Reader: Andrea Dodd
Respondent: Lisa Runnels
Recorder: Dominique Corpus

Chrystos, “Portrait of Assimilation,” UA 258

 Biographical Information:

“Chrystos is self-described as an Urban Indian, a political poet and activist whose memories of her troubled childhood and years of struggle with mental illness, drugs, and alcohol permeate her work.  She was born on 7 November 1941 in San Francisco.  Her father was a Menominee Indian and her mother was part Lithuanian and part French” (nativepubs.com).  “She won the Audre Lorde International Poetry Cojetino in 1994, and is a widely acclaimed writer and Native rights activist” (peak.suf.ca/th-peak/96-1/issue9/chrystos.html).  “One of the things I find really difficult is how racism is presented as a black-white issue.  It erases the whole issue of genocide.” (theGully.com).

Literary Objectives:

3b  Native American Indian alternative narrative:  “Loss and Survival” (Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to get to America, the Indians once had America but lost it along with many of their people.  Yet they defy the myth of “the vanishing Indian, “instead of choosing to survive,” sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forest and buffalo will return.

4  To register the minority dilemma of assimilation or resistance i.e., do you fight or join the culture that oppressed you?  What balance do minorities strike between economic benefits and personal or cultural sacrifices?

6  To observe images of the individual, the family, and alternative families in the writings and experience of minority groups.

Interpretation:

Chrystos poem about her father describes him as a person who has assimilated into the dominant culture and her resistance to this change.  There are several stanzas that show her disapproval, as if he has abandoned his culture: his hair is cut short; under his feet a prairie of green gold wall to wall carpet says nothing; a carved tusk made to look like a fish; the way you know it’s really him is the way he’s wrapped.  Chrystos disproval may come from her experiences of her childhood, the fact that her dad was ashamed of his ethnicity.  In the poem  He Saw, Chrystos writes that she longs for her father to not discard his past but share it with her and embrace it himself (berea.edu).  In researching the Menominee Indians, they were one of the original tribes of Wisconsin and the Upper Michigan areas.  The Menominee had an eastern woodland culture.  They wore long buckskin pants, breechcloth and loosely hanging long hair.  Besides hunters they were considered expert fishermen.

Question:

1. Did you find any other hidden meanings in this poem?
2. What was the significance of the colors mentioned in this poem?

Discussion:

Student:  The stanza father sits Indian style with a blanket – red stands for his skin color and blue being the idea of the American flag, without the white for white man.

Student:  The t.v. sound switches from visual to auditory.

Student:  Chair is fake leather, but real leather shoes.

Student:  The father is compared to Mr. Rogers and his attire.

Student:  There are so many examples of imitation – carved fish, carpet and turquoise glass vase.

Student:  4^th and 5^th stanzas, the pause imitates reality.

Student:  The crack in the wall is hidden by the chair, it may represent the broken promises that white man has given to the Indians. 

Respondent:  When discussing nature, nature can speak to you and the carpet has nothing to say.