Sonia Connolly

“Noopiming” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

July 21, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: The Cure for White Ladies

Recommended to me by: RadiantFracture’s series about Native authors

This book is woven together with brief recurring scenes and thoughts and symbols from eight main characters, plus some geese and raccoons at the end. The characters are Native Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg in Canada, like the author.

Official synopsis:

Mashkawaji (they/them) lies frozen in the ice, remembering the sharpness of unmuted feeling from long ago, finding freedom and solace in isolated suspension. They introduce the seven characters: Akiwenzii, the old man who represents the narrator’s will; Ninaatig, the maple tree who represents their lungs; Mindimooyenh, the old woman, their conscience; Sabe, a gentle giant, their marrow; Adik, the caribou, their nervous system; and Asin and Lucy, the humans who represent their eyes, ears, and brain.

The characters are formally introduced at the beginning, and then we see them up close as they go about their lives and interact with each other. Their lives weave in and around and through the invasive white people who have changed their world. The story is confusing on the surface, like a turning kaleidoscope, and makes a deeper kind of sense underneath.

Stories tell us how to live, how to see each other, how to care for each other. They point out when we are falling short. This book has layers of knowledge and wisdom that would reward rereading and study.

Recommended to take a step away from colonialism and toward Nishnaabeg ways of connecting with the world. The “cure for white ladies” in the subtitle is never directly addressed.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Care Of” by Ivan Coyote

July 17, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: Letters, Connections, and Cures

Recommended to me by: Muccamukk

This book made me cry a lot in a good way, a heart-opening way. Ivan (they/them pronouns) says when they are about to go onstage to tell stories, first they imagine their chest opening right up so that the stories can come out of their heart to the audience, collect bits of the audience’s hearts and come back to Ivan.

When the pandemic hit, they were fortuitously at their partner’s home between gigs. There they stayed during pandemic lockdown, answering the special letters they had received over the years with stories and tidbits about lockdown life. The letters are vulnerably open, and the replies are warm, kind, loving. They touch on the loneliness and dangers of growing up trans, the need for mentors and safe community and chosen family when the larger community and blood family are intolerant and cruel.

Highly recommended.

Available at Amazon.

“Recollections of My Nonexistence” by Rebecca Solnit

June 28, 2021 by Sonia Connolly 3 Comments

Recommended to me by: Reading her other books, and her talk at Powell’s Books on zoom with Jia Tolentino on March 9, 2021.

Rebecca Solnit is a powerful, clear, lyrical writer. I thought her memoir might be literary and opaque, but instead it is luminously down to earth.

It contains brief descriptions of violence against women as she describes her ongoing dread that one day she would be the target. She shares the process of finding her voice amid the pressure to remain silent and unheard as a woman.

She describes living in a lovely studio apartment in San Francisco for 25 years, and the gentrification she witnessed in her neighborhood over that time. She invites us along on her widening explorations of the western US and the connections she made with environmentalists, anti-nuclear protestors, and Native Americans defending their land.

At the end of the book she comes back around to violence against women, and the writing of her explosively popular essay Men Explain Things To Me, which inspired the term “mansplaining.” She points out that the #MeToo movement was a tipping point built from many women speaking up and gaining power and gaining allies. We don’t know what may follow from our small actions against big problems. Keep taking the small actions that are available to you.

Highly recommended.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“Big Friendship” by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

June 14, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

Subtitle: How We Keep Each Other Close

Recommended to me by: Body Impolitic

Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman name the difficulties of putting words to their friendship, and then as the professional writers they are, they go ahead and do it. I was worried that this book would be superficial or didactic, or both, but instead it is an engagingly told story with depth and detail, along with engagingly presented research into maintaining friendships.

They name Big Friendship, Shine Theory (invest in helping people shine rather than competing with them), and the friendweb they create together. They don’t shy away from discussing the hard parts of an interracial friendship.

They talk about stretching to maintain a friendship, and the difficulties of evaluating when stretch becomes strain, and what to do when the stretch feels unequal or too much.

They talk about Deborah Tannen’s term “complementary schismogenesis” (originally from Gregory Bateson) when two people get further and further apart as they try to model what they want from the other person, like one person talking louder and louder and the other talking quieter and quieter rather than asking the other person to speak up or speak more softly.

They reference For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend by Pat Parker.

Ultimately they went to couple’s counseling and learned to talk about their differences as well as the ways they are the same.

Highly recommended.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“The Betrayal Bond” by Patrick J Carnes, PhD with Bonnie Phillips, PhD

June 14, 2021 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

Recommended to me by: Marie

This book was originally published in 1997, over 20 years ago. I read an edition published in 2019 which had been updated to include references to social media, but which still contains outdated models of trauma, attachment, and blaming the individual for societal patterns.

The book was groundbreaking when it was published in acknowledging that traumatic bonds exist and many people suffer in manipulative and abusive relationships. Those relationships are difficult to leave for a multitude of reasons. Some of them are internal, and the book addresses those. Many of them are external, where people have no other way to get their basic needs met, or feel trapped because society is tipped toward believing and rewarding abusers.

Patrick Carnes specializes in treating addictions and compulsions, especially sex addiction, and the book is based on that model.

He accepts Stockholm Syndrome as a real diagnosis, even though it has been discredited as a victim-blaming invention. See The Myth of “Stockholm Syndrome” and how it was invented to silence Kristin Enmark by Barbara Roberts.

Oddly, the psychiatrist who coined the term “Stockholm Syndrome” never spoke with Kristin Enmark. Neither have present day experts who present misinformation and perpetuate the myth.

More information: The myth of “Stockholm Syndrome” presentation by Allan Wade.

Kristin Enmark was responding to both the hostage takers and a disorganized and dangerous police-state responses, while protecting and keeping solidarity with her fellow captives.

As a 23 yr. woman, Kristin showed extraordinary presence of mind and
determination throughout the ordeal (not infantile regression).

Kristin criticized the police and state response and refused to speak with Nils
Bejerot, who had refused to speak with her during the hostage-taking.

Nils Bejerot, who directed the police response and was in an obvious conflict of
interest, invented “Stockholm Syndrome” to silence Kristin Enmark.

Patrick Carnes also blames the victims of the Jonestown Massacre instead of understanding that they were coerced and trapped. See Coerced Suicide: The Jonestown Deaths, Suicide Bombings, and Beyond by Adam Lankford, Ph.D.

Available at Powell’s Books.

“As We Have Always Done” by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

June 13, 2021 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

Subtitle: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resurgence

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has taught and lectured across Canada. With story and analysis, she carefully lays out how Nishnaabeg ways of living, learning, and experiencing are intrinsically suited to reestablish their communities and place-relationship that have been intentionally disrupted and stolen by colonialist settlers.

A single quote out of context doesn’t do justice to the way she steps out of whiteness to center the Nishnaabeg way of thinking and doing, but here is a taste.

Governance was made every day. Leadership was embodied and acted out every day. Grounded normativity isn’t a thing; it is generated structure born and maintained from deep engagement with Indigenous processes that are inherently physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Processes were created and practiced. Daily life involved making politics, education, health care, food systems, and economy on micro- and macro-scales. […] The structural and material basis of Nishnaabeg life was and is process and relationship—again, resurgence is our original instruction.

The book addresses kwe – the embodied experience of being an Indigenous woman – and the ways capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy have suppressed and damaged that experience. It also includes 2SQ – people who are Two Spirit and Queer.

I feel changed by reading this book. It affirms that there are right ways, sustainable ways of living, and Indigenous people still know and practice those ways. It supports my own search for connection to place and right ways to live. It reminds and teaches me that Indigenous people are brilliant modern thinkers and doers, interrupting the stereotypes of “primitive,” “lost,” and “in the past.”

Highly recommended!

Land as pedagogy: Nishnaabeg intelligence and rebellious transformation (pdf), an article by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson published in Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson website

Available at Powell’s Books.