A Generous Spirit by Janice Gould

A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant collects the writing of Beth Brant, Mohawk lesbian poet, essayist, and activist. During her life, Brant’s work gave voice to an often unacknowledged Two-Spirit identity, and today, her words represent continued strength, growth, and connection in the face of deep suffering. A Generous Spirit is Brant’s portrait of survival and empathy at the intersection of Native American and lesbian experience. Edited by noted Native poet and scholar Janice Gould, A Generous Spirit recounts and enacts the continuance of her people and her sisters with distinct, organic voices and Brant’s characteristic warmth. Her work is a simultaneous cry of grief and celebration of human compassion and connection in its shared experience. Through storytelling, her characters wrest their own voices from years of silence and find communion with other souls.

“In A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant, we have one marvelous native lesbian poet introducing another. Janice Gould thoughtfully presents the work of Beth Brant, a Mohawk writer who never received the acclimation she deserved while she lived. Here her poems and, especially, her robust and gritty prose pieces reveal worlds of living richly put to paper; including a marvelous story of a cross-dressing female coyote attempting to play a trick on a fox. Beth Brant is a writer of great depth and brilliant talent.”
—Margaret Randall, writer, oral historian, and revolutionary, author most recently of Exporting Revolution and Che on My Mind

“For the native, queer, feminist, literary world: Beth is a home, reminding us that we are not alone in our movements towards liberation.”
—Christopher Soto, poet and editor of Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color

“Wow! I discovered new material and remembered some of my favourite Brant gems with this collection. Reading it now, I realize that Beth Brant gave us Indigenous feminism and Indigenous queer theory even before we had a name for these practices, all wrapped up in the most beautiful storywork. Highly valuable for its literary as well as its theoretical contribution, A Generous Spirit will find a cherished spot on many, many bookshelves, now and into the future.”
—Kim Anderson, author of A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood