LeAnne Howe - Choctalking on Other Realities

Also by LeAnne Howe

Shell Shaker

Evidence of Red

Miko Kings

Copyright 2013 LeAnne Howe

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

Aunt Lute Books

P.O. Box 410687

San Francisco, CA 94141

www.auntlute.com

Cover design: Amy Woloszyn, Amymade Graphic Design

Cover photo: Jim Wilson

Text design: Amy Woloszyn, Amymade Graphic Design

Interior Illustrations: Ellen French

Author Photo: Jim Wilson

Senior Editor: Joan Pinkvoss

Managing Editor: Shay Brawn

Production: Laura Chin, Learkana Chong, Ellen French, Lisa Hastings, Taylor Hodges, Alexa Kelly, Kara Owens, Erin Peterson, Allison Power

This book was made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Vessel Foundation, and the Sara & Two C-Dogs Foundation

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Howe, LeAnne.

[Essays. Selections]

Choctalking on other realities / by LeAnne Howe; foreword by Dean Rader.

pages cm

Print ISBN 978-1-879960-90-9 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-939904-07-2

1. Howe, LeAnne. 2. Indians of North America. I. Title.

PS3608.O95A6 2013

814.6--dc23

[B]

2013032092

Printed in the U.S.A. on acid-free paper

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

It is a little known fact that Choctaws are thrill seekers.

Contents

Foreword

Scary isnt it, writes LeAnne Howe in her essay that chronicles her trip to Japan, how one narrative bleeds into anotherfrom Ronald Reagan to Pearl Harbor to my grandmothers Japanese china.

By scary, LeAnne means not scary.

By scary, she means cool.

By scary, she means normal.

By scary, she means Indian.

By scary, she means Choctaw.

Choctaw, isnt it, how one narrative bleeds into anotherand so it goes with Choctalking On Other Realities. One memory leads to another memory, which leads to an observation, which leads to a family story, which leads to a comical encounter overseas, which illuminates a Choctaw mode of being in the world, which leads to yet another observation about Oklahoma, which prompts another memory, and the narrative spins on, always turning on the axis of Choctaw history and culture. In this extraordinary collection, LeAnne Howe does for Choctaw storytelling what The Hunger Games does for archerymakes something seemingly traditional and archaic feel edgy, new, and necessary.

Acknowledging LeAnnes acknowledgment of her narrative tendencies feels necessary as well, as it points to an important self-awareness in her prose. A reader not familiar with her work or that of a similar writer, like Leslie Marmon Silko or Sherman Alexie, might find herself confused by the humorous but jarring leaps from, say, Choctaw tribal history to modern airline travel, to being taken hostage on a bus, to her work as a day trader, to chocolate cow patties. But, as she proves in these pages, everything is everything, which is to say that everything can or does or will lead into everything else. The route, then, from Reagan to Pearl Harbor to Japanese china goes beyond Howes internal map of migration and memory; its a metaphor for the connectedness among appearing disconnects.

Disconnect, as it happens, emerges as one of the great themes of this book. There is the obvious (and occasionally painful) cultural disconnect the author experiences when dealing with non-Indians. In Carlos Castaneda Lives in Romania, our intrepid author tries to find new ways to respond to a barrage of disappointed Romanians when they learn the Choctaw are not the Yaqui and do not have a shaman like the great Indian Carlos Castaneda. Here, LeAnne is punished for not being Indian enough or for being the wrong kind of Indian, but on the other end of the spectrum, on a book tour in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, the author is punished for her Indianness. In How I Lost Ten Pounds, LeAnne recounts a bizarre scene at a bookstore when a woman accosts the author because the Choctaw did not intervene in the famous 1791 battle between the Miami and the United States Army. The woman, a descendent of the general in charge of the U.S. forces, demanded an explanation for the Indian attack and justification for the lack of Choctaw intervention. LeAnnes response was (unusually) diplomatic and gracious. Nevertheless, the woman insults LeAnne and storms out of the bookstore.

Many writers would take this opportunity to wade into the self-satisfying waters of aggrievement, but LeAnne opts for a different approach. For her, these odd moments of misunderstanding, of painful racial ignorance, elicit not anger, not reproach, but humor. It seems to me it would be easier, and perhaps even cathartic, to empty the quiver here. And, to a certain degree, I suspect that is what many readers want. But, in typical Howe style, she frustrates. She trades easy antagonism for a kind of wry bemusement.

This is a remarkable choice.

It is also an aesthetic choice. Or at the very least a writerly one. When an author addresses issues of race and gender, the fall back position tends to focus on injustice, which is both appropriate and necessary. Which is why it is even more astonishing how rarely the voice in these pieces goes to that place. Rather than complain, the voice sustains. The voice does not cry or scream. It laughs, or chuckles, or sighs.

Much of the humor in these pieces arises out of the gaps between what people imagine about Indians, what popular culture tells them Indians are, and what they do when confronted with LeAnne. That is a perfect storm of kerfuffle. Things dont mesh. Worlds collide. Defensiveness emerges. But not on LeAnnes part. In this way, she reminds me of our fellow Oklahoman, Will Rogers, who was one of the best when it came to using humor as a dagger. His ability to cut to the core of a social or political issue was legendary. He was pithy and insightful. Being funny just made him that much more effective. One of Rogerss most famous quotesEverybody is ignorant, only on different subjectscould be the epigraph for this very book.

Interestingly, LeAnne is hardest on herself. We never really see her lose her composure in this country with our own boneheads; we only see her come unmoored when she is culturally unmoored, as in Japan. I Fuck Up In Japan is probably my favorite piece in the book, in part because we get to see LeAnne doing to her Japanese hosts what has been done to her for a good bit of her life. She is culturally unaware and more than once culturally insensitive. If you travel across country with her, youll quickly discover those sets of behaviors are not reserved for the Japanese, but thats a different story. In Japan, she finds herself unintentionally dissing her gracious, deferential host and a gigantic Buddha, along with the sacred space they all occupy. All of a sudden, LeAnne Howe, not some clueless Anglo, is the one committing the faux pas. It is a fantastic moment. The degree to which we are all connected and at the same time disconnected emerges here in the most fascinating ways, and it suggests that, at least tangentially, LeAnne is connected to the still-bitter descendant of General St. Clair. We all have our conflict points. We all are defensive about something. However, having those points and being brave enough to write about them are two different things.