women, gone, of the children without

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parents, of the mothers without sons. I think of the overwhelming grief of the wives left behind, of the millions of women widowed by war over the centuries, of mothers birthing, and later burying, their children. Still bravely singing, fly, I think of sisters losing their beloved little brothers, of the hundreds of Iraqi women who have vanished since the war began. When will this world have had its fill of women’s tears? Scarce heard amid the guns below I weep for the hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq who have already died, and those who will surely die today. We are the dead. Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow. I cry at the ceaselessness of war, and at the certain knowledge that my husband’s boots are now on the ground. Loved, and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders fields.1

NOTES 1. John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” 1915.

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F-16 Doris Seale When I first moved back to Vermont in 2004, one of my good friends took me to an archaeological site her daughter had worked on, where irrefutable evidence of occupation for at least ten thousand years was found. It is a beautiful place, in the woods near the Winooski River, full of forest sounds and light, and plants I had not seen since childhood; a place of wonder and mystery. And into the quiet, there came this earth-shattering sound. That is when my friend told me that all the warplanes for the East Coast were based at the Burlington Airport. One F-16 following another kept going over, and seemed like the sound of death. For Judy The birds of war have gathered, Their thunder Over this ancient land, Ten thousand times the length of their existence Standing below. Small ducks swim, My sister walks beside me, Showing me once again What is remembered Only as a dream, Thunder fades, And only this is real.

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The Best Way to Honor My Son’s Death Would Be to Bring the Troops Home Amy Goodman A Democracy Now! interview with Cindy Sheehan, New York City, June 29, 2005. AMY GOODMAN: As President Bush refuses to set a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, we speak with Cindy Sheehan; her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in 2004. Sheehan calls on President Bush to withdraw the over 130,000 troops from Iraq and for Congress to investigate the Downing Street minutes. President Bush also directly addressed servicemen and women and their families. He told them that the best way to honor those who have died in the war is to keep fighting. He seemed to acknowledge the falling army recruitment rates by putting in a plug for military service. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: To the soldiers in this hall and our servicemen and women across the globe, I thank you for your courage under fire and your service to our nation. I thank our military families. The burden of war falls especially hard on you. In this war, we have lost good men and women who left our shores to defend freedom and did not live to make the journey home. I’ve met with families grieving the loss of loved ones who were taken from us too soon. I’ve been inspired by their strength in the face of such great loss. We pray for the families, and the best way to honor the lives that have been given in this struggle is to complete the mission. I thank those of you who have reenlisted in an hour when your country needs you. And to those watching tonight who are considering a military career, there is no higher calling than service in our armed forces. AMY GOODMAN: That was President Bush, speaking at Fort Bragg. In our studio in Washington, DC, we have Cindy Sheehan, whose

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son Casey was killed in Iraq in April 2004. Cindy is cofounder of Gold Star Families for Peace. Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. CINDY SHEEHAN: Hi, Amy. Thank you. It’s nice to be here. AMY GOODMAN: What is your response to President Bush addressing US servicemen and women and what his message was? CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, first of all, I think the best way to honor my son’s death would be to bring the troops home, and that’s what we in Gold Star Families want our children to be remembered for: peace, and not war and hatred. For him to use my son’s blood to continue the killing, to me, is despicable. I don’t want one more drop of blood spilled in my son’s name or in my name. We never should have been there in the first place. It was a mistake. It was a mistake when we invaded. It’s a mistake now, and I want my son’s sacrifice and the sacrifices of the other brave Americans to stand for peace and to bring peace to the world and not to spread more hate. You know, he said that my son died to spread freedom and democracy in that region. We’re spreading imperialism and death and destruction everywhere we go. And, no, not one more drop of blood in my son’s name or the names of any other of our brave young people who have made the ultimate sacrifice for basically nothing. AMY GOODMAN: Cindy, what were your feelings when your son Casey went to Iraq? Are they the same as now? And what were Casey’s feelings about the invasion and occupation? CINDY SHEEHAN: Our family was against it from the beginning. Casey was against it, but he felt it was his duty to go because he was in the army. And he felt that he had to go to protect his buddies, to be there for his buddies, to be support, and they are brainwashed into thinking that even if they don’t agree with the mission, they’re brainwashed into just blindly following it. I begged Casey not to go. I told him I would take him to Canada. I told him I would run over him with a car, anything to get him not to go to that immoral war. And he said, “Mom, I wish I didn’t have to, but I have to go.” AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Cindy Sheehan; she lost her son Casey in Iraq. How did Casey die? What was the mission he died on? CINDY SHEEHAN: We were told that he was going to rescue a

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group of soldiers that had been ambushed on April 4 in Sadr City, Baghdad. It was when L. Paul Bremer inflamed the Shiite militia into rebellion, first in Fallujah, and then it spread to Sadr City, which is a Shiite slum in Baghdad. And so we were told he volunteered to go rescue a group of soldiers that had been ambushed, and on the way there, his convoy was ambushed, and seven soldiers were killed. AMY GOODMAN: Cindy Sheehan, there was no mention last night at the Fort Bragg speech of the Downing Street minutes, the minutes that were taken July 23, 2002, before the invasion, of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisors, saying that the US was fixing the facts and intelligence around the policy to go to war. But you were at the hearing on the Hill in the Capitol—even if it was in the basement—that was held by Congressman Conyers. Of the significance of these minutes, can you talk about that? CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, like I said, we didn’t agree with the war, we didn’t agree with the invasion of Iraq. It looked like we were rushing into something that was unnecessary. You know, it was not necessary to protect America. And I could see that the sanctions were working. We had years of devastating sanctions against Iraq. The UN weapon inspectors were saying there were no weapons of mass destruction. So I believed all along that this invasion was unnecessary and that there was some other agenda behind it besides keeping America safe. And when the Downing Street memos came out, and I read them, I just thought, Well, this confirms my suspicion that this invasion was premeditated and prefabricated for a different agenda. And it looks like my son’s murder and the murder of almost 1,800 other Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis whose only crime is that they were born in Iraq at the wrong time, are dead—are dead for the agenda of the neocon war machine. I really think that somebody in our government needs to be held accountable, and just because George Bush gets up and tells us that things are getting better, they’re not getting better, and he needs to present some kind of facts to back up his position, and he needs to answer the Congressmen. I think it’s 128 congresspeople have signed John Conyers’s letter asking for explanation into this Downing Street memo, and it needs

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to be investigated. Congress needs to do its Constitutional duty for once and investigate the memo because we families that have paid the ultimate price, who will be grieving and mourning and in pain for the rest of our lives, we deserve to know the truth. AMY GOODMAN: Karen Kwiatkowski of the Pentagon, retired lieutenant colonel, you have written about how the Pentagon has suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war. What about the Downing Street memo? Does this fit into the picture? Did this particular meeting and the documents that have come out that surprise you? LT. COL. KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: No, not surprised.Very much like Cindy said, it confirmed things that I witnessed that I didn’t understand at the time. This intention to go to war, this decision, this very early decision, possibly as early as 2001 or before, this we were unaware of. But seeing that the decision had been made, and I think the Downing Street memoranda show that very clearly, the position of the administration long before the American people were ever notified of any kind of threat or rationale for going into Iraq, knowing that that existed explains a whole lot of what I saw and it makes sense, and even things that I haven’t written about, things that I just saw and that folks in the Pentagon like me, probably thousands of them, saw and did not at the time understand. This war plan was engaged and operational long before many people, even insiders, understood, and it was engaged for a reason. And George Bush, in his latest speech—every time he gives a speech, in fact, I listen to see if he will explain why we are in Iraq. And every time I hear him give a speech, I’m disappointed. He never explains why we’re there. He makes up stories, as he did, you know, in last night’s speech, very clearly untrue in many, many ways, and he doesn’t address why our young men and women are dying. You know, it’s particularly insulting to me to hear him talk about those deaths when this country, and this administration has more than any previous administration, and more than any other country in the world that has lost soldiers in Iraq, has refused to show proper respect for those dead soldiers and for those losses. He has attended to date no funerals—George Bush or Dick Cheney. They refuse to acknowledge the real cost of their decisions. This is particularly

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insulting for him to use their deaths and to somehow, you know, wave this flag, when he himself by his own actions does not care about these deaths. AMY GOODMAN: Karen Kwiatkowski is a retired lieutenant colonel speaking to us from West Virginia. She worked in the Pentagon, the office that oversaw the Office of Special Plans. Douglas Feith ran that. Also, in our Washington, DC, studio, Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey, who was a US soldier who died in Iraq last year. Cindy, I did want to ask you, right before the Fort Bragg address of President Bush, he met with family members who lost loved ones in Iraq. Have you been able to meet with Bush administration officials? CINDY SHEEHAN: Actually, I met with the president in June of 2004, a couple of months after my son was killed. We were summoned up to Fort Irwin, Washington state, to have a sit-down with the president. So my entire family went. And I was on CNN last night with Larry King talking about this, and there was another mother who had met with him, and she said that she supports the war and the president, and she said he was so warm and everything and gentle and kind, and when my family and I met with him, I met a man who had no compassion in him. He had no heart. Like Karen said, he cares nothing about us. We tried to show him pictures of Casey. He wouldn’t look at them. He wouldn’t even acknowledge Casey’s name. He called me “Mom” through the entire visit. He acted like we were at a tea party, like it was something fun, that we should just be so pleased that we got to meet with the president who killed our son. AMY GOODMAN: What did you say to him? CINDY SHEEHAN:The first thing, he came up to me, and he goes, “Mom, I can’t imagine your loss. I can’t imagine losing a loved one, you know, whether it be a mother, a father, a sister, or brother.” And I stopped him, and I said, “You have two children. Try to imagine them being killed in a war. How would that make you feel?” And he got a little bit of—just a little bit of human flicker in his eye, like he might be connected for a minute, because this is a man that’s disconnected from humanity. And he had just got a little flicker in his eye, and I said, “Trust me, you don’t want to go there.” And you know what he told me? He goes, “You’re right, I

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don’t.” And so I said, “Well, thank you for putting me there.” And then he moved on to the next person, and then a little while later we were talking, and he went up to my oldest daughter, and he said, “I wish I could bring back your loved one to replace the hole in your heart.” And she goes, “Yeah, so do we.” And he gave her the dirtiest look and turned his back on her and ignored her for the rest of the meeting. And then a little later on in the meeting, I said, “Why were we invited here? We didn’t vote for you in 2000, and we’re certainly not going to vote for you in 2004.” And he said, “It’s not about politics,” which is just bologna, because he went through the campaign trail, and last night he said he meets with families, and we say that we’re praying for him and stuff like that. You know, that’s not—that wasn’t our experience. And everybody else I’ve talked to who have met with him have about the same experiences I do. He comes in, says “I want to extend the gratitude of the nation and express my condolences,” but he says it, and his eyes don’t convey that, his heart doesn’t convey that. We felt—we left our meeting with him feeling worse than when we walked in, feeling more determined to stop the madness in Iraq than before.

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Grandma Rochelle Ratner I’ve always felt that poetry should strike a balance between inside and outside, the personal and the universal. For me, from about 1970 until 2003, it was a process of drawing the poems closer, being able to speak more directly about myself. Then it began to get too close, and working with little-known news stories seemed a way to work toward balance once again. Not my own life, exactly, but my own emotions, embodying the prose poems with the characteristics of fi ctional characters: who, what, when, where, why? On November 18, 2005, The Associated Press released the news bite “Grandma Gets Soldier’s Tattoo,” which said simply that she got a tattoo in support of her grandson serving in Iraq. But there are thousands of grandmothers with grandsons serving in Iraq. Why did I want to write about this particular one? Well, to begin with, this is a woman who doesn’t mind gently harming her body (biting fingernails and scratching mosquito bites are aspects of my own life, as is the consequence of wearing only long-sleeve shirts). But this woman needed more than one grandson in Iraq to make her unique; she needed at least one grandson already killed in war. I then took it further and gave her five children and numerous grandchildren. I made pregnancy’s stretch marks another sign of the body’s scarring. The brief clipping also doesn’t say where she got the tattoo—and again, I had to envision that. Putting it on her stomach, next to pregnancy’s stretch marks, seemed the most fitting spot.

As a little girl, she bit her nails. Then, cured of that, she began to scratch mosquito bites until they bled, then pick at the sores until they left scars. She wore long sleeve dresses even in the middle of summer, that’s how ashamed she was. She might have been one of those cutters described on the news last month, but when she was growing up no one had heard of them. By the time she was twenty-one two sons had left their stretch marks, and

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three daughters would follow. The same marks were left on the stomachs of her daughters. One grandson was killed in the Gulf War (the first Gulf War, as they call it now). These days young women were fighting. Girls were having their tongues and nipples pierced, but she was too frail now to hurt herself like that. Still, when her third grandson, her favorite, with his large grey eyes that never darkened, was shipped off to Iraq, she wanted to share a patriotic tattoo with him. On his right arm, he told her. And she remembered rocking him in her arms. She thought about a tattoo on her arm, then her back, but opted at last for her abdomen, just above the barely visible scars.

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Selections from A War You Carry in Your Pocket Kimberly Roppolo He wasn’t born my brother, but he became that… Jacob and I thoroughly detested each other when we first met. We were both living in Waco, Texas. We were both attending Baylor, a Baptist university at which neither of us quite fit. We were both officers in our Native American Student Association (NASA). To say the least, we clashed. The first time I saw him, he was dancing at our powwow. I was talking with Keith Bullock, founder and first president of our NASA. Jake shot me a glare from the arena—whoever this breed with braids was, he clearly didn’t like me. When I got to know him better, I found that he was uncertain of his heritage. He looked Indian, but his grandfather had been some guy passing through an army base, and his mother claimed Italian ancestry as the explanation for his dark skin. Jake moved around quite a bit growing up—California, overseas—thinking of himself as white. Once, while living in Germany, he was surrounded by skinheads, who chanted at him, “Foreigner, go home!” This was a turning point in his life, the moment when he realized he wasn’t white, but that he didn’t know how to be anything otherwise. Searching for his identity, he began going to Native events and gatherings, learning about Native spirituality and becoming a powwow dancer. He had been adopted by a well-known powwow emcee, a Cheyenne from Watonga, Oklahoma. Unfortunately, a lot of what he learned from this guy was misogynism disguised as traditionalism. That didn’t sit too well with me. I had grown up in Texas, raised by strong Cherokee women, but for all intents and purposes, detribalized. My grandmother says that growing up, she and her sisters got called “poor, dirty Indians from Oklahoma” all the time. Her oldest sister, my Aunt Ruby, who moved in with my grandparents to help raise me when my parents split up when I was a little over a year old, had the advantage of being around their grandmother

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for more years of her early life. Aunt Ruby called me sister, her “little Indian sister.” I had no problem knowing who I was, but I was in Texas. My friends were Chicanos. I identified with them the most. When Jake and I found ourselves running the NASA after Keith graduated, he didn’t like my outspoken ways any more than I liked his narrow viewpoint. But my grandmother taught me that no man was better than I was, and I knew enough to know that Jake’s conception of an Indian worldview wasn’t traditional for Cherokees, at least. I wasn’t giving in. Time passed. I worked on my PhD in Native American literature and became Associate National Director of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, being blessed enough to be taken under the tutelage of Dr. Lee Francis, and being blessed enough to meet and work with many other Native writers. Jake plugged away at a Bachelor’s in Aviation Science. Eugene Blackbear Sr., the oldest living Cheyenne Sun Dance Priest and I became close, and he took me for a granddaughter. What I didn’t know at the time was that this relationship would lead to Jacob becoming my brother. He and I traveled back and forth to Oklahoma to visit family, both becoming very involved in Native American Church—from which I have learned many lessons about life, about being a woman—and growing closer to our Cheyenne relatives. Lisa Tiger—daughter of the late Creek artist Jerome Tiger and sister of artist Dana Tiger—as well as a good friend of Jacob’s, was told that in addition to the HIV she had been diagnosed with for the previous fourteen years, she now had lung cancer and only three months to live. Jacob, one of the sisters we had both taken, Chelleye Crow, and I put up a Native American Church meeting for her, with Grandpa as road man. Grandpa was hesitant when he found out about the HIV. He felt confident he could help her with the cancer, as many patients had been healed through ceremony before, but he had no experience with victims of HIV. He decided to go ahead and at least try, despite his misgivings, so we held the first NAC meeting for an HIV victim. Today, Lisa is well, married to Cochiti potter Diego Romero, and has a beautiful, healthy baby girl, Cricket. I graduated and moved on to teaching at the local community college, becoming advisor for an American Indian Student Association

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there that would later become the Intercultural Association, taking in our Hispanic students as well since there was no HSA. Since my standard answer in Texas to the question, “You’re Hispanic, aren’t you?” was, “No, but Hispanics are Indians,” and because I believe in La Raza, I felt doing otherwise would be hypocritical. Besides, one of my proudest moments was when I found a few of my words, published in an essay in editor MariJo Moore’s Genocide of the Mind, quoted in a Zapatista newsletter. I try to live up to my ideology. Jacob got caught in the new student-loan laws and decided to join the army to pay for school. Given the time frame, my husband, Randall, and I begged him to reconsider. Jake moved in with us a few months before he left for boot camp, then AIT. Next would be Iraq, where he would serve as a medic. In 2004, I took a job in Canada. Given the Homeland Security robbery of civil liberties and my disagreement with this war to begin with, I felt it was the best move. I also saw that a lot of prophecies from various traditional ways were coming together, and I felt my family would be safer across the line. I flew down, however, to Oklahoma before Jacob shipped out to Iraq. I put up a NAC meeting for him; the same way Cheyenne people had done when the boys went to Vietnam. As not one Cheyenne soldier was lost, I felt confident that meeting Grandpa ran for Jacob would protect his life. We prayed that his mind, heart, and spirit would be safe, as well as his body. Despite my disagreement with the war, with killing for oil profits in the filthy hands of a few rich men who run this world, Jacob was my brother. I was going to have to understand this aspect of the world of men and do what I could for him as a sister. Besides, at this point, Grandpa had given me a warrior name—Early Morning Killer Woman—recognizing that aspect of my nature. He saw that I fight for what I believe in, that I was like those old time women who leapt into battles to support brothers when necessary. Additionally, he had put me through ceremonies that in the past were reserved only for men. I have probably learned more in that way than in any other. For each of us, “there is a time to kill and a time to heal.” The trick is knowing which of these one faces each moment of this human experience. We live in a time of revolutions and change all around the world,

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but in this hemisphere in particular. For the first time in over five hundred years, Native people have true sovereignty in countries like Venezuela and Bolivia. But these struggles for freedom from colonial oppression have not been easy. Witness the women warriors defending their people and territory in Chiapas—mothers and grandmothers who have been forced to take up arms as a last resort. Though I honor my hermanas to the south and thank them for the immense sacrifice they make, my front lines, as a poet and thinker, are different, something I consider a blessing. I find myself fighting the evil that is out there, the needless death, the oppression, in all sorts of ways. The noted Creek poet and musician Joy Harjo says, “The real revolution is love.”This love is what keeps me going—love for my peoples, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Cheyenne, the Blackfoot people in Canada who have welcomed me to their homeland, love for all indigenous peoples— whatever they call themselves—love for my husband, my children, my students, my sisters, my brother. There are all kinds of warriors. Traditional Native warfare took few lives: It was about honor, respect, and gaining medicine. In traditional warrior ways, war was another way for a man to be reborn in a world of men, without woman (or with woman on the periphery as there were, and are, certainly women warriors in this world typically composed of men, like those in the art of Dana Tiger).Traditionally, warfare was another manipulation of the cardinal balances, like childbirth for a woman, a place no man can go to face death and come back unchanged. This is why honor is so important. Without honor, there is no sacrifice. Without sacrifice, there is no ceremony. Without ceremony, there is no rebirth. Without rebirth, the boy cannot become a man. Without becoming a man, one is unworthy of a girl who must by virtue of her willing sacrifice in reproductive sexuality, becomes and re-becomes a woman each time in that Sacred Joining. So how do we respond as people of Native ancestry now that our battles have changed? Now that those who lay the chessboard in Anthony Mitchell’s “Ghost Dance” vision painting that hangs above my sofa prefer to enlist women as foot soldiers of capitalism because (as we still don’t have equality under US law) we can be more easily manipulated as subalterns, can be more abused? How do we as women resist the values of the

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monetary-system culture, the anti–Mother Earth, antiwoman, antichild, anti-elderly Imperialist Super Machine that tries to remake us in its image with the intention of making us consume ourselves to support that very Machine? How do our men, in the face of the daily mental sodomy, which parallels that in Iraqi prisons and Guantanamo Bay, resist the temptation to reassert their masculinity upon our children and us in unbalanced ways? How do those of our men who beat the system by becoming part of it—our briefcase warriors who take that way in absence of another more honorable path—resist the remaking of themselves as dogs who believe they are their masters’ friends? How do our soldiers, those whose coup counts renew the world each year at the Sun Dance arbor, walk the fine line between the path of the Destroyer and the monster of Self-Loathing, a thin and lonely journey? How do we honor our Elderly, our ceremonial people? How do we raise mentally, spiritually, emotionally, and physically healthy children in this maelstrom? How do we heal, resist the bottle and the crack pipe, live as Men and Women or as proud and holy people of Two-Spirits, a balance of Sacred Masculine and Sacred Feminine in one flesh, doubly-doubled in coupling into the sacred number four? How can we regain respect and honor for all creation and ourselves? These are the questions I ask myself right now as a woman, a woman with a warrior name, a woman who, with my many flaws and weaknesses, has a strong desire to be a good mother, good wife, good sister, good daughter, good granddaughter. The following poems are one of the ways I have of fighting: They are word magic and memory, war songs, love songs, and songs of survival. I freely mix Cherokee, a bit of Choctaw, and Spanish with my English because that is the language that best represents who I am. I oftentimes use some Cheyenne, as that has become part of my language as well. Writings are my offering and my sacrifice.

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Painting Her Face There is a difference between war and malice. At least, if it’s a traditional war. Linda used to say: “Poetry is a war you carry in your pocket.” Yes, this is a war. Like Leslie says, “It’s a five hundred year old war that we are still fighting.” That’s it. That’s the big secret. There it is. Everything the outside world thinks we’re hiding from them. This is a five hundred year old war. We are not conquered. The hearts of our women, as Cheyenne People say, are not on the ground. But the difference is— this is a War for spiritual and physical survival. And not just for us, not out of individual greed, but for All of Our Relations. Words are our weapons. Words give Birth. And Words Kill. This War Comes From the Womb of the Mother. It comes from the Wombs of Us All. Male and Female.

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Indian, Black, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Afghani… Endless spectrum of relationship. When a Mother protects Her Child, when she snatches it from the jaws of a wolf, from the hands of pedophiles and killers, from the mere breath of her Enemy who breathes destruction, that is not malice, that, gi-na-li, is Love.

Crossing the Medicine Line “I am fighting for my children,” I tell myself as I board the plane, “Better cowgirl up.” Styv. Be strong. Be brave. Bravo? Bravado. . . “No, this is real,” I say, “And I’d better get that way myself.” To the South— that is where the Revolution begins. To the North— that is where the Survivors run to hide.

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All the prophets point to the Mountain. “How does Woman fight?” I ask myself. By clutching babies to her breasts and running, burdened by offspring, pouches of corn and pemmican, hiding in creek banks and coulees, climbing hilltops, cloistered in caves, clawing eyes, tearing hair, kneeing gonads, biting flesh, fists flailing, a Banshee scream— Survive. Live. Revive. Drive on. The world must go on, Somewhere. Lloro para mis camaradas en Meshica, en Bolivia y Venezuela. Tienen más cohones que hago. It’s five hundred years later, and I’m still having to thank them for their sacrifices.

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Muchas gracias. Muchas gracias. Mis niños le agradecen. I whisper a prayer a las almas de sus niños quién nunca estará or at least one more time as history cycles us una vez más will never be the same. The cold will be bitter. The ground will be thin… But we will live. We will live quivering. We will live with quick eyes and supplicant lips while rivers of blood flow again in Tenochtitlán, the dams broken por los hijos y hijas de Malinche. Cortez is dead, y la Gente está caminando al Norte. —“We will take it back without firing a shot,” dicen los antepasados— clearing the way with their maimed and colonized bodies till we greet them with gifts and gratitude, till the circle has come round once again.

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Right Fist Up With my right fist up I bring this crowd to a roar— Peace and Unity Peace and Unity Peace and Unity Peace and Unity Peace and Unity Peace and Unity Peace and Unity With my right hand I send you the sign Peace… Peace be with you. With my right hand I send you the sign Peace… Peace be with you.

forward of

forward of

Make love, Not war Our mommas And daddies Used to say In the seventies When they were cool When they were real people With real ideals And not sold out yuppies Burnt up junkies Prostitutes to the establishment Or to their own baby-booming Eternal and infantile need

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A needle in an arm Or in the heart of a value Pumping society’s smack… Toilet paper Ice And Air Conditioning Now it’s cell phones And personal organizers And PCs and Macs and laptops and Internet accesses We let the man convince us we just got to have Hummer H-2s and SUVs Nice tennis shoes And some bling-bling around your neck Can somebody tell me something? What in the hell we allowed in the last thirty years? Where did you go, Beautiful People of my childhood My longhaired cousins And their friends with fros My dad looking something like a Beatle And driving a VW Even him wanting change Before he got jaded… But here I am getting old. And I’m not getting that way… Winston Churchill said, “Any man who is not a liberal at 18 has no heart. Any man who is not a conservative at 30 has no brain.” I say, but you gotta be a man first. Or a wo-man A Hu-man

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Real People Like the old folks said People We have got to start loving each other We have got to see past lines of color To see that it is not a matter of race or ethnicity But a matter of have and have not— If you don’t have, those that do have Are going to make sure you don’t… And still I know We As Americans Are all Rich We suck up the resources of Mother Earth We put food embargos on children in Afghanistan and starve them to death And if they survive And someone is appalled enough at us to fight back— Just like we damn well better do if someone starved our children Killed our babies out of capitalist, materialistic greed— Someone learned to hate us for our own destruction Hate us for our own ignorance Our own lack of knowledge about who we are All the children of death 40 to 60 million Africans before they even reached the soil stained with slavery and evil and the blood of 100 million Indian people Who were murdered to take it All the children of sweat Of those who survived these dual Holocausts

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And of poor Irish considered less than human by the British too go figure… Like the Scots and the Welsh And of Italians and Germans and others who believed in the beautiful lie And of the Chinese so maligned by the deceit of indentured servitude That they scratched their miseries On the concrete walls of Pacific Coast detention centers We are the children of rape Of grandmothers And babies sold for pleasure Of Octoroons bred for it and auctioned off in a mockery Of the Monsters’ own daughters’ Legitimate prostitution by marriage to son-of-a-bitch Cannibal preying on the human flesh of bondage All the children of tears That have fallen And crystallized Into the “civilization” That buys us each individually out and carries out a foreign policy based on made up borders artificial separations of people ordered by artificial separations of time…

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While more than 400 babies die every thirty minutes in this world from starvation… Where are you, my beautiful minds? My beautiful people Brother Sister Son Daughter… Momma??? Daddy??? Auntie??? Uncle??? Está una Raza We are one Race La Raza de Gente The Human Race De Gente de la Tierra The People of the Earth Nos Madre Our Mother La Raza de Gente The Human Race De Gente del Dios The People of God Nos Padre Our Father What ever we name them… However we As weak Human beings Try to conceive The Unconceivable

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The Ineffable The Divine The Divine that has told us all the same thing: “People, Love one Another.” We have got to get Our act Together.

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Civics after Grace Paley Demetria Martinez “Civics” was inspired by Grace Paley’s poem “Responsibility,” in which she speaks of the work of the poet in the world. Her writing and political commitment has always made me appreciate the sheer joy of being an activist, which really is just about practicing citizenship in all its forms.

It is the citizen’s duty to adhere Bumper stickers to the cars Of willing neighbors: Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home War is So Twentieth Century Who Would Jesus Bomb? And if vandals slit tires we will Take up a collection to buy Better tires, to buy red chile Cheese enchiladas from the Frontier Restaurant for it is the Citizen’s duty to eat with neighbors In times of war that we might Remember the taste of peace. It is the citizen’s duty to be a pest, To camp outside the Presidential ranch, To tape photographs of the President Upside down, everywhere upside Down, on telephone poles and park benches. It is the citizen’s duty to chant “Quagmire, Quagmire!” at the gates Of legislators’ homes at midnight, To be a running sore on the body

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Politic that some in Congress might Grow sick and cry over lie stacked Upon lie, numerous as the dead on all sides. It is the duty of the citizen to rest, eat pan dulce, Read the poetry of Rumi, the mystic from what Is now Afghanistan, to recall that God planted Eden in what is now Iraq, it is the citizen’s duty To meditate upon this, to go to bed early, to rise And march with millions of immigrants for their Rights, it is our duty to remember that we were Once strangers in the land of Egypt, therefore We must welcome the stranger. It is the duty of the citizen to care For her feet for the marches ahead: Pilgrimages to the polls, trespassing On land planted with missile silos. Passing of petitions. It is the citizen’s Duty to send letters to soldiers who Will be tried for refusing to fight, Whose numbers grow by the day, News we don’t read in the papers, News we must listen to on the radio, On Democracy Now, it is our Duty to demand democracy now. It is the citizen’s duty to be grateful To be alive in times so awful That good works are plentiful. It is our duty to hang Out at the Peace Center, To talk with strangers who are Re-thinking this war business. Invite them to demonstrations, Get them on the mailing list, Send them home with fact sheets,

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Yes, these are our duties: Who live in such times, revising our Lives and the curriculum by which We learn what it means to be one World with purpose and justice for all.

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Two Young Lives before and after Enlistment Marie Nigro When I heard of MariJo Moore’s desire to compile a collection of stories about the effects of war, I thought that was a great idea, but as a lifelong civilian from a civilian family, I had watched the frightening images on the evening news and wondered who actually volunteers to go to war, why do these young people enlist in the service, and how do they adjust to civilian life upon their return? Good questions. No answers. For the past twenty-five years, I have enjoyed teaching at our nation’s oldest Historically Black College and University (HBCU)—Lincoln University— located in southeastern Pennsylvania. Because we are a small school, faculty and students have the opportunity to interact and get to know each other. It is with this spirit of cooperation that I have listened and written.* This past semester in 2006, I met a young man in my freshman composition class who had just returned from a tour of duty as a soldier in Iraq. His fi rst essay, a narrative about his experience of being shot at by a pair of snipers, told me he needed to tell his stories. His later essays continued to draw on his service and war experiences. At the end of the semester, we sat down and discussed his service and war experiences, his life before enlistment, his family at home, and his feelings about war. He was open and willing to respond to questions, even those that were personal. A colleague mentioned that she had a freshman who had recently returned to civilian life from a stint in the air force. Caprea was also willing to discuss her service experience with me, and like Kevin, was open and honest.

* Kevin and Caprea agreed to sit down and talk with me for this essay. They both gave permission to use their names. I thank them for their forthright and honest responses.

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Why Enlist?

I wanted to know why young women and men decide to join the armed forces. In the case of Caprea, a young woman, a freshman at our university, she just decided one day to stop into an air force recruiting office. She was eighteen years old and was looking for something to do. The recruiter was delighted. Caprea passed all the tests and was quickly inducted into the US Air Force. At the time, she was living independently in a small apartment, so she didn’t need anyone’s permission. She asked and told no one until she had made her decision. Her mother, busy at home with Caprea’s eightyear-old sister, accepted her decision easily. The eight-year-old loved her uniform, but it was clear that Caprea was on her own. Kevin, also a freshman this semester, joined the US Army at age eighteen. Like Caprea, he didn’t have much else to do, and the army sounded like a good idea. Bad things were happening in his neighborhood; Kevin wanted to get away. He was looking for what he calls a push, a direction. He knew he would be headed to Iraq, but he wanted a path to success. He wanted to go to college, and the army seemed to make that opportunity possible. He describes his family as close and explains that they were brought closer during his service. He remarked that his decision was greeted with acceptance from his mother. His grandmother, who had been a major influence in his life, expressed concern for his safety, but she and his mother realized that he “was a man now” and he had to make his own decisions. Ironically, he recalls that after he signed the initial “pile” of papers at the recruiting office, he went home to find the letter of acceptance from our university. However, he did not know (or was not told) that he was not bound to the service until he was officially sworn and signed in. He could have opted out, but believing that he was bound, he followed through, was sworn in, and found himself a new recruit in the US Army. Caprea describes her six years in the air force as “very long.” Life for her was certainly not as exciting as advertised, and after two or three years, she tired of wearing the uniform, and more than anything, she resented the unpredictability of service and having no control of her life. Although

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she served in Spain, Texas, Florida, and Mississippi, she describes her “job” as doing endless administrative paperwork. She does, however, speak fondly of her air force colleagues, men and women, officers as well as enlisted personnel. She describes the relationship of the men to air force women as that of helpful big brothers. She saw very few “bad attitudes” among officers and enlisted men.The men and women lived in separate dorms, but trained side by side and worked together in the field.When Caprea enlisted in 1995, the nation was at peace. She acknowledged that during the war in Iraq, women were deployed in secure combat areas, serving as mechanics, cooks, and office personnel. After 9/11, some air force women were trained as medics and flight mechanics and were positioned closer to combat areas. Some of her friends were among these women, but she lost contact with them once they left her base. Loneliness, Homesickness, and Relationships

How do young men and women deal with the inevitable loneliness and homesickness when they are away from home for long periods? Caprea describes her boyfriend at home as intimidated and explains that he was gone in a few months. She said many hometown boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses cannot face the loneliness and go their separate ways. The service is hard on relationships. Caprea recalls that some servicemen and women marry each other, but within six weeks to a year, many are divorced. But more often than marriage, men and women form relationships that last as long as the partners are deployed together, or until they decide to move on. Both single and married personnel can form these relationships. She says, “It happens a lot. People get lonely.” While Caprea as well as her comrades phoned home from time to time, they knew they were a long way from home and would have to make the best of their lives wherever they were. Just as Caprea describes her hometown boyfriend as “quickly gone,” Kevin recalls that his hometown girlfriend had no intention of waiting for him. He accepted that, and like any eighteen-year-old, he enjoyed calling home to talk to his mother, grandmother, and especially his ten-year-old sister. Were there any sexual relationships formed between

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men and women during this time? Kevin says there were; they were shortlived and discreet. No one judged, and everyone understood the fear and loneliness of this mission. Fear was an everyday companion—fear for oneself, fear for buddies and friends. Fear never went away. Relationships helped men and women to cope. Race and the Service

I asked Caprea about race relations and her own experiences. She acknowledged that prejudices among some personnel did exist. She says they were easy to spot and easy to avoid. For the most part, her colleagues were congenial and friendly. In all of her experiences, on and off the base, she considered her friendships satisfactory and was not concerned with race relations. Kevin’s experience was similar. He stayed away from those he considered racist and worked with everyone else. His bond with his buddies was important, and was a key to survival—both physically and mentally. He recalls with pride the homecoming when he and his weary veteran comrades were cheered and applauded as they walked through the airport on the last leg of the journey home. The Road to Iraq for Kevin

After basic training, he enrolled in a course servicing army vehicles, more specifically, servicing Humvees. His early experiences were uneventful—training in the States and in Korea; he was happy and proud to be a skilled mechanic. Then one day he was told to prepare to be deployed to Iraq. The preparation was intense, extensive, and hasty. The troops had to stop at each station, where they were checked for gear, inoculations, and equipment. Kevin called home to say good-bye, and he left for a very long fl ight to Iraq. During the fl ight, some men engaged in small talk, but that did not help, as Kevin felt the first pangs of fear, wondering where he would be sent and what he would be doing. In Iraq, Kevin remained in a secure combat area where he serviced the essential Humvees. He describes the weather as cold, but he adjusted and was reasonably secure in his supportive role. Service personnel had easy access to phones, and he continued to call home to assure his family

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that he was well. Then one day a captain asked him if he would like to be his driver (of a Humvee). “Yes, sir,” Kevin answered, as this sounded good to a young soldier. The next morning when he appeared at the designated spot, other soldiers asked where his protective gear was. “Oh,” said Kevin. “I’m just driving the captain.” The soldiers asked if he knew he would be leading a convoy into a dangerous area of Baghdad. Kevin quickly suited up with protective gear. Fear crept quietly into the driver of that Humvee. After a long drive into the city, the captain directed Kevin to pull over and to stay with the vehicle. Since it was cold outside, Kevin stayed inside the Humvee. Hours later, eyeing a Port-A-Potty a distance from the vehicle, he decided to run to it. As he emerged from the small building, he felt a bullet whiz past his ear. Looking in the direction of the shot, he saw two snipers on the roof of a nearby building, aiming their weapons directly at him. He darted behind a tree, crouching there as bullets ricocheted off the trunk. For what seemed like an eternity, the snipers kept shooting and missing. Eventually, two American soldiers appeared and shot the snipers. A shaken Kevin emerged from behind the tree. He says he is grateful the snipers were unskilled. Did Kevin call home after his close call? Yes, he did, but his mother and grandmother never knew he had been in any danger. He called frequently to restore his own spirits, but never told the women that he was on the front line. Once safely at home, his army duty behind him, he did tell his stories to his mother and grandmother. But during his service, he never wanted them to know where he was or what he was doing. Kevin drove that Humvee for the next seven months. He and his captain led a convoy of six or seven vehicles.Traveling with larger numbers was necessary for safety, making it more difficult for the enemy to abduct or surprise those in a lone vehicle. It was his responsibility to think fast and protect his captain and the convoy. He quickly learned to look for trouble and to find escape routes; he was responsible for the safety not only of his captain, but also of the entire convoy. He showed me photos of his buddies, his barrack, and his weapon and ammunition. In his prize photo, he is standing next to the head of a statue of Saddam Hussein. I asked about the photo of his weapon, had he

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ever used it? His demeanor changed as he replied yes and went silent. He said he did not like using his weapon, and since he was not “trained” in that area, he was spared and was able to keep driving. A few women soldiers in his company did serve on the front lines in Iraq. He remembers having to drive women back to their secure base during the time they were having their menstrual period. He recalled the Humvee drive was perilous as they were targets for snipers; however, they made it back safely, and the men were understanding and did not resent the mission. Coping with Memories

Now that Kevin is home, how is he coping with the memories? He says he has learned to “put things to the side.” He says he has left his war experiences in Iraq, and he lives for the moment. He does not suffer nightmares and seldom has flashbacks; he is determined to go forward, not back. He does not feel the need to relive the past. So far, he says, he has been able to separate the past from the present. But, I wonder, if sometime in the near future the past will come to haunt Kevin, as it has so many others who have endured such experiences. I asked him about the irony of exchanging the terror on the mean streets of Philadelphia for the terror in Iraq. Kevin smiled an easy smile and observed that terror exists in both places. The only difference, as he sees it, is the scale of violence. When asked about his and his comrades’ thoughts on the war, he gestured widely, smiled, and said he could not comment. Did he and his comrades ever complain? Again, Kevin refused to comment. We discussed the possibility of being called back to Iraq. He left the army with the rank of sergeant E5, and he is very aware that he is eligible for recall for the next five years. He is determined to continue his education, and he hopes he can do so uninterrupted by further service. He is taking advantage of the financial aid from the army, although he admitted that it took twelve to fourteen months for the paperwork to be completed. Even with contributions from the GI Bill, he still must work between semesters.

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I asked Kevin if he would do it again. He never hesitated: “No!” Life as a College Freshman

Kevin has found that as a veteran and a freshman, he is respected by faculty and students alike. In history class, the professor asked him to discuss his opinions and his experiences, but he doesn’t talk about the war unless he is asked. In his freshman composition class, he has chosen to relive some of his experiences in his essays. He does admit, however, that on campus he has become a “chick magnet,” as female students find him very attractive. He is still learning to deal with these new designations. Even though she did not face combat, six years of air force life had their effect on Caprea. By the fourth year, she was ready to leave, but since that was not an option, she continued to do her job. She values her experiences, noting that she lived and learned. She has no regrets. Like Kevin, she learned that the service is hard on relationships. Boyfriends or girlfriends may come and go, but lessons learned in the service of their country are with the veterans forever. As a student living on campus, she values her privacy. She is a sophomore now, and at twenty-six, she has found dealing with immature freshmen to be bothersome, especially since she had to live in a freshman dorm last year. This semester she has a single room with a common area, which she loves, but the noise from the other girls sometimes annoys her. She says she basically goes to class, studies, goes to work, and stays in her room. She misses the free time she had in the air force. Although she was told where to go and what to do, when the day was over, she could do what she wanted. Her time was her own. “After work, it was just me,” she said. It is not easy to do this with classes, schoolwork, and a job. Regardless, she seems content—almost happy—and knows who she is. She is selfassured, but thoughtful; however she still struggles with the age and maturity disparity between herself and her classmates. The gaggling of the girls over guys amuses her. She observes that her roommates don’t understand the freedom of not having to be responsible to another person, a man. Caprea is not getting financial assistance because she joined the air force with a signing bonus that precluded funding from the GI Bill. “I

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never read the fine print,” she admitted. “Now I read everything!” She spent all the money she made while in the air force, admitting she enjoyed spending it. She has a few regrets, but says, “I was young.” She currently works on campus to pay her auto insurance, and at CVS Pharmacy for “real money.” Would she ever reenlist? Only if her “back were up against a wall,” she says. “And that is not going to happen!” Would she enlist (at eighteen) again? She is not sure. As Caprea copes with college and civilian life, her goal is clear. With a premed major, she plans to make it all the way to medical school. Kevin at twenty-one is a business major, having no problem fitting in as a college student. As a mature young man, he too finds the freshmen immature, but he can ignore that—he remembers his own immaturity at that age. He smiles a lot and is enjoying the college life. Maybe the difference between Caprea and Kevin as college students is their inherent personalities, or maybe it’s the age difference. Whatever may explain their different college experiences, they are two young people who have served their country with pride and are now ready to do something for themselves: and college is the beginning. Once again, the question: Why do young men and women join the army or the air force? For eighteen-year-old Caprea, with no future in sight and no close ties to her family, it seemed like a good idea, and with nothing to stay at home for, the air force offered exactly what she was seeking: a future and a goal. At eighteen, Kevin didn’t have much to stay home for either. He wanted to escape the mean streets of his neighborhood, and the army seemed like a great place to do that. These days Caprea and Kevin are mature college students, friendly, eager, and motivated. For Kevin, the nightmares of war are still fresh, and even though says he is able to put them aside, he finds writing about them and sometimes talking about them help him adjust to civilian life. The last time I saw him, he came smiling into my office with a lovely female companion. He is applying for the position of residence hall counselor for the next school year. Caprea admits that she does not regret the six years. “I lived and learned,” she says. On campus she considers herself a loner. Maybe it is

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because she is older and more mature than other freshmen. Perhaps she is enjoying the solace of being alone—enjoying the privilege of doing what she wants, when she wants. She insists she is content, and I have no reason to doubt her. Epilogue

What have I learned from these conversations with Kevin and Caprea? I know young men and women often join the service when no other opportunity seems available. Loving families can sustain our young people in the service, but they may not have had the resources to direct or guide their young adults on a path to success. For these ambitious young people, the only path to training or to college seems to be to enlist in the army, navy, or air force. Their hope is to return and to establish a normal life as a college student. On the other hand, young men and women with resources and knowledgeable guidance enroll in college and are able to avoid military service if they wish. Is this fair?

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Better a Good Warrior Cheryl Dietrich I don’t believe in war. I don’t believe war would exist in a world populated only by women. Sure, women can fight when they’re angry, when they’re frightened, when they or their children are threatened. But war as a means of attaining property or power or wealth or dominion, in other words, war for the reasons it’s most often waged in this world, has always seemed alien and bewilderingly senseless. So how did a woman like me—a former Presbyterian minister, war protester, member of Amnesty International, proud liberal—end up in the air force? When I was twenty-nine and a hospital chaplain, I came to the realization that the ministry wasn’t right for me. I had no idea what I wanted to do instead, but I remembered a caustic quip from my seminary days: “Well, if this doesn’t work out, we can always join the military.” We thought the idea was hilarious because it was so absurd. It was the seventies, and we still used the term “military-industrial complex” without irony. Now I couldn’t get the joke out of my head. There was something in the idea of joining the military that quickened my pulse, that felt right. I found reasons to persuade myself. I didn’t believe in war, but like it or not, war was a reality.The military was as necessary as the local police force or the security guard at the bank. Unlike a civilian employer, the military wouldn’t care how many words a minute I could type. I might get to go overseas. I could join up just for the requisite four years while I decided what to do next. After all, as a woman, I wouldn’t actually go into combat. I wouldn’t be personally involved in war. And so I rationalized my way to the local air force recruiter, led more by instinct than reason. When I took my enlistment oath, a surge of fierce patriotism surprised me. Serving my country hadn’t even occurred to me as a reason to join up. I’d never thought of myself as particularly patriotic. The very

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word seemed vulgarly sentimental. Now, suddenly I came face to face with a love of country that had nothing to do with cloth symbols or history or beautiful terrain or boundaries or hit tunes out of Nashville, Tennessee. “I swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies…” These words left me as breathless as the succinct truths in poetry. I felt myself standing taller, squaring my shoulders, lifting my chin. Slipping into my new identity as a United States airman (woman) was as easy as donning the uniform. ***

In my fi rst week at Officer Training School, my fl ight commander gave me an intake interview. One of his questions stopped me. “If an enemy attacked you, and you had a gun, would you shoot him?” I was silent, picturing the scenario, trying to imagine the unknown weight of a gun in my hand. Part of me was still trying to make sense of the step I’d taken. For my own sake, I needed to answer as honestly as I was able. My commander repeated the question. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “I don’t know if my brain could make my fingers pull the trigger.” He set his pen and questionnaire down on the desk and leaned toward me. His voice was surprisingly gentle. “Nobody knows that, not until you’re in the situation and you have to respond. But do you have any problems rationally with defending yourself by shooting your attacker?” I didn’t hesitate. “Oh, no. I don’t have a problem with that.” He sat back and picked up the questionnaire again. “That’s all the air force asks of you.” One of my seminary professors, responding to the news that I was joining the air force, had said simply, “Better a good warrior than a poor pacifist.” Now I understood what he meant. While I admired Gandhi and King, not to mention Jesus, I’d only been paying lip service to their great teachings. I didn’t really believe in nonviolence in response to violence. I believed in defense.Very well. If I couldn’t be a good pacifist, I’d be a good warrior. Of course, I knew even then that the air force asks more of its

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members than self-defense or even defense of country. I had clear memories of the Vietnam War and few illusions about our nation’s leaders. Of the wars our politicians lead us into, few can be convincingly described as necessary to the national defense. But our laws do not allow the military to select the wars it will fight, or military members to pick and choose among missions. There is no legal designation of conscientious objector to some wars but not others. Once I agreed to the principle of killing in self-defense, I was in for whatever came. ***

Officer Training School lecture courses were held in a darkened auditorium, popularly referred to as “the big bedroom,” because five hundred officer trainees struggled to stay awake while grounded pilots droned on and on over dull slide presentations. Most of the time we’d just arrived from some strenuous activity, jogging or marching in the Texas heat, and the urge to sleep hit us all as soon as we sank into our seats. But there was one class that kept me awake. A grizzled captain stood dwarfed next to a huge screen hanging down over the stage and with his laser pointer led us down a list of military targets in ascending order of destructiveness. The list, in neat bullet format, began with property, then continued down through transportation routes, enemy aircraft, enemy combatants, war production plants. Finally, at the bottom of the list were two words, “collateral damage.” “This is when untargeted civilian populations, property, and buildings are inadvertently hit,” he said. The transparency disappeared and was smoothly replaced with a new one on a different subject. The captain stared at the new slide for a moment, then called out, “Hey, airman, put that last slide back up.” He walked in front of the screen and punched the bullet next to the words, “collateral damage.” The screen rippled and the words quivered in the air. “Okay, ladies and gentlemen.Take a good look at these words.You’re going to hear them a lot. Remember that what these words mean is somebody’s baby got killed or somebody’s mom or their grandparents or maybe a whole family was wiped out. Or a schoolhouse full of children or

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a park bench with a couple of old men sitting on it. Never, ever—“ with each word, he punched the screen again. “Never forget what these words mean.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, next slide.” I never forgot. I had tried to ignore the deadly truth behind all the gleaming efficiency and discipline, but the air force itself insisted on brutal understanding. I had joined an organization whose primary functions were to fight, to destroy, and to kill. ***

In a seminar years later, I sat next to a young pilot who’d flown combat missions in Desert Storm. He told me, “After two weeks, there were no new targets left to bomb. We were basically rearranging rubble. Then one day we got sent to destroy some jets that the Iraqis had tried to hide by parking them around a traffic circle on the outskirts of Baghdad. Well, we flew in and took care of them okay, but on the way back I started thinking about one time when I was a kid. A pilot had performed an emergency landing on one of the highways coming into town. My dad came and got me. He said, ‘Come on, let’s go see the plane up close.’ And we did. We wandered all around it. I was just a little guy, already in love with planes.” He stopped to take a sip of coffee. He stared into his cup as he continued. “Anyway, I couldn’t help wondering as I flew back to the base, if there was some Iraqi dad out there, showing his kid the planes. I got back to the base and it was Sunday morning. The officer’s mess was still serving brunch. But I didn’t feel like eating.” He shrugged and changed the subject. And I thought, He’s a good pilot and a good officer, because he never forgets what he is, what he does—and that’s killing. And he doesn’t let words like “collateral damage” confuse him. He knows what it means. He knows the price he’s agreed to pay isn’t always his own life. I was a personnel officer, so I didn’t have his nightmares to face. The closest I’d ever gotten to actual warfare was in Cold War exercises, fighting a chimerical enemy in a fight for global conquest and survival. My biggest challenge had been directing a personnel readiness center while struggling to breathe the thick, dank air inside a gas mask and moving inside the awkward bulk of a chemical protection suit. No one ever actually shot at

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me or set off explosives near me. My life was never in danger. I never had to look someone in the eye and pull a trigger. ***

Training never stops in the air force. As a major, I had a class on dealing with the media. During a fake TV interview with an air force public affairs officer pretending to be Diane Sawyer, she asked me, “Do you think your parents are prepared to see you come home in a body bag?” I had no prepared answer, just a gut response. “No. But I don’t think they’re prepared to see my brothers come home in a body bag either.” The instructor called out, “Cut! Good answer.” The camera stopped. I stepped down from the dais and joined the other students. While the instructor talked about the power of a pithy sound bite, I thought about the question. It wasn’t an unlikely one for a woman officer to be hit with. It had been asked since women were first integrated into the military services. It became particularly controversial in the 1990s, when women comprised a fifth of the armed forces, and the services were gradually moving them closer to combat.The media piously asked if the American public was prepared to have their daughters killed in wartime. They still ask it, but the concern about women in body bags is specious. Women have always died in wars. We’ve been raped, kidnapped, enslaved, massacred. We’ve been taken prisoner. We’ve been tortured. We’ve been bystanders whose only crime has been an inability to get out of the way of armies. We’ve also participated in war. We’ve served as spies, as nurses and doctors, as instructors.We’ve cooked, ferried planes, provided support and ease. We’ve even fought. There’s little outcry when women are the victims of war, except when it serves a political purpose to paint the adversary as particularly brutal. The more difficult the war is to justify, the more likely the politicians are to trot out the women and children. Woman as victim receives a grudging acceptance. Many consider it part of the natural order of things. What truly makes the press, the politicians, and society in general uncomfortable is the idea of woman as fighter. Woman as killer. Woman as warrior.

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General Merrill McPeak, the air force chief of staff in the early 1990s wouldn’t support efforts to allow women to fly combat aircraft, not because he thought they were incapable, but because “I have a very traditional attitude about wives and daughters being ordered to kill people.”1 This is the real sticking point.We often hear the pious precept about the willingness of military members to give up their lives for their country. Unsaid is the harder truth, politely ignored, that what makes the military unique is it exists solely to exert lethal force, and all its members must be willing to take the lives of others. ***

In 1996, I was sent to Croatia on a NATO deployment after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed. There I saw the fresh wounds of a brutal civil war: the Wall of Shame, built brick by brick with the names of the dead; the shrapnel-torn buildings; the bleak, gray faces of a population steeped in despair. Land mines and booby traps still lay strewn throughout the former Yugoslavia. I took the half-day training the US Air Force required for deployments to that area.We joked that it boiled down to two easily remembered axioms: 1. If it ain’t paved, don’t step on it. 2. If you didn’t drop it, don’t pick it up. We knew the danger was chillingly real. Once, awaiting the transport of new troops augmenting our organization, I stood on a narrow strip of tarmac at the Zagreb Airport. Next to me, barbed wire cordoned off a small field bordering the runway and a sign cautioned in three languages: Danger Do Not Enter Land Mines Crudely drawn explosive bursts decorated the sides of the sign. I stared out over the innocent-looking plot in horrified fascination. Mines seemed a particularly terrible kind of killing to me, with death hidden under the soil for random victims, for no purpose, able to strike at any time. But there was no true distinction between the indiscriminate destruction dealt out by mines and that delivered by bombs and missiles. In fact, the

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air force I was a member of dealt out death from the sky in far greater numbers and with far greater terror than a field of land mines.That day, for the first time, standing on a narrow strip of safety in a war-scarred country, facing into a relentless wind, I stopped pretending the killing had nothing to do with me. ***

I retired from the air force in 2000. While the officiating general read from a list of my assignments and decorations, I looked out at the friends and family who had gathered to help me celebrate the occasion. I found the words I’d spoken at the beginning of my air force career running through my head: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies…” I have a better sense now of what that oath I took so eagerly and so innocently actually means. Recognizing what a stern, dark pledge it is makes me even prouder of fulfilling it. I’m burdened by neither guilt nor shame. Honesty demands, however, that I also have no illusions about the nature of military service and my role in it. Those of us who choose to join the fighting forces, men and women alike, consent to being tools of destruction, our skills honed to provide security, defense, and death. As a personnel officer, I performed the moral equivalent of pulling a trigger every day, although my weapons were primarily words and graphs and computer printouts. Every assignment I worked, every evaluation, every records inspection, every briefing had as its ultimate goal the creation of a more effective killing machine. Even though I never personally pressed the button that dropped a bomb or punched in the code that released a missile, I can never claim innocence. I too was part of the killing. I was a good warrior. NOTE 1. Shirley Sagawa and Nancy Duff Campbell, “Women in Combat,” Women in the Military Issue Paper. National Women’s Law Center, Washington, DC. October 30, 1992.

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Woman’s War Cry Angela Sterritt The presentation that follows was given as part of the First Nations Program within the World Peace Forum 2006, at the First Nations House of Learning at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (Musqueam land) on June 27, 2006. I would like to thank the Musqueam People and their ancestors for having me on their territory today. And I want to thank the organizers of this event for inviting me to speak. It is an honor to be here. Hamy’ya. Today we come together to embrace in the idea of peace, but we also come together to embrace in opposition the current forces of colonization, racism, classism, sexism, and ageism. We embrace in opposition the violence inflicted and the occupation of our lands and us. Some people may think this globalization is a new threat that has ravaged the lands and lives of many, but to us, to Indigenous people, it is nothing new; it is colonization that has expanded, developed, and exploited more. In the entire world we see injustice, we see war, we see greed: This is what we want to end. We want to reclaim our freedom. Peace. How can we imagine peace when our territories are occupied by a foreign and violent government that began its stay on our lands with the fearful idea that they needed to oppress us in order to make their place in society? Claiming that they did not conquest us but came to a peaceful understanding, set out the type of war the Canadian government has waged on us for the last two hundred years: A war that has attempted to kill Indigenous people through cultural genocide, assimilation, massive sexual and physical abuse, isolation, genocide, imprisonment and criminalization. The legacy of this occupation, and imposition of the Canadian judicial system on Indigenous lands and people is shameful as we see the high number of Indigenous peoples in the prison system, beaten, brutalized, raped and killed by police forces, and as we see an overrepresentation of Indigenous children in the wardship of the ministry and homeless. Indigenous youth

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who escape the iron hands of the Canadian judicial system continue to be oppressed on their own traditional territories through environmental and economic racism. Youth who stand up for their rights are targeted and criminalized. Indigenous youth, in particular girls, are victims of contemporary Canadian society, which views them as disposable. This has become more and more evident with the growing number of murdered and missing Indigenous girls along Highway 16 and more generally across Canada. This state of violence against Indigenous women, men, youth, and children is a deadly serious issue that we, Indigenous people, are tackling nationally. The government claims that Canada is a peaceful country with a vast track record of human rights and environmental standards. Other countries have talked about Canada as the El Dorado or the paradise of the world. But welcome to a world where poor Indigenous women and girls are forced into the sex trade due to extreme poverty and forced to give up their children because they cannot feed them. Welcome to the reality, much different than the claim of peace. There are more children in the ministry today than the total number of Indigenous children in residential school. This ugly face of colonization rears its head more forcefully today and the Indigenous women and girls bear the brunt.The colonial government that committed atrocities against our people, put us on reserves, in residential school, and committed genocide are the same government that continues to set racist social policy in an attempt to keep us locked up; locked up in state abuse, locked up in fear, locked up in prison, locked up in beaurocractic systems, and locked up in poverty. The war on Indigenous women and children in Canada is like the war waged on all other nations of the world: if they keep us locked up they can take our rights, take our land, and take our traditional roles. Keeping us caged also works to produce a symbol of the arbitrary ability of the federal government of Canada to repress the legitimate aspirations to liberation of Indigenous peoples within its claimed boundaries. To quote from a letter Gail K. Horii of the Strength in Sisterhood society sent to Stan Hagan (MCFD minister) to support our fight against the shackling of Native youth in the sweat lodge in a youth prison: “Too

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many Aboriginal youth, women and men languish in penitentiaries, prisons, jails, remand centers and holding cells across this country and in this province. Too many are brutalized by policing agencies. To consider that finding respite from concrete cells to take comfort in a ceremony of elders is further punishable by shackling is beyond vindictiveness; is cultural genocide at best. This is only one example of many in which the colonial forces that be continue to suppress our constitutional right to selfdetermination, our human rights and our right to be free without colonial molestation. More recently the Solicitor General has begun talks about the building of further prisons for our people, the so-called ‘segregated jails.’ We see this further accommodating of Indigenous people in prisons as contradictory to so-called efforts to lower the number of Indigenous people in jail. It is our goal to free our people from this racist and oppression system, not make the prison system more ‘Aboriginal friendly.’” Similarly, the youth jail has recently boasted of its use of “aboriginal” art. Is the use of the art an attempt to make the prison institution more culturally relevant to Indigenous people? This is sick. The entire prison system needs to start spending its resources on dealing with its systemic racism instead of making the prison more accommodating for Indigenous people. When will the police admit the wrongs? To further quote from Gail K. Horii’s letter: “It does not go unnoticed by the international community how this government has quickly seized and copied the totems and artwork of Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit cultures, how freely this government utilizes these assets to promote beautiful British Columbia while they lock up and brutalize their First Nations’ peoples.” She continues, “If a face of every missing Aboriginal youth and woman and a face of every Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit person behind bars accompanied every Coast Salish, every Haida, every Métis symbol and every ‘inunnguaq’ [the symbol that the 2010 Olympics cultural appropriates (steals and bastardizes) from the Inuit] published from now until 2010, perhaps then, this government would be shamed enough to treat every arrested and incarcerated Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit person with dignity, with respect, and would grant them equal rights before and under the law.”

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In some Indigenous communities, in what is now called Canada, children’s bodies are covered with sores from contaminated water sources (Kectewan and Kanawake for example). Other youth see their sacred sites being bulldozed in order to make way for development (Skwek’welk’welt, Cayoosh Creek). More and more corporations are entering our communities and ignoring the national laws that our people have fought relentlessly for decades.Youth that challenge destructive corporate operations such as logging, mining, pipelines and dam projects on their territories, are forced on the very margins of societies. To silence Indigenous people, and to create divisions among us, corporations offer programs and sponsorships to Aboriginal organizations, bands, and individuals. This is an attempt to “even out” their unethical and devastating practices. So corporations like Weyerhaeuser, Shell Canada and Encana—who are responsible for destroying a number of Indigenous communities—give money to the Aboriginal Achievement Awards and other organizations, and work to co-opt the support of Indigenous people who have critiqued and resisted their destructive activities and developments. So this makes it difficult for us to educate youth and create awareness about how corporations suppress our rights, devastate our lives and land, and violate constitutional and human rights. While the government locks up our people and perpetuates oppression and demonstrates their colonial occupation on Indigenous lands, corporations work with that government to pollute minds and life on Indigenous lands. There is hope, we have to come together and not get sucked up into the divisions or into individualistic notions of power. Although the issues above are vast, we understand that all are linked to a colonial legacy that governments and corporations work to continue today. We know that through networks, campaigns, and actions, change will come slowly—but step by step, if we are strategic—surely. Each of the campaigns I discussed were initiated and carried out just by one or two people and the force of movement behind each has been immense. We plan to meet with different Aboriginal organizations that have received corporate sponsorship in an attempt to get them to seek and receive ethical sponsorship.

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On the prison front, we have received support from pockets of people every day, and the movement to change that system is growing. It is never a hopeless situation; we just need to keep on moving, exposing injustices, and building support in order for the movement and change to continue. I have heard some say you cannot change the system or people, but that’s what we have been doing and will continue to do.

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American Helmets Bushra Al-Bustani (Translated from the Arabic by Dr. Wafa’ A. Zeinal’abidin)

I see American soldiers everywhere I go. My house is situated a few meters away from Saddam’s former palace, which was occupied by an American base after the fall of Baghdad. I wrote this poem in 2006. I wake in the morning and see the havoc of the White House around the bed glittering, soaked in the dark of the crime I collect its shrapnel, the lots of debris, And toss them in the waste barrel. In my home office one of my students knocks at my door, I let him in, I wait for him to speak. He sinks in silence. I am shocked by his muzzled mouth, his chained hands. I wonder, “Why?” He points at the American helmet… At lunch, my sister prepares the table. So tired, I run to lunch… the invaders’ hands surprise me from beneath the table; the plates fly in the air and fall on the ground.

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Their fragrance fills the air, and perforates the pupils of my eyes… In the evening, I go to prayer. As soon as I start with Al-Fatiha, the innocents’ skulls accumulate around me. A blood fountain spurts from the ceiling, my body and clothes in a pool of blood. I hear the groans of the wall and the whole place spins, I shake off the blood clots from the bottom of my heart. The prayers are unsound… At night, I hear the trees’ anguish, I hear the rustling of fires in the grass, I run to the garden, a pomegranate branch extends and points at the American Apache. At dawn, I speak to my wounds: Tenderly, I ask them to sleep; they turn toward the door and remain speechless; I turn toward the door: I see the Hummers behind the door; me, too, I bleed and cannot sleep. In the streets, I cannot walk; In their middle, and on the pavement, the American helmets pile up, headless. On the pavement, the wind whistles into the copper helmets, on the pavement, autumnal helmets, on the pavement helmets, helmets, helmets…

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Requiem for Arrival Deema K. Shehabi As I was reading Agha Shahid Ali’s translations of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry, one line in particular emerged and struck me right in the head. It read: “Do not leave now that you are here. Stay so the world may become itself again.” These weight-filled words spoken by Faiz not only appeared to me as a personal invitation to loosen memory—fl awed or otherwise—but also to build upon and intermingle with a communal narrative that already existed within my unspoken, inner life. The poem “Requiem for Arrival” weaves some of my own experiences with displacement and communal grief. It’s also a poem about multiple generations within a family, both living and dead.

If I tell you that I saw her that transparent morning, her small frame leaning against the balcony balustrade, her hands migrating toward a jasmine flower, her fingers enfolding it and bringing it slowly to her freckled lips, you must promise never to tell that this is only a dream, and in this dream my mother says: Do not leave now that you are here—Stay, so the world may become itself again. And the world is not itself, here below this mountain where my child’s eyes attach to the moon. In the valley, he chases birds through the lifts of hills, and on certain nights, I see another moonlit refugee child netting birds over barbed-wire fences, but this is nothing but a fragment or an apparition. And because there are grain but no bullet shortages, we must never measure the distance between a bullet and the blighted moon.

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If I tell you that I have been to the Holy City at dawn, the ancient light scalding the mouths of fallen houses, the seven-year-old boy surrendering his belongings under a soldier’s heavy breath, the air blazing with prayers and burial lids, promise never again to say that ancient is everywhere or that your house once belonged to doubt or to belief. And the air still blazes with the prescience of burial lids even as I watch my child standing here on a hill at the edge of sloping stars, as we stood once on the edge of a fresh mound, where a woman once harvested jasmine with the length of her fingers, the words on her tombstone still freshly inked like dark rain: We belong to God, and to Him we will return. If I tell you that I have often arrived to the airport of back rooms, of interrogators humming the melodies of ancient blood, of brown men whose mouths throb with the taste of soil from their land, of long-rooted women gazing at their unreachable orchards beyond the glass, would you still say nothing of capitulation, or how we will wash our scars? My child’s hair is washed in the red slumber of the sun, and his eyes hold the same curvature of drowse that my mother’s once held. So that the world may become itself again, will you stay awhile with me and plant our grief in the embers of his hair, and say: For every one gone into the earth, one hundred roots are planted?

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A book of this significance would not have been possible without the determination and willingness of the following: Sam Scinta, who appreciated the idea from conception and agreed to publish this timely and much-needed anthology. Carolyn Sobczak, whose kindness, assistance, and comments were extremely valuable. The people of the marketing and design teams at Fulcrum, who offered insightful suggestions. All the women who contributed their time, thoughts, and vital submissions. The spirit of candid creativity that calls to us all in various voices. Thank you.

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PERMISSIONS “A Turned-Around World” is excerpted from The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir (NYC/London: W. W. Norton, 2001). © Linda Hogan. Reprinted with permission of the author. “A Woman Accompanied by the World” is excerpted from My Life with Pablo Neruda (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1997). © Matilde Urrutia and Fundación Pablo Neruda. Reprinted with permission of Carmen Balcells Literary Agency, Barcelona, Spain. “After Reading Women on War” appeared online at The Pedestal Magazine, “The Political Anthology,” Oct. 1–Nov. 3 (2004), www.thepedestalmagazine.com. © Pat Falk. Reprinted by permission of the author. “Cedar Songs, Left Behind” fi rst appeared in the chapbook Cemetery Plots (Redding, CA: doodlefriendzy publishing, 2006). © Linda Boyden. Reprinted in the essay titled “Finding Home” with permission of the author. “Dead All Over the Hills: An Interview with Ex-Slave Mrs. Phoebe Banks” appeared as “Phoebe Banks, Age 78, Muskogee, Oklahoma” Pages 30-33 in The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives (Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1996). Edited by Julie P. Baker and T. Lindsay Baker. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. “Fall, 1998” is excerpted from Pushing Up the Sky: A Mother’s Story (El Dorado Hills, CA:Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network, 2006). © Terra Treva. Reprinted with permission of the author. “Hermine Jungus Komnik’s World Wars I and II Experiences and Results” appears in a different version online at ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), www.eric.ed.gov in 1996. © Paula Popow Oliver. Reprinted with permission of the author. “Patch Work: Picturing Vietnam” fi rst appeared in The Iowa Review (25:2 Spring/ Summer 1995). © Rebecca Blevins Faery. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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“Rya’s Rainbow” is from The Women of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave Women (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1998). © Dolores Kendrick. Reprinted with permission of the author. “Requiem for Arrival” was published in The Mississippi Review, Fall 2004 3, no. 32, and appeared online on the Nevada County Women’s Writing Salon. © Deema K. Shehabi. Reprinted with permission of the author. “Saga of American Truth” is from Bent Box (Penticon, B.C.: Theytus Books, 2000). © Lee Maracle. Reprinted with permission of the author. “The Best Way to Honor My Son” aired on Democracy Now! Wednesday, June 29, 2005. Printed with permission of Amy Goodman (Host and Executive Producer) and Denis Moynihan (Outreach Director). “The Call” is excerpted from When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind (New York: Continuum Publishing, 2006). © Stacy Bannerman. Reprinted with permission of the author. “The Collectors” is from Feral (Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2007). © Janet McAdams. Reprinted with permission of the author. “The Cure” is reprinted from The Alchemy of Grief, a bilingual edition translated into Italian by Sabine Pascarelli (New York: Bordighera Press, The Calandra Institute, City Univ. of New York, 2007). © Emily Ferrara. Reprinted with permission of the author. “Those Policemen Are Sleeping: A Call to the Children of Israel and Palestine” fi rst appeared online at www.poetz.com, 2002. © D. H. Melhem. Reprinted with permission of the author. “White Snake Coils—A Prophecy” was fi rst published in Generation, SUNY at Buffalo school magazine, November 1996. The poem was also published in phati’tude Indian Summer 1, no. 2, 1997/2001. © Barbara Helen Hill. Reprinted in the essay “War Is Never Done!” with permission of the author. “Woman’s War Cry” appeared online at aboriginal angel doll project: http:// aboriginalangeldollproject.blogspot.com, 2006. © Angela Sterritt. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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ABOUT THE EDITOR

MariJo Moore (Cherokee, Irish, Dutch) is the author of a dozen books including Spirit Voices of Bones, Confessions of a Madwoman, Red Woman With Backward Eyes and Other Stories, The Diamond Doorknob, and The Boy with a Tree Growing From His Ear and Other Stories, and the editor of four anthologies including Genocide of the Mind: New Native Writings and Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: Breaking the Great Silence of the American Indian Holocaust. The recipient of numerous literary and publishing awards, she resides in the mountains of western North Carolina, where she presides over rENEGADE pLANETS pUBLISHING. Please visit www.marijomoore.com.

Author photo by Katie Jaynes © 2008

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CONTRIBUTORS

Margaret Abruzzi was born in London in 1939, an innocent bystander to World War II. After graduating from The City of London College in 1958, her fi rst job was assistant to the editor of the trade magazine British Millinery, and she was later hired as chief copy editor for the British edition of Vanity Fair. She now volunteers for the Asheville Animal Compassion Network and serves on the board of The Candy Fund, in memory of Candy Maier. She resides near downtown Asheville and shares a Victorian house with four cats. Bushra Al-Bustani, an Iraqi poet, critic, and academician, was born in Mosul in 1950. She has published nine collections of poems and numerous articles on Arabic literature, especially poetry. Currently she is a professor of Arabic at the College of Arts, Mosul University, Iraq. The poem in this anthology is from her unpublished archives. Translator Wafa’ A. Zeinal’abidin, PhD, is an assistant professor of English, College of Arts, at the University of Mosul, Iraq. Alice Azure’s poems and essays have appeared in Mid Rivers Review, SIMULLutheran Voices in Poetry, The Cream City Review, Shenandoah, Skins: Drumbeats from City Streets, Native Chicago, and Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: An Anthology of the American Indian Holocaust. A Mi’kmaq Métis from the Kespu’kwitk District of Nova Scotia, she was raised in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine. She is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and of the Saint Louis Poetry Center. She recently retired to the Saint Louis area after a twenty-five-year career in the United Way movement. Her fi rst book was In Mi’kmaq Country: Selected Poems and Stories. Julie P. Baker is director of the Layland Museum in Cleburne, Texas. T. Lindsay Baker is director of academic programs and graduate studies for the Department of Museum Studies at Baylor University. The Bakers are the editors of The Oklahoma Slave Narratives, from which the interview with Mrs. Phoebe Banks was excerpted.

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H. Byron Ballard is a pagan advocate and writer who divides her time between her homeland in the mountains of western North Carolina and leading pilgrimages to goddess locales in western Europe and the eastern United States. Read more of her writing at http://home.earthlink.net/~ancientjourneys. Stacy Bannerman is the author of When the War Came Home: The Inside Story of Reservists and the Families They Leave Behind. She is a member of Military Families Speak Out, www.mfso.org, and was the first white executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Spokane, Washington. She can be contacted at her website, www.stacybannerman.com. Mary BlackBonnet, an enrolled member of the Sicangu (Rosebud) Tribe, currently lives in Vermillion, South Dakota, with her husband and two dogs. BlackBonnet received her BA in English from the University of South Dakota. She was chosen as an artist in residence at the Montana Artists Refuge in 2006 and was also chosen to attend the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camp. She does writer-in-residencies with schools, colleges, and universities, where she encourages students to use writing as a way to become empowered. Kimberly Blaeser is a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where she teaches creative writing, Native American literature, and American nature writing. Her publications include three books of poetry, Trailing You, winner of the fi rst book award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas, Absentee Indians and Other Poems, and Apprenticed to Justice, as well as a scholarly study, Gerald Vizenor: Writing in the Oral Tradition. Blaeser is of Anishinaabe ancestry and is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe who grew up on the White Earth Reservation. She lives with her husband and two children in Lyons Township, Wisconsin. Eavan Boland is Irish. She has been a writer in residence at Trinity College and University College, Dublin, and was poet in residence at the National Maternity Hospital during its 1994 Centenary. She has also been the Hurst Professor at Washington University and Regent’s Lecturer at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Boland is on the board of the Irish Arts Council and a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. She has published eight volumes

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of poetry, including In a Time of Violence and An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967–87. Deborah A. Bowles is of Irish, English, and Dutch lineage and grew up in Winder, Georgia. She graduated from Mercer University, Atlanta, and The George Washington University. Deborah lives in Washington, DC. Linda Boyden has spent most of her adult life leading children to literacy. From 1970 to 1997, she taught in elementary schools, and she received her master’s in gifted–and-talented education in 1992 from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. In 1997, Boyden abandoned full-time teaching for full-time writing. In 2002, she published her fi rst picture book, The Blue Roses, which won numerous awards. Boyden is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers. She enjoys storytelling at schools and libraries across the country. Visit her website, www.lindaboyden.com. Emöke B’Rácz Imre Margit Lanya was born in 1948 in Budapest, Hungary. She is founder of Asheville’s Burning Bush Press, Asheville Poetry Review, One Page Press, Malaprops Bookstore and Café, Downtown Books and News, and Women On Words: Café on Our Own. She has served on the boards of the Black Mountain College Museum, SIBA, and the North Carolina Writer’s Network. Her writings have appeared in New York Quarterly, Nexus, Magyar Naplo, Webster Review, North Carolina Literary Review, International Poetry Review, and Wordimages. She was named Publishers Weekly Best Bookseller of 2000. She resides in Asheville, North Carolina. Kathryn Stripling Byer has lived since 1968 in the mountains of western North Carolina. She has published five books of poetry, the most recent being Coming to Rest. Her poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in magazines and journals ranging from The Atlantic Monthly to Appalachian Heritage. As North Carolina’s poet laureate, she offers a website devoted to North Carolina poets and their publications, www.ncarts.org. She is the recipient of the 2007 Hanes Poetry Award from The Fellowship of Southern Writers.

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Louisa Calio is an award-winning poet, writer, performer, artist, and traveler. She is the author of numerous publications, including In the Eye of Balance, a poetry book and ritual performance designed to reawaken the sacred within, and she is editor of several editions of senior citizen and children’s writings. Her writing has appeared in many anthologies. Currently the director of the Poets and Writers Piazza for Hofstra University, Calio was a founding member and fi rst executive director of City Spirit Artists, Inc. She currently lives in both Jamaica and New York. Grace Cavalieri is the author of fourteen books and chapbooks and twenty staged plays. She’s produced “The Poet and the Poem” on public radio, now in its twenty-ninth year. Cavalieri holds an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, a Paterson Poetry Prize, a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, a Bordighera Poetry Award, a Folger’s Columbia Award, and CPB’s Silver Medal. Her latest book, What I Would Do For Love (poems in the voice of Mary Wollstonecraft) is the basis for her new play, Hyena in Petticoats, currently in development in New York City. Cheryl Dietrich served in the United States Air Force for more than twenty years. Her military career as a personnel officer included assignments in San Antonio, Texas; Ramstein Air Base in Germany; Croatia; and the Pentagon. After retiring in 2000 as a lieutenant colonel, Dietrich moved to Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, Lynn, and began to write. Her stories and articles have appeared in Gettysburg Review, MudRock: Stories and Tales, and the online magazine Long Story Short. She is currently working on a novel and on a memoir of her air force experiences. Carolyn Dunn is a wife, mother, journalist, teacher, poet, storyteller, and playwright born in Southern California. Her two newest books are Echo Location (poems) and Coyote Speaks (with Ari Berk). Dunn, who does voiceovers for fi lm and television, is also a former radio producer and host whose work has appeared on National Native News. Ellenburg lives in the mountains of western North Carolina. Her writings have appeared in The Asheville Poetry Review, The American Indian Quarterly, sheville.org, News from Indian Country, and The Multi-Cultural Digest. She is currently working on her fi rst novel, Via Dolorosa.

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Helen Epstein is the author of Where She Came From: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother’s History and Children of the Holocaust. She resides in Massachusetts. She can be reached at www.helenepstein.com. Rebecca Blevins Faery holds a PhD in American literature from the University of Iowa. She is director of fi rst year writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An essayist, poet, and literary scholar, she has been published in a wide variety of magazines and journals. She is the author of Cartographies of Desire: Captivity, Race, and Sex in the Shaping of an American Nation, a scholarly study of captivity stories in American cultural history that includes personal essays as well as conventional scholarship. Pat Falk is an award-winning poet and professor at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, where she teaches writing, literature, and women’s studies. She’s the author of the poetry collections In the Shape of a Woman and Crazy Jane, and she introduced and edited the anthology Sightings: Poems on Discovery. Her most recent book, an experimental, creative nonfiction poetics, is titled It Happens As We Speak: A Feminist Poetics. She maintains a website, www.patfalk.net. Emily Ferrara of Worcester, Massachusetts, teaches creative writing at University of Massachusetts Medical School. Her fi rst full-length book, The Alchemy of Grief, won the 2006 Bordighera Poetry Prize. The volume traces her journey through grief in the wake of the sudden death of her nineteenyear-old son. Diana Festa grew up in Italy during World War II and came to the States as a teenager. She earned a PhD in French literature and began an academic career at the City University of New York. She is the author of four books in literary criticism and was awarded the Guizot Prize by the French Academy. She is also a trained psychotherapist with a private practice in New York. As a poet, Festa published four books, Arches to the West, Ice Sparrow, Thresholds, and Bedrock. She has also published numerous poems and articles in various reviews and anthologies. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and several poetry prizes.

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Alexandria Giardino is a novelist and literary translator. Her translation of My Life With Pablo Neruda, a memoir by the Chilean poet’s wife Matilde Urrutia, received widespread critical attention. She recently translated Hector Aguilar Camin’s La conspiración de la fortuna. Giardino is currently working on La Scarlettina, a novel set during World War II. She was formerly a journalist, and her work appeared in the Village Voice Literary Supplement, Ms., Marie Claire, and Discovery, among others. She lives in northern California with her family. Daniela Gioseffi is an American Book Award–winning author of eleven books of poetry and prose. Her fi rst book, Eggs in the Lake, won a New York State Council for the Arts grant award in poetry. Her novel The Great American Belly has been optioned for a screenplay by Warner Brothers, and she reads widely throughout the United States and Europe, appearing on NPR and WNYC, as well as other radio and TV stations. Gioseffi edits www.PoetsUSA.com. Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now! She is coauthor of the national best seller The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them, written with her brother David Goodman. The book was chosen by independent bookstores as the number one political title of the 2004 election season, and Publishers Weekly chose it as one of the top fi fty nonfiction books of 2004. Democracy Now! is a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over five hundred stations in North America. Paula Gunn Allen, PhD, (1939–2008), was professor emerita at UCLA. Gunn Allen, whose poetry, fiction, and essays appear in numerous books and periodicals, won many awards for writing and scholarship, including the Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement and the Native Writer’s Circle Lifetime Achievement Award. Her most recent book, Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat, was published in October 2003. Author of the groundbreaking The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, Gunn Allen is recognized as the founder of American Indian literary studies.

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Barbara-Helen Hill, MA, is a multimedia artist and author of the book Shaking the Rattle: Healing the Trauma of Colonization. She has been published in numerous anthologies and on a spoken-word compilation, and her art pieces appear on the covers of books and CDs. Hill received her certificate of creative writing and visual arts at the En’owkin Centre in British Columbia, a BA in Native American aesthetics–creative narrative from SUNY Buffalo, and an MA in American studies at SUNY Buffalo. Hill tries to incorporate her stories into her doll making and her artistic wall hangings. Linda Hogan (Chickasaw) was born in Denver, Colorado, and grew up in Oklahoma. She is as poet, short-story writer, novelist, playwright, and essayist. Her many awards include the Five Civilized Tribes Playwriting Award, the Guggenheim Award, and Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year (Prose-Fiction) for her novel Mean Spirit. She resides in Colorado. Laura Hope-Gill has had poems, essays, and stories appear in Fugue, Cincinnati Review, Laurel Review, North Carolina Literary Review, The Rambler, Cairn, and, Xavier Review, among others. She teaches in Asheville, North Carolina, where she lives with her daughter and animals. Marjorie Hudson is author of Searching for Virginia Dare, a mosaic of fiction, history, and memoir, a fi nalist for the Sherwood Anderson Prize in 2003. Her fiction has won Pushcart Special Mentions, and she was an artist in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, California, in 2005. In 2000, Marjorie was selected as Sarah Belk Gambrell Artist Educator of the Year for her work educating communities about George Moses Horton, the slave poet of North Carolina. “Sufi Dancing with Dad” is one of a series of personal essays she is writing for a memoir about her father, a lifelong peace activist. She resides in North Carolina. Nancy J. Jackson, (1954–2007), was a sixth-generation Ozarker who resided in southern Missouri. She was the owner and operator of Cherokee Legacy Pottery/Ceramic, and her works were sold throughout the world. Her main love and priority was for family and friends, particularly her grandchildren. She was a brave cancer warrior and a wonderful, generous woman.

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Jun’er was born in rural China in 1968. After graduating from the Chinese Department of Shandong University, she moved to Tianjin, where she now works as a journalist with the newspaper Beifang jingji shibao (Northern Economic Times). She has published two collections to date, Chenmo yu xuanhua de shijie (Quiet in a Tumultuous World) and Dahai yu huayuan (Oceans and Gardens). Translator Simon Patton was born in Australia in 1961. He currently works as a freelance literary translator specializing in contemporary Chinese literature and earns a living teaching Chinese language and translation at the University of Queensland. He also coedits china.poetryinternational.org, the China domain of Poetry International Web with the Mainland Chinese poet Yu Jian. Dolores Kendrick, a native Washingtonian, was named poet laureate of the District of Columbia in 1999. She is the author of the award-winning poetry book The Women of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave Women, as well as Through the Ceiling and Now Is the Thing to Praise. Her CD, The Color of Dusk, in collaboration with composer Wall Matthews and vocalist Aleta Greene, won rave reviews from music critics nationally, and her poetic contributions to local and national publications have earned her numerous prestigious awards and honors. In 2004, she received an honorary doctorate of letters at Saint Bonaventure University in New York. Kendrick was one of the original designers and teachers at the School Without Walls, a high school in Washington, DC. Regina Krummel is professor emerita of English and education at Queens College, City University of New York. She has written several novels including Looking Good and Liquor to Casket, both about women. She is presently facilitating groups in a women’s prison and teaching creative writing in a local community college. Lisa Suhair Majaj, a Palestinian American writer and scholar, was born in the United States, grew up in Amman, Jordan, and studied in Beirut, Lebanon, from 1978 until 1982. She subsequently lived for nineteen years in the US and now makes her home in Nicosia, Cyprus. She has published her creative work in over fi fty journals and anthologies in the US and internationally, most recently in World Literature Today. Her poetry chapbooks include These Words and What She Said, and she has written many critical articles about

350 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

Arab American literature and has coedited three essay collections. She may be reached at [email protected]. Charlotte Mandel is the author of the book of poetry Sight Lines and two poem-novellas of feminist biblical revision: The Life of Mary and The Marriages of Jacob. As an independent scholar, she has published a series of articles on the role of cinema in the life and work of poet H. D. She is a past president of the Essex County, New Jersey, chapter of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Currently, she teaches poetry writing at the Center for Research on Women, Barnard College, New York City. Lee Maracle is a member of the Sto:Loh Nation. She has published a number of critically acclaimed literary works including Ravensong, Daughters Are Forever, Will’s Garden, Bent Box, Bobbi Lee, Sojourner’s and Sundogs, I Am Woman, Telling It: Women and Language Across Culture, My Home as I Remember, and Theory Coming to Story. She was one of the founders of the En’owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, British Columbia—a learning institute with an indigenous fi ne arts program and an Okanagon language program. An awardwinning writer, Maracle has published in a number of anthologies worldwide and is currently associate professor of Aboriginal studies and English at the University of Toronto. Demetria Martinez is an author, activist, lecturer, and columnist. Her book of autobiographical essays, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana, was winner of the 2006 International Latino Book Award in the category of Best Biography. Her books include the widely translated novel Mother Tongue, winner of a Western States Book Award for Fiction, and two books of poetry, Breathing Between the Lines and The Devil’s Workshop. Martinez writes a column for the National Catholic Reporter, an independent progressive newsweekly. She resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sheila Massoni lives in Hackensack, New Jersey, with her husband, Mike, and three fat cats. She loves rocks, trains, and keeping alive the memory of her murdered daughter. She is currently pre-PhD at SUNY Binghamton. She was a cowinner of the Allan Ginsburg Poetry Prize, and her work has appeared in The Paterson Literary Review, LIPS, Sensations Magazine, and several publications from Writer’s Ink.

351 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

Janet McAdams is the author of two poetry collections, most recently Feral, in which “The Collectors” appears, and The Island of Lost Luggage, which won the American Book Award. Her prose and poetry have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, TriQuarterly, storySouth, and the Women’s Review of Books. She edits the Earthworks Series of Indigenous Poetry. She also teaches courses in creative writing, American Indian literature, and environmental literature at Kenyon College, Ohio, where she is the Robert P. Hubbard Professor of Poetry. Molly McGlennen is of mixed blood (Anishinaabe, French, Irish) and was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is presently the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American Studies at Vassar College. She received her PhD in Native American Studies from the University of California–Davis in 2005, with her dissertation work on contemporary indigenous women’s poetry. She also earned her MFA in creative writing from Mills College in 1998. Her writing has appeared in Studies in American Indian Literatures, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and Midwestern Miscellany, among many others. D. H. Melhem, PhD, recently published her seventh collection of poetry, New York Poems, and the fi nal two books in her Patrimonies trilogy, Stigma and The Cave, begun with the novel Blight. She is also the author of the groundbreaking study Gwendolyn Brooks and Heroism in the New Black Poetry, and she wrote and produced Children of the House Afire, a musical drama. The numerous awards for her poetry and prose include the American Book Award and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Melhem is vice president of the International Women’s Writing Guild and has a website, www.dhmelhem.com. Suzanne Zahrt Murphy is an artist, writer, nurse, mother, and grandmother. She has published articles in the LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in various nursing journals. Very proud of her Cherokee ancestry, she is also Scottish, Swedish, and German. In all her work, she searches for truth, beauty, and the sacred.

352 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

Marie Nigro, PhD, has taught at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania for twenty-five years, where she directs the English education program and teaches freshman composition, linguistics, and Native American literature (she initiated the fi rst Native American lit course). Her essays have appeared in Italian Americana, WILLA, Journal of Black Studies, and Maryland English Journal. She is mother of four and has eleven grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Paula Popow Oliver grew up in eastern North Carolina and has a degree in communications studies from West Chester University, Pennsylvania. She has published two personal histories, “Hermine Jungus Komnik’s World Wars I and II Experiences and Results,” and “Marianne Wahnschaff Ballester’s Personal Experiences: United States, World War Two, Soviet Zone.” She has recently completed a third personal history, “Ruth Earline Bateman Oliver and Northeastern Carolina Folks.” She is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and resides with her husband in Manteo, North Carolina. Suranee Mariettha Perera is a freelance writer and social worker living in Rakwana, Sri Lanka. She began writing short stories as a child for her friends. Having traveled the world far and wide and living amongst so many different cultures, her imagination knew no bounds. Although she stopped writing for a brief period in her late teens, she began again after her mother’s death in 2002 to deal with the grief. Dawn Karima Pettigrew is a Creek/Cherokee Indian who belongs to the Panther/Tiger and Red Paint Clans. She is the author of two novels, The Marriage of Saints and The Way We Make Sense, coauthor of Children Learn What They Read, and host of the Native American talk show Rezervations with Dawn Karima on Native Voice One (www.nv1.org). Her work regularly appears in Indian Life, News from Indian Country, and Whispering Wind, and she is also a fi lmmaker and has released a CD. With a BA from Harvard and MFA in creative writing from Ohio State University, she teaches Native American studies and is active in modeling, fi lm, television, and the arts. Michele Ramos is the mother of three children. She ran an organic family farm with her husband for about twenty years before she returned to school and started work in the mental health field. Currently in graduate school for

353 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

social work and working as a case manager for people with severe and persistent mental illness, she resides in Rhode Island. A poem arises from her heart about once every ten years or so. Rochelle Ratner passed away in April 2008 after a long struggle with cancer. She is the author of two novels, Bobby’s Girl and The Lion’s Share, and sixteen poetry books, most recently Balancing Acts and Beggars at the Wall. She is also editor of the anthology Bearing Life: Women’s Writings on Childlessness. A former executive editor for American Book Review, Ratner reviewed regularly for Library Journal and was on the board of the National Book Critics Circle from 1994 until 2000. Her posthumous book of poetry was published in the winter of 2008. Glenis Redmond is a 2005–2006 North Carolina Literary Award recipient and a Denny C. Plattner Award for Outstanding Poetry winner. She logs over thirty-five thousand miles a year bringing poetry to the masses, encouraging and facilitating writing at such diverse locations as prisons, universities, festivals, conferences, camps, rallies, and preschools. Redmond was inducted into the Mountain Xpress Hall of Fame for Best Poet in Western North Carolina after winning for over seven years. Her work has aired on National Public Radio, and she is a past winner of the Southern Fried Slam and the National Slam. She has been published most recently in Meridians, African Voices, EMRYS, Asheville Poetry Review, 2006 Kakalak: A Journal of Carolina Poets, Appalachian Heritage, and the Appalachian Journal. You can fi nd her at www.glenisredmond.com. Ala Riani was born in Kurdistan. At the age of five, in 1986, she fled with her mother and younger sister to Sweden, where she currently lives. The political struggles of her parents against the Iranian regime and their fight for a free and independent Kurdistan have deeply influenced Riani. Since her young teen years, she has written poetry and composed music for her own lyrics. She is currently pursuing a music career as a singer and songwriter. Riani has an MA in political science. Kimberly Roppolo, of Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek descent, is assistant professor of Native studies at the University of Lethbridge and the associate national director of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Her recent and upcoming publications include “Getting Ourselves Back to the

354 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

Garden: Death, Life, and Rebirth in Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes,” a volume edited by Laura Coltelli, two pieces in Studies in American Indian Literatures, and “Washita, a Slaughter, Not a Battle: A Cheyenne Survivor’s Perspective” (translated with Eugene Blackbear Sr.) in Eating Fire, Tasting Blood: Breaking the Great Silence of the American Indian Holocaust. She resides in Lethbridge, Alberta, with her husband, Randall. She is the proud mother of Cody, Rachel, and Marley. Annmarie Sauer is a nomad with two anchors: the polder in Belgium and the desert in Arizona. Born in Dayton, Ohio, she has dual citizenship in the United States and Belgium. Since 1985, she has worked for the European Parliament as an interpreter of five languages (Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian) and as a member of the training working group for interpreters. A poet, essayist, and author, she has translated numerous books and plays, and her written works have appeared in numerous international publications. She has one daughter, from whom the most wonderful gift she has received is the idea of futures (plural). Doris Seale was born and grew up in southern Vermont. She lived in Massachusetts for many years, where she worked as a children’s librarian. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies, she is the author of two books of poetry, Blood Salt and Ghost Dance, and she’s the author and coeditor of Through Indian Eyes and A Broken Flute, two works that address the ways in which Native people are portrayed in writing for children and young people. She returned to Vermont in 2004, where she lives and writes in Burlington. Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian poet. She arrived in the United States in 1988, where she completed an MS in journalism. Her poems have appeared in various anthologies and literary journals including The Atlanta Review, Bat City Review, Crab Orchard, DMQ Review, Drunken Boat, White Ink, The Body Eclectic, The Poetry of Arab Women, and The Mississippi Review. She resides in northern California with her husband and two sons. Kimberly Shuck is a mixed Tsalagi, Sauk/Fox, and Polish educator, writer, and weaver. She has had myriad jobs, which include writing math curricula, frothing cappuccino, teaching at the university level, and parenting three kids who are now close on the heels of teenhood. Shuck has an MFA, and her

355 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR

poetry has been published nationally and internationally in such publications as Shenandoah, Cream City Review, the En’owken Journal, and the recent anthology The Other Side of the Postcard. Smuggling Cherokee, her full-length poetry manuscript, won the fi rst book award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas for 2005 and was published in 2006. Shuck lives in San Francisco, California. Christine Stark is a writer and visual artist of Anishinaabe, Cherokee, and European heritage. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals, including Poetry Motel, The Florida Review, To Plead Our Own Cause: Narratives of Modern Slavery, The Journal of Trauma Practice, and Primavera. She is a coeditor (with Rebecca Whisnant) of Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. She is working on a second anthology, The Long Journey Home, which is a series of interviews with Anishinaabe people who have returned to traditional Anishinaabe ways. Stark teaches literature and writing at a community college in northern Minnesota. Angela Sterritt is a social-justice advocate, artist, writer, and student who belongs to the Gitanmaax band of the Gitxsan Nation, and also self-identifies as a white and Irish person. Sterrit has been an advocate and organizer since she was seventeen, and she continues to work for the rights of youth, Indigenous peoples, women, and girls. She was recently awarded the Solicitor General’s Award for her efforts in preventing violence against young women by speaking at the United Nations in Geneva and working with grassroots organizations. Currently she works at the Vancouver Status of Women and with a local collective of young indigenous printers. She is a political science and visual arts student at the University of Britsh Columbia. Laura Tohe is Diné (Navajo). She is the author of four books. Tseyi’, Deep in the Rock: Reflections on Canyon de Chelly, a collaboration of Tohe’s poetry and Stephen Strom’s photography, was listed as a 2005 Southwest Book of the Year. She has two sons and lives in Mesa, Arizona. She teaches at Arizona State University. Terra Trevor, of Western Band Cherokee, Delaware, Seneca ancestry, frequently writes on the topics of motherhood, transracial adoption, culture, ethnicity, her identity as a mixed blood, as well as the experience of raising

356 BIRTHED FROM SCORCHED HEARTS

a child with a life-threatening illness, and the healing process following the death of a child. She is a contributing writer to Adoption Today magazine and is a contributing author of both Children of The Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education and Childhood Brain & Spinal Cord Tumors: A Guide for Families, Friends & Caregivers. Her memoir, Pushing up the Sky, was published in 2006, and she shares her knowledge and experiences speaking in a variety of forums nationwide. Matilde Urrutia (1912–1985) worked as a singer throughout Latin America before meeting and becoming the poet Pablo Neruda’s lover, muse, wife, and widow. In the face of traumatic and disturbing circumstances, due to the military coup cast upon Chile, Urrutia fostered her husband’s legacy and secretly wrote her memoirs, which were published posthumously in 1986. Rhiana Yazzie is a Navajo playwright whose work has been performed from Mexico to Alaska. A Minneapolis Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow for 2006/2007, she has developed plays at The Kennedy Center’s New Visions/ New Voices theater, the Native Voices Theater at the Autry National Center, the East West Players, the World Congress of the International Theater Institute–UNESCO in Tampico, Mexico, and the Wakiknabe Native Theater Company, of which she is a former associate artistic director. Her radio play, The Best Place to Grow Pumpkins, was broadcast nationally through the Native Radio Theater Project at the National Audio Theater Festival. Victoria Ybanez (Navajo, Apache, Mexican) has been working to end violence against women for twenty-four years and brings fi rsthand experience with domestic violence, racism, and poverty to her work. Currently, she works through Red Wind Consulting as a technical assistance partner for Praxis International and with the Battered Women’s Justice Project. Ybanez was the executive director and a founding member of American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO), and she developed Oshki Odaadiziwini Waka’igan transitional housing program, and Dabinoo’Igan, a battered women’s shelter. She holds a bachelor’s in economics through the University of Minnesota–Duluth and is a graduate of the 1997 Institute for Renewing Community Leadership, University of Saint Thomas–Minneapolis, Minnesota.

357 WOMEN RESPOND TO WAR