I hauled out my binder of translations and the woman I try to sit next to in the Bad Class (because she is a grownup, and nice, and ... non heteronormative in a way that is comforting) realized suddenly that the poet I'm translating was her friend Néstor. Whoa! Coolio. I am now dying to pick her brains in massive detail. In 1980 there was a horrible incident in Sao Pa0lo where the police decided to "clean up" the downtown or something and arrested all the tr4vestis and were killing people or something, and there was a big protest or series of protests, and the g/l/t/b people all started protesting and came together in a group called "S0mos"... (with the slogans, "we're all tr4vestis" and "we're all putas")
And then she said that they had to leave town and go into hiding and later there was more intense activism. And P3rlongher moved there in ... like 1982. He had written some articles (as a s0ciologist) on hustlers. And then (I'm unclear... but I'm hoping she'll explain the history to me later) the lesbianfeminists split off from the group (surprise... NOT). Her best friend in S.P. was P3rllongher's best friend, or something...
Hopefully I can do something intellectually helpful for her as well ... maybe give feedback on something she is working on...
So -- one interesting thing here is that just last week I was reading a book by Dale Spender on 10 recent feminists and their theories. And she said something in the introduction to the book - I'm going to have to go back and read it again - about how she realized along the way while writing the book that it was silly NOT to send the chapters to the people she was writing about, since there were all still alive. And she did, and said it was one of the scariest things she ever did! And the responses were scary and a lot of the time she was either way off in her understanding, or offensive to the person in what she said about their work.... and whiel I was reading this I felt really self conscious of all the dumb essays I've ever written and what the authors would say if they could read them! Aaaaaa! So, that element of personal accountability and feeling of responsibility is pretty intense right now. I just wrote 3 or 4 pages last night of what will probably turn out to be complete nonsense and speculation that's way off the mark, after I talk to people who were actually there. I mean to have Nini right there next to me pointing at poems and going, "Oh look, this one is about XX, I lived with her for years. And this one is about Eduard, you should talk to him too."
Jeez. Foot in mouth averted I hope... but on the other hand I have to write SOMETHING and quick in the next month! A month! That means pretty much right now. So I will try to write it carefully without making too many wild assumptions or saying anything hifalutin'.
One thing I've learned from my "serious" school/professional blog is that it's no longer possible to write about someone else or their work without your words standing a good chance of reaching them, and much faster than you'd think. Three times now, in the handful of posts to that blog, I've said something critical in response to an idea and had the creator of that idea show up and respond in kind, and within 48 hours or so to boot. I don't know whether they watch their referrer logs like hawks or have vanitybots or what, but there they were.
So the moral is, if you don't want a little friendly back-and-forth, write about dead people. :-)
Posted by: Prentiss Riddle | April 07, 2005 at 02:19 PM
Or at least revise your template with an deeply ironic Holly Hobby theme, which will throw all critical implications into disarray immediately with nary a word.
Posted by: Jo | April 07, 2005 at 02:43 PM
Ha, yes, I'll start a deeply serious journal of political/literary cultural criticism and call it "Holly Hobby". oh god that cheers me up just to think about. Grotesque!
Posted by: badgerbag | April 07, 2005 at 03:42 PM