In 1983, a Mohawk lesbian writer named Beth Brant edited A Gathering of Spirit, a special issue of the lesbian feminist journal Sinister Wisdom. It collected writing and art by Native women from across North America, and it became one of the first anthologies of its kind. Plenty of Indigenous women writers who are now well known first appeared in print around that time, in a landscape that had made very little room for them.
Brant went on to publish her own books of stories, poems and essays. She wrote about being Mohawk, being lesbian, being a working-class woman and a mother. She wrote about Two-Spirit identity at a time when hardly anyone in mainstream publishing was paying attention to it. She died in 2015.
A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant, published by Inanna Publications in 2019, brings her poetry, essays and prose back into one book. It was edited by Janice Gould, a Native poet and scholar, and it was a 2020 Lambda Literary Award finalist. The bibliography rates it Good.
Selected works collections matter more than people think. Writers like Brant often published with small presses and in journals that went out of print. Their books become hard to find, and then they become hard to teach, and then a new generation never learns their names. A selected works volume is a rescue operation. It says this writer matters and puts her back on the shelf.
The blurbs on the /books entry give a good sense of what’s inside. Poet Margaret Randall calls Brant a writer of great depth and talent and singles out her prose, including a story about a cross-dressing female coyote. That alone should get some readers to pick it up. Poet Christopher Soto describes Brant’s work as a source of community for Native and queer feminist readers, a reminder that they are not alone. And scholar Kim Anderson argues that Brant anticipated both Indigenous feminism and Indigenous queer theory, which means this book is worth reading for its ideas as well as its writing.
The tone, according to the publisher, mixes grief with a celebration of compassion and shared experience. That fits what we know of Brant’s work. Her characters often break long silences, and the breaking is where connection happens. It’s survival writing, but warm survival writing.
This collection is for readers interested in Indigenous literature, Two-Spirit history, and the lesbian feminist publishing world of the 1980s. It’s also for anyone who wants to know where a lot of today’s queer Indigenous writing came from. Brant is one of the people who made room.
Pair it with Beverly Little Thunder’s oral memoir One Bead at a Time, also published by Inanna and also in the bibliography, for another Two-Spirit woman’s story told in her own voice.
Something to talk about: which writers from the 1970s and 80s do you think are in danger of being forgotten? Did you encounter A Gathering of Spirit or Sinister Wisdom when they were new? And should more small-press lesbian writers get selected works editions? Who would you nominate first?
Full details are on the A Generous Spirit entry in the Lesbian Bibliography.