I wish to inform the general public that the first copy of The Summer of Pomba Gira has been sold! Hurray! For those of you wishing to purchase your very own copy, it may be found at www.Xlibris.com under their bookstore. Type in The Summer of Pomba Gira and you should find it.
Dear blog reader, should you not know what Pomba Gira means, and decide to google it, rest assured that it is not a book with any pornographic elements. Unless of course, that's your thing, in which case, forget what I wrote and go for it. For those wondering why Pomba Gira is in any way associated with American Indians, customarily she is not, it's just that there are two plots in the book, and she relates to one of these plotlines.
Should you purchase the book and dislike it, the cover art of the book may be cut out and retained, being suitable for framing. Should you decidedly hate it, the back cover photo of me may easily be mounted on the dart board of your choice for future entertainment. I believe that the interior pages may well be appropriate for fireplace kindling. Therefore, your investment of $20 should not go to waste. $5 of it (all author royalties) go to two American Indian organizations, and with the lovely photo, dartboard entertainment and fireplace kindling, I believe you will have ample return on your investment. Besides, recycling is the way to go.
If you purchase the book, read it and like it, all the better. Contact me and we can set up our own Pomba Gira party, I can give you ideas of how to invest back in communities and causes you love, or I can simply encourage you to complete the writing project you're working on.
Have a wonderful New Year!
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
How to Host a Pomba Gira Party
Okay, now seriously, Pomba Gira wouldn't be someone to mock or take lightly, nor would I recommend actually petitioning her for help unless you became well versed in what that would entail. In no way do we want to go prancing around messing with a perfectly wonderful and culturally different spiritual practice. It just wouldn't be nice.
That being said, I think many times there are ways to honor the essence of something good from another's respective culture without making a mockery of it. Of course, as soon as I type this, there are a hundred great examples of where this is a slippery slope. I'll let you in on my thought process and where it went..."hmmm, US Constitution and government borrowing from the Iroquois Confederacy....no, no, that only works if they'd also afforded the Iroquois at the time of said borrowing/adoption the same rights under the law that they held themselves so dear....bad example....mhmmm...." Where have I heard this before, this idea of taking something without making a mockery of it? Oh yes, the inipi or sweatlodge ceremonies of the Lakota. Suddenly, people who weren't trained in it were running around putting up do-it-yourself sweats, and claiming to be honoring the essence of it...what might that be called? Cultural misappropriation.
I'm such a tease. It's all been a lead in to being able to discuss cultural misappropriation. It would be so much easier if we could just have a Pomba Gira party and be done with it! Cultural misappropriation is when something of another's culture, particularly the tools and practices associated with it, are taken out of context, stolen away with in the night, and claimed by others to have the right to do it or practice it. However, typically when this happens, it ends up being a one dimensional mockery of what was otherwise a deeply meaningful and essential part of the culture in which it originated.
Rather, perhaps throw a party in honor of all of your female friends. Invite them all over, pamper them and treat them right. Have some great music, some nice chocolate, some excellent coffee, or your beverage of choice, and make it a point to remind them that it's all right to hope, that their dreams are important, that they are valuable as people. Encourage them to begin to think this way themselves. Don't weigh them with your baggage, but each of you help one another lower that weight to the ground for just a little while. Let them encourage you to think this way yourself. Have an all out ball! Maybe bring flowers for each other, or write each other notes of gratitude, or together write notes of commitment to your dreams. Share in projects, crafts, create something together! Nothing formulaic is ever fun. Let it be an organic process, let the spirit move you. Be grateful for those that do.
Did I mention that chocolate fountains can be a serious uplifter to the world-weary female of today?
That being said, I think many times there are ways to honor the essence of something good from another's respective culture without making a mockery of it. Of course, as soon as I type this, there are a hundred great examples of where this is a slippery slope. I'll let you in on my thought process and where it went..."hmmm, US Constitution and government borrowing from the Iroquois Confederacy....no, no, that only works if they'd also afforded the Iroquois at the time of said borrowing/adoption the same rights under the law that they held themselves so dear....bad example....mhmmm...." Where have I heard this before, this idea of taking something without making a mockery of it? Oh yes, the inipi or sweatlodge ceremonies of the Lakota. Suddenly, people who weren't trained in it were running around putting up do-it-yourself sweats, and claiming to be honoring the essence of it...what might that be called? Cultural misappropriation.
I'm such a tease. It's all been a lead in to being able to discuss cultural misappropriation. It would be so much easier if we could just have a Pomba Gira party and be done with it! Cultural misappropriation is when something of another's culture, particularly the tools and practices associated with it, are taken out of context, stolen away with in the night, and claimed by others to have the right to do it or practice it. However, typically when this happens, it ends up being a one dimensional mockery of what was otherwise a deeply meaningful and essential part of the culture in which it originated.
Rather, perhaps throw a party in honor of all of your female friends. Invite them all over, pamper them and treat them right. Have some great music, some nice chocolate, some excellent coffee, or your beverage of choice, and make it a point to remind them that it's all right to hope, that their dreams are important, that they are valuable as people. Encourage them to begin to think this way themselves. Don't weigh them with your baggage, but each of you help one another lower that weight to the ground for just a little while. Let them encourage you to think this way yourself. Have an all out ball! Maybe bring flowers for each other, or write each other notes of gratitude, or together write notes of commitment to your dreams. Share in projects, crafts, create something together! Nothing formulaic is ever fun. Let it be an organic process, let the spirit move you. Be grateful for those that do.
Did I mention that chocolate fountains can be a serious uplifter to the world-weary female of today?
Monday, December 28, 2009
Like a pregnancy, only a little more macabre
Each step I go along this journey to self-publish The Summer of Pomba Gira feels uneasily like the third trimester of a pregnancy. I feel heavy and wishing this phase was just over and done with. This is coupled by an uneasy feeling that my baby might emerge with three heads, two of which didn't show up on the ultrasound. I feel as ill-equipped for this authorship thing as I did for motherhood. Will I be ready? What will happen? Will it change my life forever? Will my readers like it, get it, or will they be hurtling tomatoes at me in the streets?
I'm reminded of this great episode of Northern Exposure, called Thanksgiving. In it, the local Native people have developed a tradition of throwing tomatoes at the white people. Joel, an outsider to the tradition, gets hit with a few and is indignant, wants to know why. They explain that tomatoes look like blood but don't hurt anybody, and it's better than tire irons.
On my better days, I imagine it will be a best-seller (ha!) and that I'll get calls to be interviewed by all of the major network news hounds. Of course, I will eschew them all, Oprah or Anderson Cooper, in favor of going on the Jerry Springer show so long as no one in the audience brings tomatoes. No, seriously, I'll give an exclusive interview to Geraldo Rivera, because he's not gotten to break a big expose story since the days when he was live on TV and he said he'd find the hidden treasure of the gangsters, but instead found an empty room. That's got to suck, so I'd give him the opportunity to break the great news story.
On the ultimate fantasy days (as if Geraldo just weren't enough!), somebody reads the book and decides it would make a great movie. They buy the movie rights and opening night is in Brazil (read it and you'll know why, read it especially if you're a movie maker) and I get to fly over to Brazil for the opening, where their tomatoes are much softer. In that version, when it opens in Hollywood, I get to make a request of who sits with me at dinner, and it would be Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.
More fun than that, though, the whole thing takes over like wildfire, with women all over hosting Pomba Gira parties for each other! Maybe I'll post what you'll need to do your own Pomba Gira party someday. The major players will want advertising associated with the movie. Except I somehow don't imagine a Burger King glass set coming out of this book. I'd probably pay money to see that happen. The one great fortune of writing a book this way out there is that there is NO WAY Disney will ever touch it.
Like pregnancy, this feels much like exposure, and therefore vulnerability. I've got a semi-normal little life, or at least, I float that idea out there for the general viewing public. I have a career and a family and my own little quirky bubble of reality that's changed when you give birth to a three headed child. That sort of thing happens.
I think my mother was right, I should have been a casino dealer. That was her career aspiration for me, which she astutely cultivated right around the time I was old enough to write. It was her subtle hint, I expect. I completely dashed her hopes and went an entirely different career route, but ultimately, one safer than writing.
My not-nearly-so-good days customarily come after re-reading the story, after drilling it into my head, as it were. On those days, I consider the NDN community reaction and I think: silence. Most people wouldn't view silence as anything terrifying, but this kind of silence I know, and I know full well what it means. This isn't the silence of peace and solitude, but a deafening silence, veritable fjords of silence. This is the silence of "you are dead to us" because of breaking the unspoken taboo.
There's a Cherokee story of the Uktena I've been thinking about for the better part of two years. I suspect it's part of some mid-life crisis I'm encountering, dancing with my shadow and experientially re-creating Jung's individuation process. The Uktena was a serpent created of magic to kill the Sun, except that it failed in that duty and went on to terrorize the Cherokee people. It was said to have the body of a snake, except it was the diameter of a tree trunk. It had antlers on it's head, wings that enabled it to fly - since it couldn't be easily categorized, it belonged to the three worlds, above, this and below, and therefore was something to be avoided. That and to approach it could cause madness, as it would seep its thoughts deep into your head and convince you that your family had been destroyed.
So, there are many versions of the Uktena story, but the one I keep coming back to is where the Shawano medicine man is captured by the Cherokee people. They want to kill him, but he convinces them instead to let him go after the Uktena. He does this, and it's a really long story, so I won't get into it here- but he brings back from them a glowing crystal that was in the center of it's head, and he's allowed to live and stay among the Cherokee. The crystal is said to bring great prosperity to the people. The remainder of the story doesn't focus on the great prosperity of the people and what that looked like, and it's only recently, in this third trimester pregnancy of the book about to be birthed, that I thought about how odd that is.
The rest of the story goes on to talk about how the Shawano comes back with a small snake with glowing red eyes growing out of his head. It never sleeps, even when he does, it's awake even after he dies and they bury him. The people, upon seeing this snake growing out of dude's head when he returns, they kind of avoid him, keep a respectful distance, but are rightfully just a wee bit afraid of him. They say it came about because one drop of blood of the Uktena crossed the fire line and touched him on the head, and that the snake sprang forth from that.
As I said, for two years I've mulled this story over, and typically consider the whole snake growing out of the head thing as a cautionary tale, don't go up against some seriously wicked magic, because it's just not worth it. No good deed goes unpunished. However, it struck me as odd that the story focuses on this and not the prosperity of the Cherokee people that ensued after the Uktena was defeated. Granted now, that would stick out in people's memory, but it's a teaching story, isn't it? Or it could be.
Then it occurred to me today, that the reason the Shawano had a snake growing out of his head at all was because he faced off with something the people themselves wouldn't. He was touched by the blood of something, had a direct experience of something that was terrifying and awful, which he battled and overcame. Like all of our direct experiences, something like that makes its mark on us. The Cherokee of old would have known this, understood it perhaps better than we do today. So why fear it so greatly? I'll delve into the realm of speculation here - that glowing eyed snake growing out of his head served as a constant reminder to them of the battle they elected not to go into themselves that day.
Putting it back to my experience of writing and publishing this story, there's not a lot in it I haven't experienced myself, although the story concepts are metaphors for the experiences I've had. I've fought a lot of personal, internal demons or monsters - faced off with them and on some level, feel I've won, and if that leaves it's mark as a snake growing out of my head in the form of a novel called The Summer of Pomba Gira, then so be it. The only difference here is that no one asked me to go into that battle, I did it all on my own. However, some of the themes of it are relevant to more people than just me. So if the story is the snake growing out of my head, and people distance themselves from me for it out of distain or fear, it won't change the fact that the glowing red eyes will remain alert, when I sleep. It won't go away once I die, the slow death of community silence or otherwise. Perhaps that little snake in the original story was to serve as a reminder of the battles we elect not to face in our own lives. No one likes to see someone's fought a battle they've yet to fight, heard they've gone the places they've yet to go, and certainly, don't remind us of it with the snake growing out of your head presence!
This is no bragging rights moment here, I don't mean it in any holier-than-thou way. I mean it as a call to action. When I re-read and drill into my head the aspects of the story I imagine would be most likely to offend, hit a community nerve and cause drama in my staid little life, it's around really serious topics: Internalized racism, internalized sexism, substance abuse, trauma, cross cultural interaction and communication, what historical injustices we've had done to us, and what we've let it do to us, family conflict, letting our stories die, etc. If even one of those is your/our Uktena, go head to head with it and come out of it alive, little snake growing out of your head or not in the end. Don't let it terrorize you, and don't slam or silence to death those who've decided to go for the challenge.
I'm reminded of this great episode of Northern Exposure, called Thanksgiving. In it, the local Native people have developed a tradition of throwing tomatoes at the white people. Joel, an outsider to the tradition, gets hit with a few and is indignant, wants to know why. They explain that tomatoes look like blood but don't hurt anybody, and it's better than tire irons.
On my better days, I imagine it will be a best-seller (ha!) and that I'll get calls to be interviewed by all of the major network news hounds. Of course, I will eschew them all, Oprah or Anderson Cooper, in favor of going on the Jerry Springer show so long as no one in the audience brings tomatoes. No, seriously, I'll give an exclusive interview to Geraldo Rivera, because he's not gotten to break a big expose story since the days when he was live on TV and he said he'd find the hidden treasure of the gangsters, but instead found an empty room. That's got to suck, so I'd give him the opportunity to break the great news story.
On the ultimate fantasy days (as if Geraldo just weren't enough!), somebody reads the book and decides it would make a great movie. They buy the movie rights and opening night is in Brazil (read it and you'll know why, read it especially if you're a movie maker) and I get to fly over to Brazil for the opening, where their tomatoes are much softer. In that version, when it opens in Hollywood, I get to make a request of who sits with me at dinner, and it would be Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie.
More fun than that, though, the whole thing takes over like wildfire, with women all over hosting Pomba Gira parties for each other! Maybe I'll post what you'll need to do your own Pomba Gira party someday. The major players will want advertising associated with the movie. Except I somehow don't imagine a Burger King glass set coming out of this book. I'd probably pay money to see that happen. The one great fortune of writing a book this way out there is that there is NO WAY Disney will ever touch it.
Like pregnancy, this feels much like exposure, and therefore vulnerability. I've got a semi-normal little life, or at least, I float that idea out there for the general viewing public. I have a career and a family and my own little quirky bubble of reality that's changed when you give birth to a three headed child. That sort of thing happens.
I think my mother was right, I should have been a casino dealer. That was her career aspiration for me, which she astutely cultivated right around the time I was old enough to write. It was her subtle hint, I expect. I completely dashed her hopes and went an entirely different career route, but ultimately, one safer than writing.
My not-nearly-so-good days customarily come after re-reading the story, after drilling it into my head, as it were. On those days, I consider the NDN community reaction and I think: silence. Most people wouldn't view silence as anything terrifying, but this kind of silence I know, and I know full well what it means. This isn't the silence of peace and solitude, but a deafening silence, veritable fjords of silence. This is the silence of "you are dead to us" because of breaking the unspoken taboo.
There's a Cherokee story of the Uktena I've been thinking about for the better part of two years. I suspect it's part of some mid-life crisis I'm encountering, dancing with my shadow and experientially re-creating Jung's individuation process. The Uktena was a serpent created of magic to kill the Sun, except that it failed in that duty and went on to terrorize the Cherokee people. It was said to have the body of a snake, except it was the diameter of a tree trunk. It had antlers on it's head, wings that enabled it to fly - since it couldn't be easily categorized, it belonged to the three worlds, above, this and below, and therefore was something to be avoided. That and to approach it could cause madness, as it would seep its thoughts deep into your head and convince you that your family had been destroyed.
So, there are many versions of the Uktena story, but the one I keep coming back to is where the Shawano medicine man is captured by the Cherokee people. They want to kill him, but he convinces them instead to let him go after the Uktena. He does this, and it's a really long story, so I won't get into it here- but he brings back from them a glowing crystal that was in the center of it's head, and he's allowed to live and stay among the Cherokee. The crystal is said to bring great prosperity to the people. The remainder of the story doesn't focus on the great prosperity of the people and what that looked like, and it's only recently, in this third trimester pregnancy of the book about to be birthed, that I thought about how odd that is.
The rest of the story goes on to talk about how the Shawano comes back with a small snake with glowing red eyes growing out of his head. It never sleeps, even when he does, it's awake even after he dies and they bury him. The people, upon seeing this snake growing out of dude's head when he returns, they kind of avoid him, keep a respectful distance, but are rightfully just a wee bit afraid of him. They say it came about because one drop of blood of the Uktena crossed the fire line and touched him on the head, and that the snake sprang forth from that.
As I said, for two years I've mulled this story over, and typically consider the whole snake growing out of the head thing as a cautionary tale, don't go up against some seriously wicked magic, because it's just not worth it. No good deed goes unpunished. However, it struck me as odd that the story focuses on this and not the prosperity of the Cherokee people that ensued after the Uktena was defeated. Granted now, that would stick out in people's memory, but it's a teaching story, isn't it? Or it could be.
Then it occurred to me today, that the reason the Shawano had a snake growing out of his head at all was because he faced off with something the people themselves wouldn't. He was touched by the blood of something, had a direct experience of something that was terrifying and awful, which he battled and overcame. Like all of our direct experiences, something like that makes its mark on us. The Cherokee of old would have known this, understood it perhaps better than we do today. So why fear it so greatly? I'll delve into the realm of speculation here - that glowing eyed snake growing out of his head served as a constant reminder to them of the battle they elected not to go into themselves that day.
Putting it back to my experience of writing and publishing this story, there's not a lot in it I haven't experienced myself, although the story concepts are metaphors for the experiences I've had. I've fought a lot of personal, internal demons or monsters - faced off with them and on some level, feel I've won, and if that leaves it's mark as a snake growing out of my head in the form of a novel called The Summer of Pomba Gira, then so be it. The only difference here is that no one asked me to go into that battle, I did it all on my own. However, some of the themes of it are relevant to more people than just me. So if the story is the snake growing out of my head, and people distance themselves from me for it out of distain or fear, it won't change the fact that the glowing red eyes will remain alert, when I sleep. It won't go away once I die, the slow death of community silence or otherwise. Perhaps that little snake in the original story was to serve as a reminder of the battles we elect not to face in our own lives. No one likes to see someone's fought a battle they've yet to fight, heard they've gone the places they've yet to go, and certainly, don't remind us of it with the snake growing out of your head presence!
This is no bragging rights moment here, I don't mean it in any holier-than-thou way. I mean it as a call to action. When I re-read and drill into my head the aspects of the story I imagine would be most likely to offend, hit a community nerve and cause drama in my staid little life, it's around really serious topics: Internalized racism, internalized sexism, substance abuse, trauma, cross cultural interaction and communication, what historical injustices we've had done to us, and what we've let it do to us, family conflict, letting our stories die, etc. If even one of those is your/our Uktena, go head to head with it and come out of it alive, little snake growing out of your head or not in the end. Don't let it terrorize you, and don't slam or silence to death those who've decided to go for the challenge.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
News on The Summer of Pomba Gira
I've submitted everything to Xlibris now for The Summer of Pomba Gira. I decided to donate all author royalties from the sale of the book to two American Indian organizations. Someone inspired me by his example, so I decided that's what I want to do. It's nice to be inspired by someone. I got word back that I didn't win the Esquire short story contest, and will they be kicking themselves when I'm a famous author - LOL.
Seriously, though, I'd like to see where this goes. I've never self-published before, and technically, it's really print-on-demand. Also known as vanity publishing. I'm unapologetic about it, because it wasn't really about the vanity aspect for me, as much as it was seeing something through from start to finish and feeling good with the process. I gave some thoughts and a few half-hearted attempts, to secure a literary agent, but what I write isn't what necessarily sells. I recognize that and respect it, and actually like that about myself. I didn't write it to be popular or liked or make money off of it. I just wrote things that interested me, and came to know myself a little better through the process of resolution and completion. Only to start it all over again with the sequel I'm writing now.
Seriously, though, I'd like to see where this goes. I've never self-published before, and technically, it's really print-on-demand. Also known as vanity publishing. I'm unapologetic about it, because it wasn't really about the vanity aspect for me, as much as it was seeing something through from start to finish and feeling good with the process. I gave some thoughts and a few half-hearted attempts, to secure a literary agent, but what I write isn't what necessarily sells. I recognize that and respect it, and actually like that about myself. I didn't write it to be popular or liked or make money off of it. I just wrote things that interested me, and came to know myself a little better through the process of resolution and completion. Only to start it all over again with the sequel I'm writing now.
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