Identity Politics and Beyond

I once saw Chris Abani read poetry. I left his reading, after feeling alienated from the heady, seemingly content-less poetry I'd heard through the earlier part of the festival where I found him, with a rekindled sense of the powers and uses of poetry to make us look backwards to history with a breadth and sensitivity to inform our collective ways forward. What he read included the Dear Jane letter-poem, and many other letters between Jane and Henry(etta). This project, called "Buffalo Women" and included in his book Feed Me the Sun, is an epistolary correspondence between a soldier and lover during the US civil war. These lovers, however, are two women. One presents as a man, which takes him away to war, but slowly reveals his weariness at war, and his longing to return to his life with Jane, and as a woman. As the letters progress the soldier signs their name in a progression from Henry to Henry(etta) to this last letter, Henrietta. With it, a declaration of returning home.

A little background: Chris Abani is a Nigerian poet who was imprisoned and tortured in the late 80's for his anti-government writings. Much of his writing explores the atrocities of his own life, and of devastating kinds of violence that humans are capable of, but also the amazing kinds of love and compassion. He now lives and teaches in southern California.

I find this context and the project of Buffalo Women significant to entering into a look at contemporary poets of color.  I'll explain what I mean in a roundabout way.

Before plunging into the poetry, I read the introduction to the AAP anthology. I have to say, something about it was really strange to me. This anthology represents, according to Marilyn Chin, a passing the torch from the "first generation" of Asian American poets to the "next generation" who appear in the pages of the AAP. Victoria Chang in introducing the anthology heralds the "next generation" for a new era of content and style of Asian American poetry which takes from the generation before of protest and identity poetries and runs. However Chang does not discuss the complexity of such a category as Asian American poets. As diverse and large a category as Asian American poetry is, it seems only apt that there be a discussion of the problematically sweeping identity category, or at least the limitations of it, while also holding onto the importance of highlighting the diversifying and shifting poetries of Asian Americans.

But the poetry inside, oh the poetry. While the introduction fell a little flat for me, the poetics of the three poets we read sang out. While holding the politics of identity and of resisting marginalization, these are not the same protest poetries of the "first generation." These poetries have a nuance of stance and vision not always allowed by the ones who set the stage. What I find to be a marker is a departure from identity politics as essential. This isn't to say that these poets shrug off the poetics of identity or experience, but it is to say that there is a grappling with the potential trappings of the expectations of what a poet of color, an Asian American poet, can and should write about.

Adrienne Su's Female Infanticide: A Guide for Mothers is a stunning example of this. It flips the script on so many things. This isn't a poem that contains the explanatory voice of a Chinese American women; this is a ironic and satirical guide which gestures towards and rebukes patriarchal traditions. At the same time, it is an in-your-face and painful statement on the assumptions and prejudices towards Chinese women. It is a comment on the many ways that tradition and marginalization and patriarchy and limited access affects women and girls.

Chris Abani's "Dearest Jane" series also does this same work. Much of Abani's writing is about his experiences of violence and torture, and he has come to be seen as a spokesperson for his country and his people. And he does, gorgeously, with a unwavering commitment to hope.

         This boy says: Take my right eye,
         it has seen too much, but leave me my left,
         I will need it to see God.


He, however, pushes against writing from his experiences and for his people as a prescriptive element to his poetry. He writes into and from a history that is not his. In doing this, his politics move out of the gesturing towards an essentialized experience and towards a poetics of alignment with those on the margins all throughout history. This work complicates the expectation of poets of color and immigrant poets to write in a silo of protest and identity poetry.
     
      A way to ground this time
                between the hush and the turning.

Identifying the tension between being silenced and then using the poetic voice to identify and validate existence, this "next generation" holds both the need to combat silencing and speak for a people or an identity, while also stretching towards other grounds. It is this stretching and nuance I find beautifully lyrical.

Sorry if this is a little dry. I've gotten the flu.

-Tessa