Shapeshift

This is another "break from work" post. I have to write a ten-page paper by tomorrow morning that I haven't started. Not to be melodramatic about it. I've thought about it a decent amount and I've got some time to work. My main concern is that I'll spontaneously fall asleep and then wake up after the paper was due. I just woke up from a 15-minute power nap. The type of nap that was going to happen whether I wanted it or not, so best to set my alarm and call it a power nap.

For my English class, we've read approximately ten books of poetry/prose during the semester. I've chosen to write about Shapeshift by Sherwin Bitsui. He is a Diné (Navajo) author and has written poetry/prose about Navajo Nation and, happily for me, the specific area that I visited over spring break. So I am having a lot of fun reading and rereading the poems, thinking of things to think about, maybe to write, and finding connections between different elements of the text. It's very exciting when I recognize a name, place, or idea. Or even just the landscape.

In Shapeshift, Bitsui writes about language. The Diné (Navajo) language is dying as the younger generation increasingly learns English first in order to participate competitively in contemporary US society:

Five years ago, my language hit me like saw-toothed birds reaching to pull my tongue from my mouth. I didn’t know what to expect when my grandmother poured gasoline on the leaves and then fired it, saying, This is the last time I’ll ever harvest. It was the way the sunset caught her cracked lips, the way her lips folded inward, which made me realize that there were still stories within her that needed to be told, stories of when we still wove daylight onto our bones and did not live like we do now, as night people.

Bitsui repeatedly evokes imagery of blood, often contaminated, spine, marrow, tongue, veins, and nerves. In this excerpt, Bitsui incorporates myriad elements but with striking economy of language:

When one dreams of a mouth covered in white chalk,
speaking only in English,
it is a voice that wants to be cut free from a country whose veins swim with axes
and scissors.

Just for the record, I really don't like literary analysis. I took this class because I've never liked literary analysis and I thought maybe that would change. It has a tiny bit. I'm less afraid of it now, anyway. But it's really not my thing. So I'm surprised and happy to be enthused about the paper.

I only have two classes left tomorrow. After that, I won't have another class at Williams until next February. I also had my last Jewboard meeting until next February. Weird!