by Mary Kasimor
As a writer and thinker of Western ideas, I am aware of how
we use and express our ideas through our language, and words are important. Language is slippery, our identities are
suspect, and the ways that we try to prove an idea can be skewed and
inaccurate, even though they may seem true and/or right. Authenticity in expressing what we think and
feel is always under scrutiny, especially in the constantly wired world of
instant news and ideas. When we venture
into ideas in which we are already suspect, our authenticity also becomes more
suspect. If you (the writer) are trying to write from your heart, how can you
persuade your readers that what you are saying is deeply felt and not simply
what you (the writer) think that the reader wants to hear? This is the premise
of Ann Tweedy’s chapbook, White Out, or
this is what I believe that she is expressing in her collection of poems. Her writing style is straightforward and
expresses what she feels with authenticity, which is why the poems in this
chapbook are powerful. I believe the last
three lines in the poem, “Study,” express the authenticity of how and why she
wrote these poems:
In my white skin, I cringe , but go on , questioning
myself, honoring uncertainty, day by day
accepting the challenge to prove myself worthy.
Tweedy is a white woman who is writing about the racism
and bigotry that she has seen through her experiences as an attorney working
for the Indian tribes---and as an observant person living in the United States.
She also continually questions herself in the poems—her position as privileged.
Because of where she is positioned in society, it is important to know who her
audiences are in these poems. Are the poems written for a reader who is
“privileged” and white, are they written for the people who have had to live
and deal with racial prejudice, or are they written for anyone who has thought
about the way racism has affected those who do not have that “white privilege”? In Tweedy’s first poem, “Whiteness,” she
tells the experience of being poor, being on welfare and enduring the mistrust
of the K-Mart employees because she looks poor. Many white people are poor, but can their
experiences be compared to those who are Black or Indian, or Latino? The concepts of race and class have been
frequently discussed in the United States, and there are differing opinions
when comparing them. In this poem, she reflects on how class and race are often
discussed:
in one of my classes, a woman
constantly complains about us
“divide and conquer” she says of the white teacher’s
description of Indians as a political entity
and white people in her race class
are too focused on class
This has been an important part of discussion in this country—the
differences between race and class, and how it affects those who are
struggling. For many, it comes down to who has the most difficult time living
in American society. Others would argue
that it is more complex in terms of how we use various terms to describe race
and class. Without a doubt, most of what we understand is shaped through our
personal experiences, so all disadvantaged and “silenced” people do have
legitimate concerns about their personal and cultural difficulties. However
there are many who argue that we live in a
post-racial society and that the poor can always succeed in this country
through hard work.
Tweedy’s poems are
also about her personal experiences as a white woman attorney working for the
Indian tribes. In her poems, she expresses the conflict that she feels working
for people who don’t trust her because of the history and previous experiences
of Indians. From the poem, “The Same Breath,” she writes
about the hostility that she feels in the room:
…As I begin to
explain
each change and
its possible pitfalls,
a small elder
with a sweet, quiet voice
and owl-like
glasses demands to know
why I am there. Haven’t we done well enough
without
a white person telling us what to do?
In this poem, she also explains the subtlety of language and how the
speaker’s or writer’s ethos makes the situation believable and authentic to the
audience. She begins the poems by
telling the reader about a woman who calls a battered woman’s shelter, without
providing information about why she is calling. She ends her phone calls with
“God Bless You. And Fuck You.” Tweedy uses this anonymous woman’s words and
situation to also convey her invisible pain that she experiences working with
her clients, through both the harshness of some of the interactions and the
openness and vulnerability of other interactions that she has had with them. There
is intensity of emotion as she describes these experiences:
And so “God
Bless You” and “Fuck You” both strike me
as if at random,
bullets converging on their separately envisaged
targets, the
real me locked somewhere inside, apparently invisible
through the
body’s façade, but still they enter.
The poem, “House
Built On Sand,” is introduced with a quote by Sherman Alexie, in which he
simply says: “You have to understand that white people invented irony.” Irony
is used to explain the subtlety of thought; in other words, ideas are more
complex than in an “either/or” context. It can be argued that there are many angles,
shadows, and shapings in how “white people” express themselves. Perhaps this is
one of the reasons why our way of expressing ourselves is so suspect to others,
besides in our need to excuse our behavior. In the poem, “House Built On Sand,”
Tweedy explains to the reader that she loves trains because her husband loves
trains. She then tells the reader about how the trains were used also to starve
the Indians. She does not admit to disliking trains, only to disliking the history
of trains, and, despite how humans used trains for evil purposes, she still
does love trains. She also asserts that “white people” are ironic so that they (or
she) can continue to justify the lies that they need simply “to survive.”
When we attempt to look honestly at ourselves, we can
see the ways in which we have personally been damaged. It is difficult to even
write about these experiences except through poetic language, mostly because
these experiences have become so clichéd-- and because of that, the
authenticity of the emotions has become suspect. Language strives to make
things clearer, but often even when the language reduces the emotion to a
simple story it becomes overly complex with irony and subtlety. However, perhaps only through irony and
subtlety are we able to understand meaning. One of the most poignant poems in
this chapbook is titled, “Remaking A City.” The poem gives the reader examples
of people who have come to complain about the police and justice system. The
final story is about a woman who explains the possibility of being silenced
without the chance of telling her story:
at last the woman
piped up
that some people
were afraid of police,
something would
happen and they’d never
speak. it would die with them…
In many ways, this chapbook is about the poet as witness for the
oppressed people on the reservation. Tweedy’s empathy and compassion clearly
show throughout her poems. She is a subtle poet who bears witness to those who
have had not been able to tell their stories. It is difficult to write about the topic of
white privilege in poetry, but she does succeed in doing that because of her
genuine honesty. It is easy to become preachy or too overly sentimental about
those who have borne the weight of oppression. Yet Tweedy provides ideas that cannot
easily be resolved because they are about the experiences based often on
complex perceptions. She was able to write from a perspective that is open, compassionate,
and honest, and that is important and difficult in the still racially charged
culture that we live in.
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