Chapter 19 is called “Who Can Say Indian?,” and opens with Sean wondering whether or not he can say the word around Orvil, because Sean learned, through a DNA test, that he has a significant amount “Indian blood.” What did you think of the conversation between Sean and Orvil, and their subsequent friendship? In what ways did the genocide of Native Americans factor into how these boys see themselves and their history? Then, there is this line: “Sean thought it was so weird, this idea of the heritage being in the blood, but then not as weird as it only being in remnants, or relics, old art and artifacts meant to be seen behind museum glass” (197). In what ways do you feel close to or disconnected from your own heritage? How well do you know your older relatives and their stories?
One of the reasons I write is to mine the dried bones of each story I have heard. My ancestors picked cotton in other men’s fields, and worked in the segregated cotton mills of the southeast.
Like poor people everywhere, these stories are the riches left, more treasured than worldly wealth to me. In them I find the fiber to weave tales of people who couldn’t read or write, but managed to pass on their sweat and tears around kitchen tables over endless cups of coffee. My cousins and I would listen
I thought this was a really interesting chapter. It stuck with me. My father's grandmother was very active member of the Anishinaabek community in northern lower Michigan. My father identifies as Native American but I have never felt like I could. I relate to the Sean's confusion of "heritage being in the blood" but otherwise unitigrated. I do not know my elders on my father's or mother's sides. Addiction in both bloodlines was part of my not knowing--my parents and their parents prevented my knowing in my early years while they were still alive. My parents' current addictions continue to keep me disconnected from heritage. There's a barrier they built and maintain keeping me from knowing a heritage.
I appreciated the conversation and the way it gets at the tension of "blood quantum" and how weird that is when you are talking about a full human being.
They’re both so lost and untethered and that felt way for Sean to grasp at straws to find something in which he could identify, though he seemed uncomfortable about it.
The dialogue in this scene is so brilliantly written. Authentic, raw, funny, and gut-punching. While I thought it was awesome the way he had brought in a printed gun to THERE, THERE, he brought in direct-to-consumer genetic testing as the twisted weapon into this scene and it goes off. The underlying assumptions about race and genetics and blood quantum are explicitly shredded in a polemical way, but a deep and personal way between these boys and "friendship." The shrapnel of Eugenics gets deep under the skin.
Americans have lost their past. Immigrants were anxious to leave all that behind. The rest of us, the indigenous and former slaves, had their pasts forcibly erased.
When you leave your birthplace, you leave more than a country behind. You leave the essence of what makes you: YOU. In the beginning, I felt the disconnection to my heritage as I tried hard to assimilate until I started to forget my roots and everything my maternal grandmother had taught me about family rituals, family secrets, names, history, deaths, births...
I'm reminded of how much I don't know about my older relatives every time I tried to fill out my medical history. I'm on a quest to piece it together, but I'm almost running out of time, as the few elders are dying at a rapid clip.
One of the reasons I write is to mine the dried bones of each story I have heard. My ancestors picked cotton in other men’s fields, and worked in the segregated cotton mills of the southeast.
Like poor people everywhere, these stories are the riches left, more treasured than worldly wealth to me. In them I find the fiber to weave tales of people who couldn’t read or write, but managed to pass on their sweat and tears around kitchen tables over endless cups of coffee. My cousins and I would listen
I thought this was a really interesting chapter. It stuck with me. My father's grandmother was very active member of the Anishinaabek community in northern lower Michigan. My father identifies as Native American but I have never felt like I could. I relate to the Sean's confusion of "heritage being in the blood" but otherwise unitigrated. I do not know my elders on my father's or mother's sides. Addiction in both bloodlines was part of my not knowing--my parents and their parents prevented my knowing in my early years while they were still alive. My parents' current addictions continue to keep me disconnected from heritage. There's a barrier they built and maintain keeping me from knowing a heritage.
Really enjoyed your interview last night.
I appreciated the conversation and the way it gets at the tension of "blood quantum" and how weird that is when you are talking about a full human being.
They’re both so lost and untethered and that felt way for Sean to grasp at straws to find something in which he could identify, though he seemed uncomfortable about it.
The dialogue in this scene is so brilliantly written. Authentic, raw, funny, and gut-punching. While I thought it was awesome the way he had brought in a printed gun to THERE, THERE, he brought in direct-to-consumer genetic testing as the twisted weapon into this scene and it goes off. The underlying assumptions about race and genetics and blood quantum are explicitly shredded in a polemical way, but a deep and personal way between these boys and "friendship." The shrapnel of Eugenics gets deep under the skin.
Americans have lost their past. Immigrants were anxious to leave all that behind. The rest of us, the indigenous and former slaves, had their pasts forcibly erased.
Does heritage matter for extinction, survival, or preservation?
When you leave your birthplace, you leave more than a country behind. You leave the essence of what makes you: YOU. In the beginning, I felt the disconnection to my heritage as I tried hard to assimilate until I started to forget my roots and everything my maternal grandmother had taught me about family rituals, family secrets, names, history, deaths, births...
I'm reminded of how much I don't know about my older relatives every time I tried to fill out my medical history. I'm on a quest to piece it together, but I'm almost running out of time, as the few elders are dying at a rapid clip.