Chrystos
Who are they?
currently, a resident of Bainbridge Island, Washington
Two-spirit (they/their)
lesbian
Born off reservation in San Francisco, California in 1974
Menominee Nation
political writer and poet
Upbringing
self-educated to read by self-educated father
sexually abused by a relative
raised with a depressed Euro-Immigrant (Lithuanian) mother and a father who was ashamed of his Menominee heritage
began writing poetry at age 9
At seventeen, was put into a mental institution for the summer (saving her life)
Significant Achievements
National Endowment for the Arts Grant
The Human Rights Freedom of Expression Award
The Sappho Award of Distinction from the Astrea Lesbian Foundation of Justice
Barbara Deming Grant
Audre Lorde International Poetry Competition
Their Art/poems
Chrystos self-illustrated many of the covers, and usually had the books published in Canada to work around censorious American publishers and "very little support for writers" in the United States.
Chrystos' activism has focused on efforts to free Norma Jean Croy and Leonard Peltier, and the rights of tribes such as the Diné (Navajo) and Mohawk people.[5][14]
Their writings that explore indigenous Americans' civil rights, social justice, and feminism
was inspired by familial angst stemming from European American cultural hegemony,[8] and more positively influenced by the work of Audre Lorde, Joy Harjo, Elizabeth Woody, and Lillian Pitt, among others,[9] to produce a series of volumes of poetry and prose throughout the 1980s and 1990s (see bibliography below). Chrystos' work focuses on social justice issues, such as how colonialism, genocide, class and gender affect the lives of women and Indigenous peoples.[10] Much of the writer's childhood is evident in works about street life, gardening, mental institutions, incest, "the Man" (authoritarian patriarchy), love, sex, and hate. The works are primarily intended for an audience of Native American / First Nations, people of color more broadly, and lesbians.[11][12] The works are also aimed at raising awareness of Native American heritage and culture, while breaking down stereotypes
Examples
Books Published
Dream On
Not Vanishing
Fire Power
In Her I Am
Fugitive Colors
Contributor to This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
Contributor to Some Poems by People I like
Diving Deeper into some of my favorite poems
I walk the history of my people
Published in This Bridge Called My Back
this poem shares the inter-generational pain and trauma caused by the oppression and colonization of their people.
Although I cannot directly related to this poem, the pain is so vivid that you cannot help but feel. It is so hard to keep walking on sometimes.
going into the prison
Published in Fire Power
This poem details the power of words, and how they 'sneak' poems into prisons, since Indigenous peoples are unfairly arrested.
I relate to this because their is true power behind words, and power behind recognizing that.
his beautiful full-blood face
Published in Not Vanishing
This poem touches on the problems of homelessness, alcoholism, and suffering within the Indigenous peoples as well as the clumping of culture.
poem for lettuce
Published in Not Vanishing
This poem uses a mocking manner to vegans and vegetarians and the hate placed on meat eaters, which is deeply rooted in their culture. Lettuce is just as alive as meat.
I like this because of the humor but also eye-opening perspective. I know that plants are alive, but I have never thought of it this way.
Crooning
Published in Not Vanishing
''This poem is filled with depth and emotion, and it reads as a reflection of the experience of gay women in the United States during the middle of the 20th century, or perhaps more specifically, the 1960s. The first few lines of the poem introduce an almost smothering sensation of melancholy and regret with the reference to “a soft old song” and the detailing of a lesbian woman wanting “to go home / again & can’t.” I believe the setting of this poem is mid-20th century America, as the suffocating feeling, combined with the allusion in line 27 to gay bars as the prescribed location to “wait” for a “kind place,” lead me to connect the tone of this poem to that historically oppressive context. Chrystos is a Native American Two-Spirit activist who was born in the 1940s, meaning that they would have been in their teens and twenties during the 1960s.This was a time when the very idea of gay rights still remained a dream, when gay bars continued to be raided by police, when queer people of all backgrounds were regularly arrested and tortured at “psych wards” to cure them of their sexuality via electroshock therapy, lobotomy, and emotional torment, to say nothing of how much other forms of discrimination queer people faced. Chrystos came of age amidst all of this.