Books of Interest by Writers of Color—Allison Hedge Coke Edits Another Great Anthology, EFFIGIES II

Allison Hedge Coke is a prolific and acclaimed Indigenous writer who’s been discussed before on this blog. http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2011/09/books-of-interest-by-writers-of_27.html

Her own books of poetry and memoir include the American Book Award winner, Dog Road Woman, popular memoir, Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer, and two Wordcraft Writer of the Year winners, Off Season City Pipe and Blood Run. Hedge Coke is also known for her fine work in editing series and anthologies of Indigenous writers, most recently and notably SING: Indigenous Poetry of the Americas, which was the first anthology of Indigenous writing from all the Americas.

One of the anthologies Hedge Coke edited in 2009 was Effigies, a strong collection of chapbooks from emerging Alaskan Native and Pacific Islander poets. Now, she has returned with a new collection of chapbooks from five emerging Indigenous poets of the continental United States, Effigies II: An Anthology of New Indigenous Writing Mainland North & South United States, 2014, from Salt Publications. Effigies II contains the poems of Lara Mann (Choctaw), Ungelbah Davila (Diné), Kateri Menominee (Anishinaabe), Kristi Leora (Onondaga), and Laura Da’ (Shawnee).

Ann Waldman says of this anthology, “Allison Hedge Coke has done it again, with her keen ear and eye: brought powerful new Native women's voices to our attention. Rigorous, powerful, brave, haunting, spirited.” LeAnne Howe also praises it. “These poems, fresh effigies carved by five young Native women cracked open my heart.  Read them when alone carefully swaddled in a warm blanket, or read them aloud at the kitchen table to all your relations, past and future.  But read them.”

The variety of poetic voices in this anthology is refreshing. These Native women’s voices are a powerful addition to the growing body of robust diversity that is modern, published Indigenous poetry (for the tribes have been voicing poetry for millennia). The poets of Effigies II bring their voices in the whispers, murmurs, fierce shouts, curses, blessings, lullabies, cries of passion, tears, and mourning. The breadth of life is to be found in these spirited offerings.

Although the poets in Effigies II are emerging poets coming into their own, the work in these pages is sure, deft, full of telling detail, rich in evocative imagery, and ringing with the music of language enriched by drawing on multiple heritages and cultures. These poems demand attention—Mann’s bittersweet tales of searching for roots for family and self; Davilah’s explorations of female sexuality, empowerment and exploitation; Menominee’s travels through ancient history and fairy tale with a postmodern sensibility; Leora’s work linking the modern world and its future with its beginnings through geologic process and creation stories; and the poems of Da’, which grieve for the atrocities, betrayals, and losses inflicted on her people.

Hedge Coke’s sure hand as editor can be seen in the ordering and juxtapositions which allow each poet’s work to feed and support that of the others. I highly recommend this collection to all with interest in new Indigenous voices and in a more nuanced approach to the idea of Indigenous writing, as well as to anyone who just loves to read lucid, lyrical, enchanting, and powerful poetry.

As usual, I suggest you order the book from the small press publisher, Salt Publications, which has a whole series of Indigenous books, Earthworks. Small press and university publishers bring most of the diversity in literature to the page. Without them, we would have a tiny handful of very famous writers of color published and no one else. If you value diverse literature, please support the presses that make it possible. http://saltpublishing.com/shop/proddetail.php?prod=9781844718955

As part of the whole #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement, I will devote a month of twice-weekly posts to my long-running Books of Interest by Writers of Color series while recuperating from some surgery mid-July to mid-August (because I'd already planned this and because I just think it's that important, so I'm going to do it anyway). During that month, I may have some extra posts by other writers and critics featuring yet more #diverselit. So stand by for some remarkable writers that you may never have heard of before.

Project Needs Help—“Red Dust: A Mixed-Blood Dust Bowl Childhood”

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is an acclaimed poet of Huron, Metis, Cherokee, Creek, Portuguese, French-Canadian, Irish, Scot, and English heritage whom I have featured before on this blog, but she is almost as well-known for her activism. Just check out all the activist projects listed in her bio below and realize that the listing is not comprehensive. Hedge Coke is another of the many writers of color who give back to the community selflessly. She was named Mentor of the Year in 2001 by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. Of particular interest is the work she did with the sandhill cranes at the University of Nebraska Kearney. A poet and activist also heavily involved with labor and the Indigenous mound structures that network across the continent, her work reverberates with dreams, myths, history, and a true sense of life lived into something more sacred than its sometimes brutal or desecrating events.

Photo of Hedge Coke courtesy of the Maturin Cultural Center, Venezuela World Poetry Festival

Hedge Coke is seeking funding for an ambitious project documenting through the life of her 91-year-old father the experiences of the many mixed-blood children who lived through the Dust Bowl and the Depression, usually in dire poverty and often working as migrant farmworkers.  Hedge Coke’s father as a child moved around the heart of the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas picking other people’s cotton for a penny a pound. As Hedge Coke says of this project, “Though we have hoped to do this project for years, my father recognized that he was in school with speakers interviewed in the recent Ken Burns documentary and was saddened that Burns’ work did not explore the collective experience and focused more in the Anglo experience, solely. Obviously timely and potentially time limited, I am setting out to document my father’s primary history of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, while he is still able to contribute effectively.”

“Red Dust: a mixed-blood Dust Bowl childhood” is designed as book project and documentary film using Hedge Coke’s father’s narration of his memories on location as the narrative thread running through a project that will also seek other surviving mixed-blood voices from that time to add their stories to enrich the chronicle. For more details of this unique project and the opportunity to contribute, visit the USArtists website here. http://www.usaprojects.org/project/red_dust_a_mixed_blood_dust_bowl_childhood

Hedge Coke conceived and edited the valuable anthology, SING: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas, the first-ever anthology of Indigenous American poetry from all the Americas, North, Central, and South. This was an incredibly complex work that took six years and multiple translators to create. Its usefulness for scholars and lovers of poetry is a testament to the energy of her vision and the quality of her accomplishment. It leads me to expect great things from this new project, which is an exciting foray into an area that has long been missing the stories, experiences, and voices of the mixed-blood people who lived through that crucial time period.

BIO

Allison Hedge Coke has been an invitational featured performer in international festivals in Medellin, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Canada, and Jordan and foreign visiting professional in for Shandong University in Wei Hai, China. A 2010 Split This Rock Festival featured poet and 2011 Lannan Writing Resident (Marfa), she is a MacDowell Colony for Artists, Black Earth Institute Think Tank, Hawthornden Castle, Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, and Center for Great Plains Research Fellow, is a former National Endowment for the Humanities Appointment Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hartwick College and formerly the Distinguished Paul W. Reynolds and Clarice Kingston Reynolds Endowed Chair in Poetry as an Associate Professor of Poetry and Writing at the University of Nebraska, Kearney where she directed the Reynolds Series and Sandhill Crane Migration Literary Retreat & Cranefest. She is core faculty in the University of Nebraska MFA Program and regular Visiting Faulty of the MFA Intensive Program at Naropa University. Hedge Coke is a regular keynote lecturer/performer and was the 2008 Paul Hanly Furfey Endowed Lecturer, in Boston. Her books include: Dog Road Woman, American Book Award, Coffee House Press, 1997; The Year of the Rat, chapbook, Grimes Press, 2000; Rock Ghost, Willow, Deer, AIROS Book-of-the-Month (memoir), University of Nebraska Press, 2004; Off-Season City Pipe, Wordcraft Writer of the Year for Poetry, Coffee House Press, 2005; Blood Run, Wordcraft Writer of the Year for Poetry, Salt Publications, UK 2006-US 2007; To Topos Ahani: Indigenous American Poetry, Journal Issue of the Year Award (ed.), Oregon State University, 2007; Effigies, (ed.), Salt Publications, 2009 and Sing, University of Arizona Press, 2011. She has edited five other volumes. Her long poem "The Year of the Rat" is currently being made into a ballet through collaboration with Brent Michael Davids, composer. Recent literary publications include Kenyon Review, Florida Review, Connecticut Review, Sentence Magazine, Prometeo Memories, Akashic Books, and Black Renaissance Noire. Recent photography publications include Connecticut Review, Future Earth Magazine and Digital Poetics. She has also authored a full-length play Icicles, numerous monologues, and has worked in theater, television, and film. Hedge Coke has been awarded several state and regional artistic and literary grants, fellowships, and tours; multiple excellence in teaching awards, including the King Chavez Parks Award; a Sioux Falls Mayor's Award for Literary Excellence; a National Mentor of the Year, a Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Award; has served on several state, community, and national boards in the arts, a housing board, as a Delegate, in the United Nations Women in Peacemaking Conference, Joan B. Kroc Center for Peace and Justice, University of San Diego, and as a United Nations Presenting Speaker (with James Thomas Stevens, Mohawk Poet), Facilitator, and Speaker Nominator for the only Indigenous Literature Panel of the Indigenous Peoples Human Rights Forum. For many years she has worked with incarcerated and underserved Indigenous youth and youth of color mentorship programs and served as a court official in Indian youth advocacy and CASA. Hedge Coke has edited five additional collections and is editing two new book series of emerging Indigenous writing. Hedge Coke has continually taught various creative writing, literature, environmental writing, cultural philosophy, Native American Studies/Literature, education, and other courses for pre-school, K-12, college, university, and professional institutions since 1979. She came of age working fields, waters, and working in factories.

What Great Fun!--Peregrine Falcons, Germans from Russia, and Tourists at Readings

Amelia Montes and me

I was invited to Lincoln, Nebraska, as a visiting writer by Amelia Montes, director of the Ethnic Studies Institute and professor of creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The visit was scheduled to begin with a dinner with faculty members and graduate students. Ben and I were late arriving because of unexpected road construction delays, so we parked at the hotel, checked in, and ran across the street to the restaurant with Amelia, who was patiently waiting for us.

Even with such an inauspicious beginning, the evening was a stimulating experience—brilliant company and conversation that ranged from crimes of passion in Mexico City to Russian Orthodox monasteries. Professors Joy Castro, James Garza, and Jennifer Garza, and Ph.D. candidate Bernice Olivas joined Amelia, Ben, and me for that very best kind of wide-ranging intellectual conversation that lasted late into the night.

Ben at the Museum of Germans from Russia

The next day, Saturday, was packed with activities. We woke early and were joined at breakfast by our dear friends, Allison and Travis Hedge Coke, who had driven two hours from the University of Nebraska-Kearney where Allison holds the Reynolds Chair of Creative Writing and coordinates the incredible Sandhill Crane Migration Literary Retreat and Festival. Travis was on his way to the airport, and Allison intended to join us for the day’s activities and my reading that evening. As always, it was so much fun to see them and talk with them, even if it was just for a short while with Travis.

Amelia arrived to interview me for a chapter in her book, Corazon y Tierra:  Latinas Writing on the Midwest, Amelia’s critical book on contemporary writing by Latina authors who are writing either about or from the Midwest. I’m honored to be in this book, which is such a fascinating exploration of different kinds of Latina identity. Amelia’s questions were probing and perceptive, and she was massively prepared for the two-hour interview.

While Amelia interviewed me, Allison and Ben went exploring in Lincoln, visiting the Museum of Germans from Russia and the university campus, which has been beautifully landscaped with native plants, always a strong interest of Ben’s and mine.

The old Senate chamber at Nebraska Capitol

We had lunch with a discussion of some of the initiatives both women were working on at their respective universities and the newest work of other writers with which we are all familiar. After lunch, Amelia had a special treat for us—a guided tour through the Nebraska State Capitol. It so happens Ben and I love to visit places like state capitols, but even those who don’t would have enjoyed this tour. Nebraska’s capitol building is a true original. All its components—from floors to ceiling—are pieces of art with symbolic meaning. Just wandering through it would be a delight because of the beauty, but the tour enhanced that with an understanding of the philosophical concepts behind everything. And our tour guide, Jameson, a student of history at the university, gave us such a dramatic rendering that it added to the pleasure.

The cap of our tour was a trip to the rotunda where a soldier’s poignant wedding was taking place. He and his best man were in uniform, and I’ve never seen such a starry-eyed groom. When the couple finished their vows to each other, the groom made his own vows to her three young children that left not only the kids wiping their eyes. We kept hoping he was not scheduled to leave for duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Breathtaking beauty in flight

The balcony section outside the rotunda offered an incredible view of the whole city. But even better, it offered… peregrine falcons! They nest on the top of the building, and during our whole time out there, the parents flew back and forth, bringing food to their constantly crying children. Of course, this was a great treat for me since I’m such a lover of raptors.

As the tour ended, Amelia announced my reading that evening to the rest of the people in our tour group. This is exactly what I would have done in her place, so it’s interesting being on the other end and feeling embarrassed about the fuss. She was right to do it, though, and one lady said she intended to attend. After all of this, we went back to the hotel to rest and prepare for the reading and book signing.

Reading from Every Last Secret

I was excited about the bookstore where I would read. Indigo Bridge Bookstore is a bookstore, a coffee shop, and a nonprofit community development organization, all in one. This is quite unusual for a bookstore, and I was interested to see how well it worked. Located in the historic Hay Market district, Indigo Bridge Bookstore is cheerful and bright with plenty of customers, so I think it’s working quite well.

Since some people had come for the mystery and some for the poetry, I mixed them in the reading, which worked well—I think because many of the same subjects and obsessions inform both areas of my work. I spoke about Every Last Secret and read from it briefly. Then I read a couple of poems from Heart’s Migration and a few more from my newest manuscript, Dark Sister. We had a lovely audience for the reading, including fellow writers Allison Hedge Coke and Joy Castro, students from the university, and townspeople. The woman from the Capitol tour showed up halfway through the reading, having wandered downtown Lincoln lost and missed the mystery part when that was what she came for, but she liked the poetry so much that she bought both books. It turns out she was a tourist from Iowa. And another woman of obvious maturity declared it was her very first reading, as she bought a book, and she thought she'd make them a regular thing from now on. So I felt I'd done my part for literature that night!

Joy Castro, me, Amelia Montes, Allison Hedge Coke, Ben

After the reading, we went out for a late meal and good conversation with other writers until midnight. So we wandered up to our hotel room, sleepy and happy.

The University of Nebraska has been wise to hire gifted writers, scholars, and teachers, such as Amelia Montes, Joy Castro, and Allison Hedge Coke. Somehow, after having seen the state's quirky but beautiful Capitol building, I'm not surprised.

In other news, I am a weekly blogger for the group blog Writers Who Kill on Saturdays, as most of you know. I have now also joined the group blog, The Stiletto Gang. (Ben said, "You'll have to use a knife for your photo since you can't wear heels.") I will be blogging there on the fourth Friday of each month. I hope you'll come visit me at both places.

I want to bring this blog back to twice a week, alternating between my two series, Books of Interest by Writers of Color and Literary Mystery Novelists, with occasional posts in the series, Balancing Writing and book Marketing, and posts about my own work. It will be a little bumpy for the next couple of weeks trying to get back to that, but then I think I'll be back in the groove. Thanks for stopping by!