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xekstrin · 5 years

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Fool Me Once (Sombra/Mei)

Title: Fool Me Once Fandom: Overwatch Ship: Sombra/Mei Rating: Teen Warnings: Some suggestive language. Summary: The short and simple truth of it is that Sombra has a crush on a woman who doesn't even know she exists. It's not polite to cyber-stalk your crush or track her down in person but Sombra is a villain; she doesn't do nice or polite. Maybe if she plays her cards right she can get out of this with her dignity intact. Maybe.

Written for Muffin, who wanted an extension of the sombra/mei from Sombra Kisses Every Girl. You can also read this story on AO3

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In her dreams she mounted the rescue mission, leading the team herself. The boats or helicopters (in her fantasy it was usually helicopters) arrived just in the nick of time, and she bundled the frozen Mei-Ling into her arms and took her to safety.

Sombra wasn't a hero. She just saw the Ecopoint station come back online. The distress signal was bouncing where nobody and no one could see it. So Sombra idly flicked it in the right direction. She pulled strings; it was what she was best at. It wasn't as though she thought anyone at Ecopoint was still alive. The distress beacon was going unanswered, was all. Irritated by the persistent pinging, Sombra boosted the signal to somewhere someone would do good, and soon it was all over the news.

When the news dropped that Mei-Ling Zhou was alive, she had no idea how to react.

Mei-Ling was a living legend, one of the few Overwatch cronies Sombra actually liked. Unlike the others and their thinly veiled bloodlust and desire for conquest, Mei-Ling was someone genuine. A real woman of science, devoting herself to the craft.

Sombra's coastal, childhood home had been swallowed by the rising seas. Mei-Ling offered to actually do something about it, and then followed through.

Years ago, even before she'd been a Talon cadet, Sombra read through all Mei-Ling's reports. The translated versions, of course. Fascinating stuff, even if it took Sombra a while to process it all. She had to keep stopping every few pages and look something up, to better understand the theories presented within.

Mei-Ling was an exceptionally skilled writer, able to weave a tale and break things down so that they were accessible to a novice like Sombra while not sacrificing any of the detail. Being a master of six languages, Mei-Ling did all her own translations when she could. Each as fluent and poetic as if it were her first.

"She's wasted on those Overwatch idiots," Sombra lamented loudly, leaning heavily on her desk, chin in her hands. "Uggghh, she's so cute, too. I bet she's straight."

So, of course, Sombra immediately began to cyber-stalk her.

As one does.

She got her chance a few months later, at a conference where Mei-Ling would be one of the keynote speakers. It was easy to forge a pass and get inside, and Mei-Ling was eager to speak to anyone willing to listen. She had an earnest crowd of listeners, all experts in their field. Sombra lingered just on the outskirts like a scavenger.

Dressed as normally as she ever was, Sombra still stuck out from the polos and geeky t-shirts that served as a uniform for the event. Skin tight navy from neck to toe, Sombra kept her blonde hair braided as neatly as she could get it and slung over one shoulder. Her ports were hard to hide, but a hat and some makeup did the trick... sort of.

As soon as the crowd dispersed, she swept in.

"Dr. Zhou?"

Up until she saw Mei-Ling in person, Sombra wasn't sure what she thought would happen. Ultimately she just wanted a chance to talk to the doctor. The truth was she often set her sights on a person in the hopes that she could peel them apart and look inside. Sombra knew on some level that she wasn't normal. While her targets were rarely average, they usually had a human element that she felt she lacked. Something inside her was missing, or had been rerouted to make room for some other, more important pathway. Always curious about that human element, she was drawn to it because she lacked it, and it's the rule of nature that every being craves homeostasis.

She wanted to study her.

But when Mei-Ling's dark eyes turned up to meet hers, Sombra felt as though she'd been ran over by a truck.

Hi, I have a crush on you and I know all your social media habits. Sign my face. You're adorable, you deserve kindness, you're my true unproblematic fave, you're a fascinating little time capsule of a person and I want to give you orgasms.

Fuck.

Of course Sombra didn't say any of that.

"Hi," Sombra said instead. "I'm a big fan."

With that out of the way, she forced herself into the conversation, monopolizing the doctor's time. Sombra treated this excursion like something halfway between a mission and a vacation. There was certainly no danger to be found in a convention full of desk nerds. Even the ones not confined to their labs were merely explorers like Mei-Ling. Those types were accustomed to months alone in the wilderness, not taking heavy fire behind enemy lines.

So no one knew where Sombra was. Nobody needed to know, it was her business. It wasn't against the rules to talk to someone, after all. There was no solid proof that Mei-Ling had rejoined Overwatch. Sombra did a little digging and knew Mei-Ling was trying to retrieve data from old Ecopoints, but so far didn't have any contact with active operatives.

As far as Sombra knew, Mei-Ling was working on another book, and a few research papers. The papers were interesting. The book promised to be an autobiographical account of Mei-Ling's journey and survival from Ecopoint Antarctica.

How did you make it out alive? Who rescued you? What happened?

Reporters had been hounding Mei-Ling with these same questions for months. So being a reporter was her cover while she attended the conference.

"Sorry, what did you say your name was?" Mei-Ling asked her, as Sombra pulled out a tablet.

Licking her index finger, she tapped out a few codes and brought up a website. "Soldaderas. It's a small woman-owned print focusing on feminist news and notable figures in the world."

Staying polite, Mei-Ling's lips twitched a little. "I see. Well that's...very inspiring."

"It's all in Spanish," Sombra continued. She passed her tablet to Mei-Ling without fear, knowing that she wouldn't be able to access anything dangerous from it. As for the website and the publication, she'd created an AI to develop it for her overnight. Fake archive and everything. "Sorry."

"No, don't apologize! I just wish I could read it. I'm sure it's amazing!" When Mei-Ling passed the tablet back, those dark eyes flickered over her again. "But that's your paper's name, not yours. Did they not give you a name tag when you checked in?"

"Must've left it in my hotel room." Sombra lied smoothly. In truth she'd only bothered to make a fake press badge. She hadn't given much thought to what name she'd use, but another quick glance through her website brought out a few options. "Sylvia Ferrero."

They shook hands. Mei-Ling shocked her with a tight grip, almost crushing. "Mei-Ling Zhou."

She couldn't help it. Her lips curled in a smile as she leaned in. "I know."

The lenses behind Sombra's eyes were constantly capturing video feed, passively hacking into anything nearby that might be useful. Mei-Ling had one of those health-conscious wrist watches that monitored your heart rate. It spiked. Nerves? Excitement? Sombra couldn't tell. But she retreated with another easy smile, one fist on her hip.

"Like I said, I'm a big fan. Any chance I can get you alone later?"

With a practised amount of firmness that bordered the edge of rude, Mei-Ling said, "I'm not taking any interviews at this time, Ms. Ferrero."

"I don't want an interview," Sombra shot back.

A very long pause. "I have dinner plans tonight." Mei-Ling broke eye contact. "It's been a very long time since I've been able to see some of my associates."

"No te preocupes." Sombra produced a business card, running her nail over it once. It was perfectly blank, but a quick scan over with her tablet affixed all her fake information onto it. Including a temporary email and the number to her burner cell. "But let me know if you change your mind. I can take you outside the usual tourist traps."

Mei-Ling didn't seem upset or pleased, but she took the card. Maybe she was just being polite, but Sombra was fine with that. She'd been able to look into Mei-Ling's eyes, talk to her, and shoot her shot. So now she was going to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

With her primary goal met, Sombra lurked through some of the major talks, taking a recording so she could sift through the information later. Some of this stuff was genuinely interesting, after all. And she could spend the rest of the night in her hotel room, getting some work done on the side.

Win-Win.

Hopefully the rest of the weekend would go just as smoothly.

The next morning Sombra bailed the talks and lectures to explore Mexico City instead. For all her talk of not succumbing to the tourist traps, it'd been a long time since she visited her second home. In between the GPS feeding input directly into her brain and old memories, she was able to navigate her way well enough. She was ordering lunch when the first text came in.

MLZ: Are you attending any panels today?

Mei-Ling. She stared at the message for a while, unsure how to respond. Had her absence been that flagrant? Or had Mei-Ling been looking for her?

SF: No. I get too cramped staying indoors that long.

She'd been caged once before. The stint behind bars changed her in more ways than one. Never again.

MLZ: That's a shame. I was hoping to introduce you to one of my colleagues. Her latest findings would make a great article, maybe. But I don't really know what kind of stories you're looking for. I don't want to assume.

How sweet. The thought of Mei-Ling looking for her, trying to help her, made Sombra smile.

SF: Don't be so quick to shut yourself down.

As much as she wanted to be casual, the instinct to spell-check was high when texting someone new.

SF: You're a great writer, too. You've got good instincts, Dr. Zhou.

The response was instant.

MLZ: My friends call me Mei.

Something inside her trembled, a flicker of excitement.

SF: And is that what you would like me to call you, Dr. Zhou? :)

Shyness didn't suit her. But the teasing could have pushed Mei-Ling away. When the doctor didn't respond for a while, Sombra shrugged and went back to her day until she got a text that made her laugh out loud in shock.

MLZ: why would i tell you that if i didn't want you to (・_・)

So they set up a meeting later that same day. Sombra didn't have an appetite— she rarely had an appetite— so they went out for drinks, which turned out to be a mistake because Mei was Buddhist and didn't drink.

"Well now I feel like an asshole," Sombra said.

Mei grinned at her, stirring a straw around her virgin daiquiri. "It's really not a big deal," she said. "It's not like you aren't allowed to drink in front of me."

Taking a huge sip that drained half the glass, Mei sighed in relief. The heat was getting to her. She used a napkin to blot at her forehead. Sombra's eyes recorded every detail, noticing the white paper came away with a faint imprint of makeup. Mei was wearing a loose cotton dress. It was pretty, looked soft. Sombra thought about how nice it would feel to touch it, and the skin underneath, but then her attention was drawn back up to Mei's lips as she kept talking.

"I should have known," Sombra said. "Bad journalism practice to not know basic stuff like that."

"Okay, so we're going to stay on this subject? Fine. You should have known and I feel sooooo upset about it. I thought you were my biggest fan," Mei tutted. "What a shame."

"A big fan." Sombra corrected her, gently. She didn't want Mei to think she didn't enjoy the teasing. Far from it. "Not your biggest. I'm sure. So what'd I miss today? Anything exciting?"

Her eyes lit up at once. "Oh, tons! Saturday is when all the biggest names were talking, I was so shocked not to see you there!"

"I'm not really here for work," Sombra admitted. "I just used it as an excuse to get in for free. When I saw you, I thought I'd be dumb not to at least say hi."

"Naughty." Mei didn't seem too phased by that. "So you're just here for fun?"

"Personal reasons, I guess. I was born in Quintana Roo."

The truth slipped out of her mouth so easily that for a solid ten seconds, Sombra's heart stopped beating. It had been so easy to say that. Mei didn't even know Sombra had spent most of her life trying to erase any records of her childhood. As far as the world was concerned, Sombra wasn't born anywhere. She was created. Everything before that was miles of useless code.

"I'm so sorry," Mei said.

Of course she did. And of course she'd know most of the Yucatan Peninsula flooded some twenty-odd years before, a storm unlike anything ever recorded. Some twisting, keening mess, a maelstrom like the eye on Jupiter. It had taken a huge chunk of money and population with it. Every effort to fix it was like slapping a bandaid on a bulletwound.

It was already on record as one of the highest losses of human life in living history. Then, during the relief efforts, an omnium rose up from the depths. A monster of steel and death and hatred. A declaration of war on all humanity.

And the ocean rose up with it, flooding Sombra's entire world.

It wasn't even a sore spot anymore, now that Sombra could see the bigger picture. Who could have predicted something like that, after all? Even if the seas had been rising slowly, and the storms got worse and worse every year. Who could be bothered with tracking emission levels when the world was at fucking war, you know? The bots were killing people in droves. Anyone who made it out alive was lucky if they escaped with all their limbs. If the waters didn't drown them first.

"Nothin' to be sorry for," Sombra said, and didn't touch another drink for the rest of the night. But she was pretty sure it wasn't the booze that was loosening her tongue.

"Sorry, should we talk about something that's not work?" Mei offered at one point. "I just realized I've been babbling this whole time."

"I like hearing you talk. I could listen to you talk all night, that's why I wanted to get you all to myself," Sombra said, and watched with satisfaction as Mei slowly turned red, from the top of her shoulders to the tips of her ears.

After chewing on her tongue for a while, Mei finally said, "Ms. Ferrero. Is... is this a date?"

"Yes," Sombra said. "But don't worry. You're doing great ."

Mei set her palms on the table, thumb rubbing against the faded cloth. "Sylvia, I'm so flattered. Really. You're... an extremely beautiful woman."

Privately, Sombra preened under the praise, but kept quiet as Mei fumbled through the rest of her rejection.

"But my job has me mobile eleven months out of the year. I'm not... if you're trying... I can't really do a relationship right now."

Taking a wary glance at her cocktail, Sombra pushed it aside in favor of a glass of water. "I don't want a relationship." She let some sexual insinuation simmer between them for a moment, relishing the way Mei started to squirm. "I just wanted a chance to talk to you."

She reached across the table, resting one hand over Mei's. It felt very good, to touch another human like that. Lately Sombra had felt more machine than human. Every touch was a precursor to violence and death.

How could she tell Mei how rare this was? That for once, she didn't have a plan? Or a long-game she was trying to play? The truth was this woman was special. If Sombra ever wanted a chance to talk to her again, she could never, ever know the truth. This was only a deception. A harmless one, but everything about this was still fake.

What a pity.

"Anything else you decide to give me is just icing on top," Sombra finished. "So are we going to take this conversation somewhere private, or should I say goodnight?"

"I—" Mei started, then stopped. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I need a moment."

"Take all the time you need." Sombra dragged her chair closer, though, resting an arm around Mei's shoulder as she took a sip of her virgin drink.

"All right," Mei said, sounding fed up. "Now what are you doing?"

"I'm touching you." She demonstrated, hand on Mei's shoulder. The strap of Mei's dress rested under her palm. It'd be so easy to rip it in half but she didn't. More important than the flimsy dress was the satisfaction of being right; Mei's skin was soft. Goosebumps rose over bare skin as she stroked it. "Do you like it?"

"Yes," Mei admitted in a half-breath, quiet on the inhale. "I'm— this is— I've never— I don't usually—" And she was saved by her phone chirping loudly. Jumping up to her feet, Mei fumbled for her purse. "I have to take this call, excuse me!" and bolted.

You're acting like a bitch in heat, Sombra chided herself, but at the same time, she only had two modes. Uninterested, or all-in. She was chancing a rejection, but she only had a few days here if she wanted to avoid suspicion. It was all-in or it was nothing.

Interestingly enough, Mei had left her cellphone out on the table when she ran off to answer the call. So maybe she had a second cell phone, one purely for work or emergencies. Sombra hoped nothing bad was happening; their date was going so well. When Mei returned she did look pale and unsettled, but didn't leave or imply anything was wrong, so Sombra chalked it up to internal politics.

More importantly, Mei said, "Okay."

Sombra made her sweat about it a little more, choosing not to respond until Mei gave her something proper to work with.

"If you want." Mei was sweating harder now. "We could talk more in my hotel room?"

"I'd love that," Sombra said. "And I'm not being sarcastic, either. If you want to just keep talking, that's fine. But I'll be frank, I'm at minimum expecting five minutes of quality cuddling time."

Taken aback, Mei laughed. "I'll take it under consideration."

They kept holding hands the entire walk back to the hotel. Sombra could have floated there, elated, even if Mei kept dropping her every few blocks to wipe her palm on her dress. She explained her sweaty palms as nerves; Sombra reassured her, gently, leaning down to kiss her on the cheek.

The dead heat of summer wasn't doing either of them any favors. Even at night it pressed in, tight like Sombra pushing Mei against her hotel room door and kissing her as hard as she could.

She tasted sweet, just a little sticky from her drink. It matched how pink her lips were. A small, sweet mouth that opened to her. Sombra felt like a real villain for a second, doing this when Mei didn't even really know her name or who she was. If Mei knew the truth any warmth would vanish between them. And Sombra pushed ahead anyway because she was hungry, at last, for touch and a human connection, and to be around someone good for once, someone unambiguously kind and nice.

Then Mei's phone started chirping again. Pushing her back, Mei frantically glanced around before sequestering herself in her hotel bathroom with a panicked, "Be right back, S— uh, Sylvia!"

Sombra chuckled, wiping her mouth off with her fingers and then licking what remained off of them. Sitting down on the edge of Mei's bed, she looked around curiously. The desire to spy and snoop was at an all time high, but she doubted there was anything in here she could use for her real job.

Still, she was restless by the time Mei emerged from the bathroom. As much as she tried to rein it in she knew her sexual frustration must be obvious. She felt like she must be smoking from the effort, a smoldering coal resting there on the bed, tracking Mei's every move and recording it all.

But something about the way Mei was fidgeting cleared the smoke out of Sombra's eyes. Mei was still sweating, but pale now. Even in the air-conditioned room she fidgeted and fretted, trembling faintly.

"Are you okay?" When Sombra got up and walked over to her, she put the back of her hand against Mei's forehead. No fever. "You seem a little shaken up. Should I leave?"

"No!" Mei said quickly, hugging her tight. "I want you to stay. Please."

Touched, Sombra returned the embrace. A little too late, she thought about the timeline of events. If Mei had even been on a date since she'd been thawed out.

What must it be like, Sombra wondered, to be thrown forward into another decade? It wasn't as though Mei was fragile, but Sombra's guilt needled a little deeper at the realization that it might have been a very long time since anyone touched Mei, too.

"You look like something went wrong at work," Sombra guessed. "I'll be a distraction, if you need one."

"Yeah," Mei said, but she stiffened up and didn't relax when Sombra kissed her again.

Unsettled and a little put off, Sombra drew back again. She didn't say anything but she didn't really need to. No doubt Mei knew the kind of energy she was putting off, the bad-touch tension of a woman who was afraid and uncomfortable.

There wasn't a bigger turn off in the world, but more frustrating was how Mei refused to acknowledge it.

When that fucking cell phone went off again, Sombra knew nobody was getting laid tonight.

"Listen. I had a really good time tonight," she said, kissing Mei briefly on her forehead. "But I think I ought to go now."

"Go?" Mei's voice cracked. "No, wait, you can't! Um. I mean I'd like it if you didn't!"

Eyes narrowing, Sombra moved past her towards the door. "Well I'd like to leave. Good night, Dr. Zhou. I'll text you later."

But Sombra didn't get to leave.

A sudden drop of temperature in the room and a loud crackle, like an ice shelf breaking, was all the warning she got.

Something knocked against her hard, like being socked with an iron fist. It seeped into her skin, wrapping around her, and the next thing Sombra knew she was trapped hip deep in a block of ice.

"You're not going anywhere until backup arrives, Sombra," Mei said, circling around her.

In her hand was a gun, unlike any Sombra had ever seen.

Mei was still shaking, sweating hard. Every inch of her. Chest rising sharp and hard from her breathing. She wasn't accustomed to confrontation but the gun looked natural in her hands, like she'd used it before. Maybe not for this, though. Probably not for this. And that loud chirping rang out again, but Mei didn't retrieve a cell phone from her purse.

It was a bronze and white communicator. The kind for active Overwatch operatives. It chirped until Mei silenced it.

"Oh, what the fuck," Sombra said. Her hands were caught in the trap as well. She struggled, squirming, until she felt the cold muzzle of the gun press against her chest. "Gonna shoot an unarmed woman?"

"It won't kill you," Mei said, and despite the situation actually sounded pretty proud about that. "It's a nonlethal restraining device, for—" then she shook her head. "I mean, I'm not telling you anything. Overwatch is here to protect the world from people like you. So whatever Talon was planning to do with me, you can forget it!"

"Planning to— I didn't even know you were still an Overwatch agent! I thought you were a goody two-shoes." Something else hit her, metaphorically. "Oh fuck," she said, "This means you knew more about me than I knew about you. That's messed up, Mei. You even made me pay for our drinks!"

"Stop talking." Mei closed her eyes. "It's only been one evening and I'm already exhausted by how much you lie."

Maybe it was silly, but hearing that was almost worse than being shot. Sombra stopped squirming, struck with the words, and the knowledge that there was nothing she could do to argue against them.

"I already told you I wasn't here for work," was all she managed to say, quiet and feeble. "The last thing I wanted was to hurt you. This wasn't a, like, this wasn't Talon. It was just me. I wasn't hired to stalk you or whatever."

"Why should I believe a word you say?"

There wasn't really a good reason. Every inch of this was fucked, though Sombra doubted Mei knew the truth from the beginning. She was the type to wear her heart on her sleeve. More likely one of her buddies notified her via the communicator. Sombra was getting sloppy; she didn't think anyone would be monitoring Mei-Ling.

Her mistake. And now she was paying for it.

"I guess you'll just have to take my word for it," Sombra said.

She looked up into Mei's eyes. And then she evaporated into a mass of pixels and glitching artifacts. Rematerializing in her own hotel room, Sombra gasped and writhed on the floor. Traveling like that always did a number on her, but she'd never been more glad that her paranoia insisted she keep an active transmitter in her room whenever she left it.

Time wasn't on her side, though. She couldn't afford to moan and complain. Quickly packing her things, Sombra tossed another translocator outside the window and landed on street level.

She spared a glance up at the hotel, scanning each open window for sign of a face, or a waving gun, or hear an angry shout. But all she heard was the sound of an aircraft in the distance. This far from an airport she knew it had to be a covert Overwatch vehicle, and knew she had to vanish.

So she did, cloaking herself and running away as fast as she could.

Six months later Mei-Ling had a problem.

She got into a self-driving car, letting it take her away from her labs, privately funded by Overwatch. The Petras Act meant none of her connections to the paramilitary group could go public, but that wasn't going to stop her when she was so close to another breakthrough.

"All I need is what's in this corrupted data," she said, holding her laptop open and typing onto it. She gathered what she could from the Ecopoints, but so much had been lost to time and wear. The degrading force of harsh environments.

Sitting back, she sighed.

"So that's why I need you."

Next to her, on the empty seat, a body materialized.

Sombra looked wildly different than that first time they had met. Her hair was black with purple streaks, and nothing hid the ports on her skull and neck anymore. Dark markup made her ghoulish and sinister, a grinning skull in the shadows.

"I gotta say, I wasn't expecting a call after how our last date went," she purred. "What made you think that burner cell would still be active?"

"Lucky guess. You were the only one I could think of that might help," Mei said. Not wanting to seem cowed, she forced herself to meet purple eyes. Inhuman eyes, unfeeling. This was all a game to Sombra, surely, and everyone around her just wasn't allowed to read the rules. "So, can you?"

"Claro que sí. But what makes you think you can trust me?"

"I don't. But I know you aren't any more loyal to Talon than you are to Overwatch." Disgusted, Mei spat out, "You're only in it for yourself."

"That's the only way to be." Stretching out like a well-fed cat, Sombra made herself comfortable in the backseat.

Again, Mei wondered how she'd ever thought Sombra was a reporter. When her contacts in Overwatch had warned her of the danger, it made a perfect sort of sense. Sombra radiated power in a way that Mei couldn't place. The moment their eyes had first locked she'd been breathless, jittery as if an electric current had attached to her spine. Every move Sombra made drew her attention, every touch had her heart leaping out of her chest. At first she'd thought it to be attraction, until the call came in. Now she knew it was fear.

It had to be fear.

There wasn't room for any other interpretation.

Once upon a time, Mei had watched all her friends die. She'd been helpless. She wasn't going to let something like that happen again, she wasn't going to let it have all been in vain. Not as long as she drew breath. No matter who or what threatened the peace, she would stop them, and she would never, ever let her guard down.

"My prices are steep," Sombra warned.

"We can pay you whatever you want," Mei said quickly. "Name it."

No matter how strange it made her feel when Sombra stared at her with those large, purple eyes, she wasn't going to back down.

Until Sombra tilted her head to the side, disarming her with a rare, genuine smile.

Not a smirk, not something that made Mei feel like she was about to be swallowed whole.

"How about a second date?"

It was warm, and unguarded, and though she knew it must be a lie...

...It felt like the truth.

#sommei #overwatch #fanfiction #Sombra

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amer-ainu · 5 years

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English Language Ainu Books

Here’s a list of books that I either own or have read that I can more or less vouch for, and where to find them (links imbedded in the titles). Anything marked with an * is written by an Ainu author. You should be able to find a lot of them at your local libraries as well. It’s a long list, so it’ll be under the cut.

*Our Land Was A Forest: An Ainu Memoir, Shigeru Kayano

An Ainu Memoir. This is an absorbing account of Ainu life written by an Ainu striving to preserve his people's cultural heritage and sense of nationhood. Unlike many accounts by outsiders, which impose predetermined socio-anthropological categories on indigenous cultures, Kayano Shigeru offers a living testimonial to the history, ethos, customs beliefs, hopes, and aspirations of a people whose way of life has been undermined by successive waves of invasion of their homeland by the Japanese.

Kayano Shigeru was the founder and director of the Kayano Shigeru Ainu Memorial Museum, the first Ainu politician to sit in the Diet of Japan, often posing questions in Ainu itak.

ISBN-10: 0813318807

ISBN-13: 978-0813318806

*The Ainu: A Story of Japan's Original People, Shigeru Kayano

Grade 3-6–Shigeru attempts to preserve the language and the customs of the Ainu by providing autobiographical snapshots of growing up in the 1930s in Hokkaido, Japan. He shows his respect for the traditions of his people to honor nature and family in his own reminiscences and in his retellings of two traditional tales. He is also quite outspoken about his strong opposition to the Japanese government overrunning the land of Ainu Mosir.

ISBN-10: 080483511X

ISBN-13: 978-0804835114

Full transparency, I haven’t read this book yet, but being written by an Ainu author it’s an inherently valuable read regardless.

*The Ainu And the Fox, Shigeru Kayano

A very cute children’s book about Ainu’s relationship with nature and Kamuy, and how we have to treat everything with careful respect, keeping our fragile ecosystems intact. The book also comes with an audio CD that narrates the book, with music performed by Ainu musician and tonkori master, Oki Kano.

ISBN-10: 1741260531

ISBN-13: 978-1741260533

*The Song The Owl God Sang: The collected Ainu legends of Chiri Yukie

These thirteen beautiful Ainu chants were collected by Chiri Yukie in 1922 -- the first Ainu literature to be written down by an Ainu. This book presents new English translations of Chiri's remarkable work.

Originally written in yukar form, a type of chant used by female storytellers among the Ainu villages of Hokkaido, these stories tell of the relationship between mankind and the world of spirits. Each yukar is narrated by a spirit -- fox, whale, frog, or even shellfish. Most important is the owl god, Kotankor Kamui, whose two long songs describe the covenant between humans and the spirits who provide them with food. Other tales focus on the balance of nature, on the respect due between animal spirits and people, and on the strength of Okikirmui, the human hero.

Although she died at 19, the thirteen tales she had written down went on to become a sensation. Her clear and beautiful yet intricate and emotive Japanese translations brought Ainu culture to a wide audience in Japan and created a movement to record and preserve Ainu belief in a living state.

ISBN-10: 099260060X

ISBN-13: 978-0992600600

*From the Playground of the Gods: The Life and Art of Bikky Sunazawa, Chisato O. Dubreuil

"Bikky Sunazawa’s art was unknown in North America and relatively little-known outside Hokkaido, Japan, when the Smithsonian opened its special Ainu exhibition [in 1999]. Conceived to explore the relationship of history, culture, and art of the Ainu people with other North Pacific native groups, the exhibition included a large section of contemporary Ainu sculpture, painting, graphic arts, and textile arts. The largest body of work was sculptures created by Bikky Sunazawa. . . . This is the first English-language book devoted to Bikky’s life and the most complete presentation of his principal artworks. . . . [It] is the most comprehensive treatment of the artist who became the pivot point in the development of modern Ainu fine art." ―from the Preface by William W. Fitzhugh

ISBN-10: 0967342988

ISBN-13: 978-0967342986

This one is crazy expensive, so I’d definitely recommend trying to find it at a library.

*First Fish, First People: Salmon Tales of the North Pacific Rim

The arc of land and water forming the North Pacific Rim is a cut lace work of rivers running to the great ocean. The salmon, sacred to people who lived along the pathways of its journey, once engorged these rivers, but no more. Twelve writers from cultures profoundly based on salmon were asked to write about "the fish of the gods" from both a historical and a contemporary perspective.

These writers from two continents and four countries are Ainu from Japan, Nyvkh and Ulchi from Siberia, Okanagon and Coastal Salish from Canada, Makah, Warm Springs, and Spokane from the United States. Their writing remembers the blessedness and mourns the loss of the salmon while alerting us to current dangers and conditions.

The text is enhanced by glyphs--traditional designs from each Nation--and photographs, both contemporary and historical, as well as personal family pictures from the writers. These words and images offer a prayer that our precious remaining wild salmon will increase and flourish.

ISBN-10: 0295977396

ISBN-13: 978-0295977393

Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu, Donald L. Philippi

As an especially beautiful and pure example of the epic styles that were once current among the hunting and fishing peoples of northern Asia, the Ainu epic folklore is of immense literary value. This collection and English translation by Donald Philippi contains thirty-three representative selections from a number of epic genres including mythic epics, culture hero epics, women's epics, and heroic epics. This is the first time, outside of Japan, that the Ainu epic folklore has been treated in a comprehensive manner.

ISBN-10: 0691063842

ISBN-13: 978-0691063843

Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People

Published in association with an exhibition of the same title organized by the Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution and circulated by the Office of Special Exhibits of that institution between 1 April 1999 and 1 April 2001. Some 55 scholars, mostly Japanese but with a considerable number from the US and Europe, write about the ethnicity, theories of origin, history, economies, art, religious beliefs, mythology, and other aspects of the culture of the Ainu, the indigenous people of Japan, now principally found in Hokkaido and smaller far northern islands.

ISBN-10: 0967342902

ISBN-13: 978-0967342900

Also insanely expensive. Try to find it at the library.

Beyond Ainu Studies: Changing Academic and Public Perspectives

This major new volume seeks to re-address the role of academic scholarship in Ainu social, cultural, and political affairs. Placing Ainu firmly into current debates over Indigeneity, Beyond Ainu Studies provides a broad yet critical overview of the history and current status of Ainu research. With chapters from scholars as well as Ainu activists and artists, it addresses a range of topics including history, ethnography, linguistics, tourism, legal mobilization, hunter-gatherer studies, the Ainu diaspora, gender, and clothwork. In its ambition to reframe the question of Ainu research in light of political reforms that are transforming Ainu society today, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in Indigenous studies as well as in anthropology and Asian studies.

Contributors: Misa Adele Honde, David L. Howell, Mark J. Hudson, Deriha Kōji, ann-elise lewallen, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Hans Dieter Ölschleger, Kirsten Refsing, Georgina Stevens, Sunazawa Kayo, Tsuda Nobuko, Uzawa Kanako, Mark K. Watson, Yūki Kōji.

ISBN-10: 0824836979

ISBN-13: 978-0824836979

The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan, ann-elise lewallen

In present-day Japan, Ainu women create spaces of cultural vitalization in which they can move between "being Ainu" through their natal and affinal relationships and actively "becoming Ainu" through their craftwork. They craft these spaces despite the specter of loss that haunts the efforts of former colonial subjects, like Ainu, to reconnect with their pasts. The author synthesizes ethnographic field research, museum and archival research, and participation in cultural-revival and rights-based organizing to show how women craft Ainu and indigenous identities through clothwork and how they also fashion lived connections to ancestral values and lifestyles. She examines the connections between the transnational dialogue on global indigeneity and multiculturalism, material culture, and the social construction of gender and ethnicity in Japanese society, and she proposes new directions for the study of settler colonialism and indigenous mobilization in other Asian and Pacific nations.

ISBN-10: 9780826357366

ISBN-13: 978-0826357366

Harukor, Katsuichi Honda

In this engaging tale, Honda Katsuichi reconstructs the life of an Ainu woman living on the northern island of Japan over five hundred years ago. Harukor's story, created from surviving oral accounts of Ainu life and culture as well as extensive scholarly research, is set in the centuries before the mainland Japanese nearly destroyed the way of life depicted here.

ISBN-10: 0520210204

ISBN-13: 978-0520210202

I have it, I haven’t read it yet.

#Ainu #Ainu studies #Ainu authors

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peisinoes · 5 years

Text

Transformations between History and Memory // ALEIDA ASSMANN

___________________________________________

Collective memory — a spurious notion?

individual memory as given — granted, singular

how is plural established ? term ‘collective’ — what does it actually mean?

Sontag — questioning and denying this term / memories as fiction, the recognisable

“all memory is individual, unreproducible — it dies with each person. what is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, that this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds. ideologies create substantiating archives of images, representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts, feelings.” (Sontag, 2003, 85-86)

memory as tied to the organ — neural networks that hold information — decay of the body = decay of the memory

autobiographical memories / experience as individual vs interaction with others / communication through intersubjective symbolic systems

language — encoding the message to be shared, confirmed, corrected, appropriated etc.

difficulty to distinguish own memory and of others — oral narratives, text, photographs + shared material signs / boundary unclear

mind vs memory / mind = cognitive part of the brain, built through external knowledge - assimilated and reconstructed “collective instruction” (Sontag)

semantic vs episodic memory / semantic = learning and strong, retention of knowledge / episodic = purely personal, can be communicated but never truly transmitted

Halbwachs — ‘collective memory’ 1925 = ‘social frame’

“no memory is possible outside frameworks used by people living in society to determine and retrieve their recollections” Halbwachs, 1992 — constructivist perspective, distancing form collective myth making and essentialism

.concept that has the capacity for new research

abuse of the memory — politics, nationalist discourse

sigular plus plural self — being a part of the ‘we’

shared cultural context - social frame = values, experiences, narratives, practices and discourse

making boundaries, principles of exclusion and inclusion, belonging to multiple ‘we’ simultaneously on various levels

vision of the past — learning + emotional acts — memorising the past

collective memory = crossover between semantic and episodic memory; acquired through learning + internalised

creation of the identity ‘we’

Sontag — collective memory not as remembering, but defining a group — thinking of what is important, which values and anxieties are shared

collective memory = ideology

Reinhart Koselleck — two forms of truth — subjective vs objective / subjective — authentic memories, unmediated experience / objective — past reconstructed impartially, arguments / between these poles = ideology

ideology vs collective memory / substation in the discus in the 1990s — result of a deeper theoretical change / ideology as derogatory - influence of constructivist, multiculturalist thinking

constructedness of memories + discarding the term ideology as only polemical

individual remembering — continuous reipscription

historiography — specific vantage point, agenda, bias

both mediated by representations, text and images

‘memory boom’ - reconstructing the past / postmodern relativism + the media / reclaiming the past as an important part of the present / post individualist age - ‘identity’ as individual and collective

memories that generate hatred vs therapeutic, ethical ones

collective memory — not had, but ‘made’ — constructing an identity, clear selection and separation / mediated memory — symbols, images, text, rites, places etc.

collective = umbrella term — family, cultural, interactive, social etc.

embodied vs absorbed through representation

transgenerational transmitting — events with charged and mobilising narrative, visual and verbal signs that aid the memory, institutions of learning, mass media, sites and monuments, commemoration rites that reactivate the memory

cultural memory based on — libraries, monuments, museums, institutions of arts and education, dates and holidays

transforming the multifaceted, heterogeneous, implicit memory into explicit, homogenous, institutional memory

past as changeable — fuelling the politics, power and identity

history vs memory:

the identity between history and memory

the polarisation between history and memory

the interaction between history and memory

— premodern stage, two not distinguished, function is to preserve the memory / Cicero — historiography as a weapon agains the oblivion

— modern stage, dichotomy — objective discipline vs subjectivity / Nietzsche — history vs life — history as unusable knowledge, life as vital capacity to forget and thus to restrict the scope of knowledge to the size of a unusable past / Halbwachs — history universal, collective memory as partial and biased / Pierre Nora — mediated memory, cohesive basis for a society. lieu de memoire vs history, memory = palpable, experienced, sacralisation of the past, history = representations, desacralisation

— postmodern stage, complementary, after 1989 — archives entering the public arena, moments of revelation / self-reflection of both memory and history, how they interlink

mnemohisotry — modes of remembering / social and cultural practices / constructing and distorting effects of memory, past as ambivalent / analysing mythical elements in tradition and discover their agenda

Charles Maier ‘memory motivates historical activity, historical research utilises memory’ + memory complements history, history corrects memory

what is forgotten — counter memory

totalitarianism — attempt to restore the premodern state monopoly over history through modern means, in modern circumstances

democratic nations — nation building, education, national memory = ‘mass instruction’ — applied history, constructing patriotic narratives

participation in social memory — official vs informal / abstract history turning into generalised collective memory / absorbed as collective identity

in totalitarian regimes — propaganda and indoctrination

democracy — popular media, public discourse

Edward Said “collective memory .. as a film of activity in which past events are selected, reconstructed, maintained, modified, and endowed with political meaning”

collective national memory — always selective

Atwood “past belongs to those who claim it, and are willing to explore it, and to infuse it with meaning for those who are alive today. the past belongs to us, because we are the ones who need it”

myth = idea, event, person, narrative with a symbolic value / distinguishing between the object of historical knowledge and collectively remembers events

myth — politically seen as untrue / in memory studies as a symbol

fabricated vs constructed - ideology critique / marxist tradition or the frankfurt school / ideology as flawed consciousness and wrong values

Barbara Godwin “we can only escape from one ideology into another”

Sacvan Bercovitch: “ideology is the system of interlinked ideas, symbolics and beliefs by which a culture seeks to justify and perpetuate itself..”

ideology becoming an inclusive term — what we do, not just what they do

starting point — we always think in the symbolic cultural frames

focusing on shameful moments — creating a honest, complex self-image of a nation / self-critical narratives, transnational narratives

#text

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artbookdap · 2 years

Photo

Happy birthday Kiki Smith, born OTD in 1954!⁠ ⁠ Details are from new release 'Kiki Smith: Memory,' published by @destefoundation⁠ ⁠ "For Smith, the body and its symmetry are always close at hand, and never in a state of stasis," Maggie Wright writes. "Physical forms have the ability to morph, mutate, dissolve. Smith has often noted the autobiographical nature of her work, and it is hard not to recognize the female experience at the core of metamorphosis: the initial transformation from girlhood to womanhood is fraught and powerful. In Smith’s art, however, change expands to nurture a variety of forms. Humans turn to animals, animals to other animals; new beings are collaged from each. Bronze oxidizes, candles melt, flags inflate and flutter, and sunlight reemerges daily. Stories, too, are continually reshaped: Greek myths and pagan rituals have been absorbed into the religious stories and sacraments of Christianity, plays and poems are recited to new audiences. Fairy tales and parables evolve for the next generation: a poisoned princess no longer passively sleeps, she actively dreams. Back in Hydra’s Historical Archives – Museum of Hydra, where remnants of the past await the gaze of the present, an island’s history is told and retold. Its collective memories, stories and traditions are like boats in the blue sea, helping to navigate increasingly choppy water. Over all, the Hydra snake—monster or scapegoat, healer and healed—watches from the heavens." ⁠ ⁠ Read more about the book via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ Text by Nadja Argyropoulou, Maggie Wright.⁠ ⁠ #kikismith #kikismithdeste #kikismithmemory⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/CY4Dk4BLBob/?utm_medium=tumblr

#kikismith #kikismithdeste #kikismithmemory

0 notes

sexkoreasblog · 4 years

Text

Old statues, new maps

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The Cantino World Map, incorporating geographical information based on four series of voyages: Columbus to the Caribbean, Pedro Álvarez Cabral to Brazil, Vasco de Gama followed by Cabral to eastern Africa and India, and the brothers Corte-Real to Greenland and Newfoundland. Public domain.

The original version of the piece below was published on the author's Facebook page.

Statues, by their nature, suggest significance. We are charged, most often, to look up to them. The difference in height matters, in perspective: what we regard at an elevation, affixed to a plinth, protected by golden braided rope, is intentional in its architecture.

You can ask any member of two of Trinidad and Tobago's most prominent faiths, Catholicism and Hinduism, about the significance of statues: a smiling Krishna garlanded in malas here, a beatific Christ with weeping candles at his punctured feet there. We miniaturize them, too: small gods for our puja rooms and prayer grottos, concentrate them to an intention of worshipfulness. We conventionally understand that these are not the gods, inasmuch as they channel the gods to us.

Is a statue of Christoper Columbus a god? Surely not. And yet.

The Jamaican author Michelle Cliff wrote in her 1984 semi-autobiographical novel, “Abeng“, of the half-monsters Columbus believed he would find in the New World:

“Dog-headed beings with human torsos. Winged people who could not fly. Beings with one foot growing out of the tops of their heads, their only living function to create shade for themselves in the hot tropical sun.”

“Abeng” is a counter-imperialist text underscored by the recorded history of the white European empire. It is this empire's sculpting of Jamaican history that “Abeng” radically confronts. It asks a question similar to Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite‘s “The Cracked Mother”, which is published in Brathwaite's 1973 opus, “The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy”:

“how will new maps be drafted?Who will suggest a new tentative frontier?How will the sky dawn now?”

Broadly, “The Arrivants”, a work that asks us to confront the internal borders we Caribbean people have constructed within ourselves, as defense/response to the borders drawn up by empire's forces to situate us, to domicile and subordinate us, poses this repeated question: who will draw our new maps? Who will signify us to ourselves?

Read more: Amid Black Lives Matter protests, fresh calls to remove statuary that hijacks the Caribbean's historical narrative

I've listened these past weeks as citizens have impressed upon me the importance of our statues of Columbus. These men and women have told me that Columbus was a fantastic navigator to whom they feel gratitude, as one of the founding fathers of our nation's history, blueprinting the very genesis of our roots. Further, I have been told that if we pull him down, where does it stop? We will have to dismantle everything made by colonial hands in our nation, and numerous Caribbean nations.

To begin to think about dismantling statues of former empires, slicing off their marble heads and pushing their alabaster, pigeon-shit-patinated bodies into our harbours, is for many of us a new and tentative frontier. It is not likely an action, of either protest or self-inquiry, that Columbus’ local devotees have ever imagined enacting: for them, the old map not only rules, but should always rule, no matter how much blood drenches it. What they perceive to be the obnoxious spectacle of contemporary activism deeply upsets them, particularly because it is a tacit attempt to begin the construction of a new map. . . and if the pro-Columbusites of so many dinner table discussions were to support such movements, it would implicitly reflect that their old systems are inherently flawed.

Who wants to believe the maps they have used their entire lives, that their parents used, were systemically poorly-charted? To begin to accept that would be to begin accepting that the post-colonial mythology of “work hard, hard, hard, obey the rules, make your children be doctors and lawyers, and you will achieve success, you might even retire in Florida” is not flawless. To begin to think that your concept of history could have damaged you is to acknowledge, with statuesque discomfort, that you are—and have been—unwell under the towering gaze of an idol or two.

Christopher Columbus rewarded his men with juvenile sex slaves. Here are his own words on the subject: “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”

So does the imagined dog-headed, useless-winged, monstrous-human of the outlying regions of empire become a useful commodity in the hands of the conqueror: as a labourer, as a local tourist guide by force, as a skin cushion to pierce with brutality. So too, do so many of us say that this is the price of our history: not only to know it, but to create tall, stone figurines to archive its criminal record. For me, it would be enough for us not to maintain statues of a rape capitalist, in this or any age. For others, the ends justify the broken bones and rivers of blood—and to be clear, I am not haranguing those others. I am merely reflecting on what they, by their own admission, find historic.

While this debate continues, in 2020 on our island, infants are murdered in drive-by shootings. Teenagers are slain in abandoned houses. Women and children and men are dying of domestic violence. Young boys are dragged outside their houses and beaten with PVC pipe until their organs swell like rotten fruit. We, most of us, do a mixture of the best we can and the bare minimum needed to survive. Election fever begins to sing its dengue-carrying mosquito song.

Christopher Columbus, untoppled, keeps watching.

https://ift.tt/3hXlFWU

written by shivanee ramlochan cc by

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simomonsiwritings · 7 years

Text

Interview with Simone Monsi by /77 on Artribune.com

☞ This is a translation of the original interview published in Italian on Artribune.com. Dall’Archivio Viafarini. Intervista con Simone Monsi by @progetto77

In his practice, Simone Monsi (born 1988, Fiorenzuola d’Arda) investigates the sensitivity of youth culture and its representation on microblogging platforms, from which he takes viral images and contents. In his practice, blogging becomes a method for indexing dynamic collections of popular melancholic sentences, video stills from Evangelion and porn gifs, while sculpture, installation and social networks are moments of a broader process that brings his works to become memes themselves, once reposted online. He recently graduated from the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, London and his work was exhibited at the 16th Rome Quadriennale. For the 2016 Goldsmiths Degree show, which took place last July, Simone presented an installation composed of three works: the Transparent word banners, a series of the most popular and banal sentimental phrases taken from Tumblr and made of semitransparent plastic little letters hanged on the wall like birthday garlands; I’m tired of being myself! I’m so tired of being young!, two posters of Shinji and Rei, teenage characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion; and CAPITOLO FINALE: Let’s Forget About It Let’s Go Forward – From Meaning To Intensity, il ventiseiesimo episodio di Mani!! I Love Holding Hands – It’s okay for me to be here!, four sculptures covered with pictures of sunsets from which little tentacles come out.

The three works presented at your graduation show seem to interact with each other, suggesting unspoken connections to the viewer’s imagination. Can you tell us more about the whole installation? At the degree show, I wanted to show those elements that had been central for my research of the last two years. I thought it was important to show new works alongside less recent ones, in order to give a sense of continuity to my art practice; talking about the banners, for instance, I had already exhibited some of them in other occasions, but at the degree show I had the chance to show them as a complete and coherent body of works.

What aspects did you take into consideration? The show was also autobiographic. The final chapter of a journey, indeed. I like to think these three works as different stages of my research: to me the banners represent the beginning of my interest for collecting fragments of texts from the Tumblr dashboard; while the big hands are a visual representation of the point I had reached at that time in my investigation on the role of the hands in the “post-slide to unlock” era; the posters, instead, were a sort of seed that I thought it could sprout in my future works – or a point from where I could depart to introduce new ideas into my practice: Shinji and Rei talking through the words of Bifo Berardi is a metaphor for becoming aware of the current state of the debate around “post-workerism”, and also a look towards possible alternatives to our post-global present time of digital capital. But, in the very end, it was also a way to say bye to Goldsmiths, literally: BYE BYE!

Part of your work originates from being part of online communities like Tumblr, in order to investigate techno-social accelerationism and its implications. During the studio visit we had, you told us about the correspondence between the collective awareness of Tumblr users and Franco Berardi’s theories. Could you say a bit more about it? Yes, big question! Well, it’s a primary issue in the current academic debate. What I can tell you is how the debate around accelerationism vs Bifo has affected my own research. While I was working on my thesis, I was reading Heroes by Bifo and I got intrigued by the fact that, in the book, he included some phrases which were similar, or sometimes even identical, to some melancholic quotes that have been very popular memes on social media in the last few years. I had the impression that the frustration originated from the speed with which new technologies are imposed by the market and the consequent hybridization of online and offline life, had reached the academic debate – and in doing so, it hasn’t got mediated, but, instead, has been contextualized as it is into a wider social-historical discourse, or something like that. In Heroes, Bifo looks at things from an interesting point of view, taking into consideration the effects of techno-social evolution on teenagers, with a focus on those who has been involved in mass murders.

You run five blogs: Congratulations!, Peacocks Inside My Head Forever, Alone is the new together, #wildsimo e Stills from Evangelion. How are they related to your practice? Yes, to be honest at the moment I have 14 blogs, not all of them are active though, a couple of them still have to be started. Of course, the ones you mentioned are those blogs that have been influencing my art practice the most over the last few years. I love collecting. But more than that, I love making archives. I like collections because collecting to me means running an archive. I see the blog as a dynamic platform where I can store, through hashtags, all those images and other files that may become relevant in the process of developing ideas for new works, or for a new text, or even become the cover pictures on my Facebook… Sometimes, some blogs that have been very active in the past became works themselves. Some other time, instead, it happened to have a work transformed into a blog, in order to keep track of its spreading online: Yesterday my Flight was Pretty Boring is an example. Also, when I’m doing some brainstorming for new works, I find helpful to print out images or even whole posts from my blogs. I hang them on the wall, they get mixed up, a sad quote gets close to a picture of a balloon, the balloon close to an emoji, add a pinch of Rei Ayanami and the next monster is ready!

www.viafarini.org http://progetto77.tumblr.com/

#simo monsi #2016 #2017 #progetto77 #artribune #viafarini #translation #contemporary art #goldsmiths #degree show #interview

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khalilhumam · 4 years

Text

Old statues, new maps

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/old-statues-new-maps/

Old statues, new maps

The original version of the piece below was published on the author's Facebook page. Statues, by their nature, suggest significance. We are charged, most often, to look up to them. The difference in height matters, in perspective: what we regard at an elevation, affixed to a plinth, protected by golden braided rope, is intentional in its architecture. You can ask any member of two of Trinidad and Tobago's most prominent faiths, Catholicism and Hinduism, about the significance of statues: a smiling Krishna garlanded in malas here, a beatific Christ with weeping candles at his punctured feet there. We miniaturize them, too: small gods for our puja rooms and prayer grottos, concentrate them to an intention of worshipfulness. We conventionally understand that these are not the gods, inasmuch as they channel the gods to us. Is a statue of Christoper Columbus a god? Surely not. And yet. The Jamaican author Michelle Cliff wrote in her 1984 semi-autobiographical novel, “Abeng“, of the half-monsters Columbus believed he would find in the New World: “Dog-headed beings with human torsos. Winged people who could not fly. Beings with one foot growing out of the tops of their heads, their only living function to create shade for themselves in the hot tropical sun.” “Abeng” is a counter-imperialist text underscored by the recorded history of the white European empire. It is this empire's sculpting of Jamaican history that “Abeng” radically confronts. It asks a question similar to Barbadian poet Kamau Brathwaite‘s “The Cracked Mother”, which is published in Brathwaite's 1973 opus, “The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy”: “how will new maps be drafted? Who will suggest a new tentative frontier? How will the sky dawn now?” Broadly, “The Arrivants”, a work that asks us to confront the internal borders we Caribbean people have constructed within ourselves, as defense/response to the borders drawn up by empire's forces to situate us, to domicile and subordinate us, poses this repeated question: who will draw our new maps? Who will signify us to ourselves? I've listened these past weeks as citizens have impressed upon me the importance of our statues of Columbus. These men and women have told me that Columbus was a fantastic navigator to whom they feel gratitude, as one of the founding fathers of our nation's history, blueprinting the very genesis of our roots. Further, I have been told that if we pull him down, where does it stop? We will have to dismantle everything made by colonial hands in our nation, and numerous Caribbean nations. To begin to think about dismantling statues of former empires, slicing off their marble heads and pushing their alabaster, pigeon-shit-patinated bodies into our harbours, is for many of us a new and tentative frontier. It is not likely an action, of either protest or self-inquiry, that Columbus’ local devotees have ever imagined enacting: for them, the old map not only rules, but should always rule, no matter how much blood drenches it. What they perceive to be the obnoxious spectacle of contemporary activism deeply upsets them, particularly because it is a tacit attempt to begin the construction of a new map. . . and if the pro-Columbusites of so many dinner table discussions were to support such movements, it would implicitly reflect that their old systems are inherently flawed. Who wants to believe the maps they have used their entire lives, that their parents used, were systemically poorly-charted? To begin to accept that would be to begin accepting that the post-colonial mythology of “work hard, hard, hard, obey the rules, make your children be doctors and lawyers, and you will achieve success, you might even retire in Florida” is not flawless. To begin to think that your concept of history could have damaged you is to acknowledge, with statuesque discomfort, that you are—and have been—unwell under the towering gaze of an idol or two. Christopher Columbus rewarded his men with juvenile sex slaves. Here are his own words on the subject: “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.” So does the imagined dog-headed, useless-winged, monstrous-human of the outlying regions of empire become a useful commodity in the hands of the conqueror: as a labourer, as a local tourist guide by force, as a skin cushion to pierce with brutality. So too, do so many of us say that this is the price of our history: not only to know it, but to create tall, stone figurines to archive its criminal record. For me, it would be enough for us not to maintain statues of a rape capitalist, in this or any age. For others, the ends justify the broken bones and rivers of blood—and to be clear, I am not haranguing those others. I am merely reflecting on what they, by their own admission, find historic. While this debate continues, in 2020 on our island, infants are murdered in drive-by shootings. Teenagers are slain in abandoned houses. Women and children and men are dying of domestic violence. Young boys are dragged outside their houses and beaten with PVC pipe until their organs swell like rotten fruit. We, most of us, do a mixture of the best we can and the bare minimum needed to survive. Election fever begins to sing its dengue-carrying mosquito song. Christopher Columbus, untoppled, keeps watching.

Written by Shivanee Ramlochan · comments (0) Donate · Share this: twitter facebook reddit

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micaramel · 4 years

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Artist: Ree Morton

Venue: Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Exhibition Title: The Plant That Heals May Also Poison

Date: February 16 – June 14, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images and works courtesy of © The Estate of Ree Morton; courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York and Annemarie Verna Galerie, Zurich. Photos by Jeff McLane.

Press Release:

The Plant That Heals May Also Poison is the first major United States exhibition of artist Ree Morton (1936-1977) in nearly four decades. The exhibition features several rarely seen works, including a selection of installations, drawings, sculptures, paintings, and archival materials which span a single decade of artistic production before Morton’s untimely death in 1977.

Throughout her career, Morton produced a philosophically complex body of work rich in emotion. Though celebrated by peers and younger artists, Morton’s influence on contemporary art remains considerable yet muted, her legacy widely underrecognized. The eclectic arc of Morton’s practice was rooted in Postminimalism, the inclusion of personal narrative—through literary, theoretical, and autobiographical references—and use of bold color and theatrical imagery infused her objects with sly humor and a concern with the decorative, generating a feminist legacy increasingly appreciated in retrospect. Reimagining tropes of love, friendship, and motherhood, while radically asserting sentiment as a legitimate subject of artmaking, Morton’s conceptually rigorous work demonstrates generosity towards the viewer, its spirit of playfulness and joy inflecting all aspects of the exhibition.

Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, the exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue co-published with Dancing Foxes Press with texts by Kate Kraczon, the exhibition’s curator; artist Nayland Blake; Kathryn Gile; and scholars Roksana Filipowska and Abi Shapiro.

Ree Morton’s initial engagement with drawing influenced much of her early work. While living in Jacksonville, Florida, with her three young children, Morton took evening drawing classes at a local museum; she later committed to focusing on being an artist, completing a BFA at the University of Rhode Island in 1968 and an MFA at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1970. Wood Drawings (1971) is the earliest work in the exhibition and marks a transition from the minimalist and loosely gridded forms she produced while in graduate school. These intricate small sculptures covered in felt-tip markings signal both an interdisciplinary approach to drawing and Morton’s nascent fascination with wood as a material, both the natural structure of found branches and logs as well as commercially cut wood. Paintings and Objects (1973), installed adjacent to Wood Drawings, features four wooden armatures that prop and push at a canvas pinned to the wall—one of the few remaining sculptural works from this period of Morton’s practice. Nearly all of these early pieces were repeatedly reconfigured into various formations that she leaned against the walls and corners of her studio, rejecting traditional systems of medium specificity and combining elements of painting, drawing, and sculpture.

She presented Souvenir Piece (1973), inspired by a summer in Newfoundland, Canada with her three children, as an installation for her fall 1973 solo exhibition at Artists Space, New York. Only two sections of this work remain, one of which is included here. Like many of Morton’s pieces, the numbers three and four can be counted among the objects—four split logs on the low green platform, for example—and she references her three children by name, as well as friends and family, in many other works. The wood and stones assembled on the table may allude to an accumulation of mementos and memories from that period of her life. She would continue the wood motif from this body of work in the sculpture See Saw (1974) and her later Woodgrain drawings (c. 1974).

Of the artist’s surviving drawings from the early 1970s, many gesture toward a form of mapping that became increasingly explicit in her early installations. With borders and fences, dashes that enclose, and silhouettes or tracings of objects both present and absent, works such as Game Map Drawings (c. 1972–73) and the series Newfoundland Drawings (1973) reveal concerns with landscape, limitations, and organic shapes that she maintainedthrough her final bodies of work. Game Map Drawings depicts aerial views of pathways and hills in a countryside. Morton created the Newfoundland Drawings (1973) after her vacation on the Canadian island, which Morton told her friend Marcia Tucker (former Whitney Museum curator and founding director of the New Museum in New York) was the happiest summer of her life. The drawings’ cartographic references are rooted in the knobby texture of logs and branches Morton sketched in the notebook she kept during her trip.

Looking to other disciplines outside of the arts, such as philosophy, literature, and botany, Morton’s work often referenced her personal life. Before pursuing an arts education, she studied nursing, which greatly influenced the Line Series (1972–74), one of which are included in this presentation. These drawings feature soft, lyrical lines that roam across the surface of the paper around an array of other shapes, reminiscent of the chromosomes that Morton recalled observing under a microscope during her studies.

In the summer of 1974, Morton discovered two horticultural texts that were highly influential, Weeds of the Northeast: Aids to Their Identification by Basal-leaf Characteristics (1970) and Wildflowers Worth Knowing (1917). Drawings of this period, such as Untitled (Woodgrain, Scaley Bulb), Yellow Clintonia, Bitter Buttons, and Broom-Rape Family (all works produced in 1974) depict wildlife species from nature and outline the names, images, and descriptions of various flora; The Plant that Heals May Also Poison, a wall sculpture which opens the exhibition, names plants that have medicinal qualities yet have some toxic properties. While Weeds of the Northeast became the namesake of a series of Morton’s drawings, installed here on woodgrain wallpaper as Morton did for their debut presentation in 1974, the comical Victorian moralism of the 1917 publication became a primary source of text for many of her drawings and sculptures.

Morton worked with celastic, a textile infused with plastic that becomes malleable when wet with solvent, for the first time in spring 1974 while teaching at the Philadelphia College of Art. After a male colleague’s snide remark that “women should stick to bake sales” in response to her participation in the school’s Women’s Faculty Show, she used the material to create bows and drapery decorating the wall behind a platform where she and her students displayed cookies and cakes as the work Bake Sale (1974).

She continued to experiment with celastic as a visiting artist at the University of Montana, during a period that seemed unproductive to the artist initially but signaled an important turn in her work. For Bozeman, Montana (1974), created during this time, Morton applied celastic to clay letters and painted the surface once hardened. The playful, celebratory wall piece names her students as well as various activities, such as playing pool, fishing, and drinking beer. The work marks two important milestones in Morton’s developing practice: in addition to using celastic with text for the first time, she also introduces the use of electric lightbulbs to the sculptures.

Morton’s practice expanded to incorporate performance and public works that reflected upon her community of friends and fellow artists. In June 1975 Morton installed the ambitious outdoor project Something in the Wind (1975), a collection of over one hundred nylon flags strung across the rigging of a nineteenth-century sailboat docked in New York’s East River. This was a public project with the South Street Seaport Museum, and each flag was dedicated to family members and friends, including many New York-based artists, such as Laurie Anderson, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Cynthia Carlson. These flags celebrated her wide-ranging personal and social relationships; for Morton, sentimentality was a critically important component of her work, visually articulating her role not only as an artist, but also a teacher, a mother, and a friend. This exhibition presents a selection of the flags from Something in the Wind, as well as a short film documenting the exhibition at the South Street Seaport.

Maid of the Mist (1976) responded to a Native American folktale of the same name about a maiden’s annual voyage in a fruit and flower-covered canoe over Niagara Falls as a sacrificial bride to the river. In her outdoor performance, Morton, alongside other artists-in-residence at Artpark in upstate New York, carried a large yellow celastic ladder to a hillside leading into the entrance of the Niagara River, joining it with a life preserver adorned with celastic florals. Morton stood at the edge of the water with an additional life preserver tied to her waist with rope, and after throwing the preserver into the river, she cut the connection of the rope so it could float free. In performing a symbolic rescue of the maiden using a ladder and life preservers, Morton established a contemporary continuation of a narrative of feminine love and sacrifice.

Morton kept an extensive archive of materials, including a collection of notebooks now housed at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and accessible online through the Franklin Furnace Archive. Presented here are select drawings, sketches, and studies alongside documentation that reveal the evolution of her practice, from slides of experimental work in her Philadelphia studio to installation images from exhibitions and projects throughout the United States.

Morton’s final project, Manipulations of the Organic (1977), focused on Chicago-based architect Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) and was developed as a frieze-like installation of fourteen paintings. She was a guest artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago that spring, surrounded by Sullivan’s architectural influence throughout the city and fascinated by his portfolio of drawings A System of Architectural Ornament, which was commissioned by the school’s library in 1924. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, created this installation in the originating presentation of this exhibition to approximate the drawings and studies she made leading up to her death in April 1977. Here, Manipulations of the Organic is represented by a series of drawings similar to those featured in the completed work.

The shapes Morton used in several celastic works, all produced in 1974, veer from the celebratory to the funerary—glittery banners and ribbons vying with the melancholic symbolism of gravestones. The pithy phrasing of Terminal Clusters mixes with more personal references such as those in Maternal Instincts, which includes the initials of her three children. Noting her experience as a housewife, Many Have Run Away, to Be Sure explores feminine clichés and the bow motif (or beaux, a homonym evoking the Beaux-Arts, a highly decorative, neoclassical architectural style) that began with Bake Sale. Similarly, Don’t Worry, I’ll only read you the good parts (1975) similarly radiates the dark humor that infuses much of this body of work.

The series Regional Pieces (1976) are paintings of various seascapes and sunsets produced during a winter spent as visiting faculty at the University of California, San Diego. The diptychs are framed by curtains made with celastic, adding a decorative flourish that is both theatrical and domestic. The top panel depicts a sunrise, culled from postcards the artist collected, and the bottom features images of local fish. Highlighting Morton’s time spent on California’s beaches, the Regional Pieces are also in dialogue with historical painting tropes such as still life and landscape painting.

Link: Ree Morton at Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2SWCOVF

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rajpersaud · 4 years

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The True Story of Typhoid Mary - The first confirmed 'super-spreader' in history?

What happens when a person's reputation has been forever damaged? With archival photographs and text among other primary sources, this riveting biography of Mary Mallon by the Sibert medalist and Newbery Honor winner Susan Bartoletti looks beyond the tabloid scandal of Mary's controversial life. How she was treated by medical and legal officials reveals a lesser-known story of human and constitutional rights, entangled with the science of pathology and enduring questions about who Mary Mallon really was. How did her name become synonymous with deadly disease? And who is really responsible for the lasting legacy of Typhoid Mary? This thorough exploration includes an author's note, timeline, annotated source notes, and bibliography.

Awards: Newbery Honor, Carolyn Field Award, Lamplighter Award, Parents Gold Choice Award, Outstanding Pennsylvania Author of the Year, Children's Book Guild Award for Body of Nonfiction Work

Abstract:

Susan Campbell Bartoletti was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1958 and grew up in rural Pennsylvania, a place she has used as a setting in her young adult novels and nonfiction books. A student, author, and teacher, Bartoletti uses historical elements as the backbone of many of her works, and she has won many awards for her ability to combine historical facts with her unique writing style.

Biography

Susan Campbell Bartoletti was born Susan Campbell in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on November 18, 1958. Two months after her birth, her father was killed in a car accident. Her mother later remarried after Bartoletti finished kindergarten, and the family moved to the outskirts of Scranton, Pennsylvania. She loved growing up in the countryside of rural Pennsylvania, and she later used this setting in many of her works. As a young girl, Bartoletti enjoyed reading, drawing, horseback riding, playing piano, and listening to the Beatles. By the eighth grade, she was editor of her newspaper and had discovered her passion for art and writing. She decided to pursue her career as soon as possible, and after her junior year of high school, she left to attend college early. Bartoletti attended Marywood College and majored in art at first. After realizing the stiff competition in the field and receiving praise from her creative writing professor, Campbell switched gears and decided to major in English and secondary education instead. After her sophomore year, she married Joseph Bartoletti, and the couple later had two children, Brandy and Joey. Bartoletti received her BA in 1979 and obtained her first teaching job at the age of 20. She began teaching English at North Pocono Middle School and remained there for 18 years. She also co-advised the school's award-winning literary magazine for 15 years. While teaching, she simultaneously earned her MA in English at the University of Scranton in 1982. Bartoletti became involved in many different activities, including the Children's Literature Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Rutgers Council on Children's Literature. She also found time to write more. Her first picture book, Silver at Night, was published in 1994. This was an autobiographical work about her husband's grandfather, an Italian immigrant who spent nearly half a century in the coal mines. Bartoletti wanted a lot of her writing to focus on historical events, particularly labor history in her native Pennsylvania. In 1996, her work Growing Up in Coal Country was published. This book focused on the working and living conditions of Pennsylvania coal towns and won her numerous awards including the Carolyn Field Award, the Lamplighter Award, and the Parents Gold Choice Award. She remained ambitious, and as she was writing and teaching eighth grade English she became an instructor in children's literature at the University of Scranton. In 1998, Bartoletti decided to stop teaching at the middle school in order to pursue her writing career and earn her PhD in creative writing. She attended Binghamton University with a full fellowship, where she won the Excellence in Research award for her doctoral dissertation.

In 1999, Susan wrote a book concerning child labor laws and the hardships children endured as they were forced to work in big industries. Kids on Strike! discussed the problems of child labor and the actions to strike against them. The pictures within the work reveal children suffering from sleep deprivation and missing fingers and showed the world just how tragic child labor was. She also focused on another historical tragedy in 2001 when she finished writing Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850. This work tells the story of the Great Potato Famine in which one million Irish died from starvation and disease, and two million had to leave Ireland to escape death. That same year, the Pennsylvania Library Association named Bartoletti the Outstanding Pennsylvania Author of the Year. In the midst of all the attention, Bartoletti wrote yet another book titled The Flag Maker (2004). This was a story about Caroline Pickersgill and her mother, Mary, sewing a large-enough American flag for the British to see it during a major battle in the War of 1812. She was inspired to write about it after she saw the 80-pound masterpiece in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.

One of Bartoletti's most compelling books was written in 2005. Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow is a story about young Germans devoting their lives to Hitler and his Nazi regime. The book also incorporated stories about young people resisting the movement, a dangerous and often fatal move. The photographs in the book put the impact of Hitler's campaign in perspective and are difficult to look at. One of the first photos was a 1934 photo taken during German Youth Day in Potsdam where a young boy is shown raising his hand in the Nazi salute. In 2006, Hitler Youth became a Newbery Honor Book selection.

On her website and in interviews, Bartoletti mentions that she is often asked if she writes the works she does, which often delve into difficult and complex topics, "to show kids today how good they have it." The answer is no. She hopes that her works give "readers courage — courage to question and to think critically about history; courage to consider and respond to their social, political, and existential responsibilities; and, most of all, courage to stand up."

In 2009, she won the Washington Post's Children's Book Guild Award for Body of Nonfiction Work. Bartoletti also won the Carolyn W. Field Award in 2009 for her novel The Boy Who Dared. The Boy Who Dared earned Bartoletti many more honors and distinctions, including American Library Association Book of Distinction and Best Book for Young Adults, Booklist Top 10 Historical Fiction for Youth, and International Reading Association Notable Book for an Important Society. In 2010, she published They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group, which was a Junior Library Guild Selection. This children's book also earned recognition and was placed on the Best Children's Book of the Year List for the School Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publisher's Weekly.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti has served as a professor of children's literature for the Pennsylvania State University's World Campus and, at the time of this writing, lives in Moscow, Pennsylvania, where she continues to write and publish.

Selected Works:

Nonfiction

Growing Up in Coal Country. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

Kids on Strike! Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845-1850. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow. New York: Scholastic Nonfiction, 2005.

They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

(Coedited with Marc Aronson.) 1968. Somerville: Candlewick, 2018.

Novels

No Man's Land: A Young Soldier's Story. New York: Blue Sky Press, 1999.

A Coal Miner's Bride: The Diary of Anetka Kaminska. New York: Scholastic, 2000.

The Boy Who Dared. New York: Scholastic Press, 2008.

Picture Books

Silver at Night. New York: Crown, 1994.

Dancing with Dziadziu. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1997.

The Christmas Promise. New York: Blue Sky Press, 2001.

Nobody's Nosier Than a Cat. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2003.

The Flag Maker: A Story of the Star Spangled Banner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Nobody's Diggier Than a Dog. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2005.

Naamah and the Ark at Night. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2011.

Sources:

"Biography: Susan Campbell Bartoletti." Scholastic. 4 December 2011. <http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/susan-campbell-bartoletti>.

Heller, Steven. "Hitler Youth." New York Times Book Review 14 Aug. 2005: 16.

Kohlepp, Peg. "History Unfurled; A Kids' Salute to the Illustrious History of the Red, White, and Blue." Times-Picayune 4 July 2004: 4.

"Librarians Find Meat in 'Potatoes'" Lancaster Sunday News 17 Nov. 2002: 6.

Myers, Alison Green. Faculty Interview: Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Highlights Foundation. 6 September 2017. 12 July 2018. <https://www.highlightsfoundation.org/9135/faculty-interview-susan-campbell-bartoletti/>.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti. 2010. 4 December 2011 and 12 July 2018. <http://www.scbartoletti.com/>.

"Susan Campbell Bartoletti." The Gale Literary Databases: Contemporary Authors Online. 8 Oct. 2010. 4 Dec. 2011.

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shannonmw · 6 years

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I am a blogger. No, I’m not an avid blogger, but it is a medium I am familiar with. My goal for this project is to use this form to tell you a story. This paper will be multimodal, because it is a blog, and because it contains personal stories and actual photographs. It will also be accessible to all, because I will actively share it on social media, allowing a community of people to read and share it.

I have been asked to tell a story. A story about my family, my community and my nation. My subjectivity is conditioned by my awareness of the constructed nature of the story I am telling. Smith and Watson, in ‘Reading Autobiography’, write that “personal memories are the primary archival source” for a life narrator despite her access to other sources such as letters, journals, photographs and conversations (2001, p.6). My archival sources are my memory, conversations with my mother and a few friends, and photographs.

An awareness of the situational and interactional features of autobiographical acts, as mentioned by Smith and Watson (2001, p. 50) gives me a sense of agency in the tale I narrate. While I am the producer, or teller, of my story, I am aware that my coaxer is the question given to me as part of the final assignment for a course at the University of Colombo’s MA in English Studies Programme; you are the consumer, reader or audience who will interpret my tale. I would like to imagine I am as revolutionary as Roland Barthes in his text, ‘Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes’, where I (the critic) turn to myself, and critique myself as a text. However the limitations of time and space quell my revolutionary fancies. Yet, while writing this I couldn’t help feel like Scout, in Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ simply because I am recalling childhood memories and retelling them – I found myself writing in a more childish manner and literally channeling Scout. To the reader who does notice the similarity, I apologise.

Life Writing, I have realized in retrospect, is easy to critique. It is harder to write. It is hard to dig deep, dredge memories and emotional experiences you’d rather forget. No, not because they’re traumatic or potentially scaring. It’s nothing like that. It’s just that these memories would rather be forgotten. Memories are shady, and in the process of recollection I have questioned my memories, and constantly asked myself ‘did I really do this?’ or ‘did I really think this?? Or do I think I thought this?!” Stanley Fish answered my questions, “[a]utobiographers cannot lie because anything they say, however mendacious, is the truth about themselves, whether they know it or not” (cited in Smith and Watson, 2001, p.12).

I’m going to tell you a story. I’m going to tell you about something that happened to my mother when I was 10 years old. This story affected me and my perspective of history and Sri Lanka as a teenager, it continues to affect how I’ve viewed the LTTE and other terrorist organisations. My retelling of this story comes from my family; it involves a community of people who stepped up in a time of need; right now my story actively involves a community of readers who will engage with it via the world wide web. The relationship of my story to the larger narrative of our nation is too blatant to ignore.

My mum’s friend, Nishani, worked for the World Bank in Washington DC. She had come down to Sri Lanka for work. She is an Economist and was writing a report (on what I don’t remember, but it was something really important). She was staying at The Galadari Hotel. Ammi and Aunty Nishani were very close. While Aunty Nishani was here, they met a few times but didn’t gossip as much as they liked to. A few days before Aunty Nishani left Sri Lanka, an ideal opportunity presented itself: a midweek poya where my dad (who is a member of the Sri Lankan Airlines Cabin Crew) had an early morning flight, my brother and I didn’t have school. Aunty Nishani invited Ammi to come for dinner and stay over. On Tuesday night Ammi dropped Mallie and me at Achchi’s place. We were happy to stay, though I really wished I could’ve gone with Ammi – I loved staying in hotels! I was grumpy and wrote a long letter to my mother, berating her for not letting me join her and Aunty Nishani. I had promised to be good and not interfere, but Ammi had just cast me aside. I was heartbroken! My grandmother went to great lengths to repair my broken heart. I went to sleep determined not to talk to Ammi when she picked us up the next day. The next morning I was awoken by the constant ringing of the phone. I don’t remember what time it was, except that the phone was in the room and my Achchi was very agitated; she didn’t talk to us; she was always speaking in Sinhalese (as if we didn’t understand!) and kept giving us the classic, “no, nothing is wrong” answer that all grown ups give children when there really is something wrong. I can’t remember what I thought the matter could be. Achchi didn’t allow us to put the TV on, but was very keen that we read or go outside to play. I had just finished an entire collection of Enid Blyton’s ‘Five Find Outers’, and I also had my favourite book by Enid Blyton ‘The Secret Island’ with me – I was in sleuth mode. It was inevitable. I hid behind curtains, eavesdropped and gathered that there had been a bomb blast somewhere in Colombo. Ok…so what? My sleuthing got me no where, my Seeya found me hiding and sent me outside. Mallie, who in my opinion had never been a particularly suspect child, was not interested in anything I had to say because it did not involve Romesh Kaluwitharana or cricket. By 10am there was a call, and that call changed my grandmother. It was my mother. Apparently she was alright. There had been a bomb blast near the Galadari Hotel. Ammi was caught in it, but she was alright now. She was safe. I remember feeling really really bad. I regretted my decision to never speak to Ammi again. “Please Jesus, let my Ammi be ok. Please don’t let anything happen to her”. I think Achchi made us kneel in front of the altar in her Hall and we recited the Rosary. I was fervent, and promised to be a really good girl, if only Ammi was ok. I recalled the Central Bank Bombing the previous year when Ammi had appeared in school, miraculously, to pick me up (If you knew my mum at that point, you’d know why this was miraculous – she avoided picking us up from school because she was always really busy and school vans were very very convenient). I remembered her telling me then, that I had nothing to worry about because Ammi would always be there. While reciting the rosary, I remember feeling like an orphan. I literally didn’t know where in the world Thathi was, and I felt very lost without Ammi. I cried. Achchi promised me that she would take care of me and to pray. So I prayed.

The next day I was taken to Nawaloka Hospital to visit Ammi and Aunty Nishani. Ammi had a small head injury, and both Aunty Nishani and her had lots of cuts, bruises and shrapnel wounds. Ammi cried when she saw us. I refused to leave the hospital room. I stayed the night with her and Thathi. She had to be given medicine to sleep because she was too scared to sleep. I was scared too.

I’ve heard Ammi’s story many times. Whenever she recalls her story, she adds more details. It’s not that she’s exaggerating, but I realise she’s adding more details because I am older. When I was 10, the story was quite basic. At 17, when she told it to me again, there were more details. At 31, she related it to me again, for the purpose of this assignment; she was more free and unrestrained. I learned more about her experience at 31, than I did at 17. It is interesting how stories can be conditioned, or condensed, based on the age of the audience despite it being the same story.

Smith and Watson have noted that the memories invoked in “autobigraphical narrative is specific to the time of writing and the context of telling…it is never isolatable fact, but situated association” (2001, p.18). I guess this is true of my story. Right now I am recalling this narrative for a specific purpose; I examine it with a fine comb to dissect and identify specific sections that are relevant to my question (the coax) and the theories of Life Writing that I’ve been taught. Likewise my Ammi’s memories were fleshed out, with more details, because she was more comfortable sharing this experience she had at 31, with her daughter who’s now 31.

The locus of my story is my mother. It is her story that I want to add, because without her, I wouldn’t be where I am. Without her, I wouldn’t be telling you this story. Her story helped me at 17 when I was selected as a member of a Delegation to participate in the Initiative for Peace program at the United World College of South East Asia. Here, during the ceasefire of 2004, group of Sri Lankan teens from all over the island were selected, based on a story narrating our personal encounters with the Civil Conflict. I wrote about my mother. To a 17 year old, the trauma of losing my mother was exaggerated because though I remembered what had happened, I was blissfully ignorant of the finer details. Unfortunately I cannot locate the original story I wrote, but this is that tale, and then some told by me, as it was narrated to me:

(Ammi’s story) After dropping Mallie and I at Achchi’s, Ammi had gone to the Galadari. They’d had a nice dinner together, and gone back to Aunty Nishani’s room for some gossip. Ammi says it was late when they got to bed. Habitually an early riser, Ammi woke up before 7am. She noticed Aunty Nishani wasn’t in bed, she’d said ‘Nishani?’ and Aunty Nishani had replied saying was in the bathroom working on her report because she didn’t want to disturb Ammi, and that Ammi should sleep. Deciding to snooze for a little longer, Ammi had closed her eyes and begun to drift off when she heard a continuous “tak-a-tak-a-tak-tak-a” noise. Getting out of bed, she opened the curtains and looked down. They were on the 12th or 14th floor (she can’t remember exactly) and the room overlooked the car park. Ammi says there were about 6 or 7 men, wearing black with bandanas or “something like turbans” on their heads. One thing stood out – they were barefoot. They had ammunition draped over their shoulders and were attempting to maneuver a very large lorry into the Galadari Hotel’s car park. Ammi had thought this was a robbery and rushed to bathroom to tell Aunty Nishani. As they came to the window they saw a large black shape, heading towards the WTC Building. It was then that they realized, this was an attack. An attack by the LTTE. Aunty Nishani’s father happened to be former UNP MP Festus Perera, whom she called immediately. He advised both of them to leave Galadari at once. (Ammi laughingly recalls how the most important thing at that time for both of them was to brush their teeth!) The sound of gunfire continued as they changed into streetwear. Ammi had just stepped out of the room when the first blast occurred. The door of the room fell on her, because of the impact and she fell face first onto the carpeted corridor. She blacked out. When she came to, Aunty Nishani and a large African American man were hauling her up, towards the staircase. Then the second blast hit. During the first blast Ammi had misplaced her shoe, and the second blast had scattered glass on the floor. She couldn’t walk barefoot so she had to run back to the room for her other shoe. When she returned to the stairwell, the third blast hit. After descending 12 or 14 flights of stairs Ammi says the Lobby was like a ghost town. She said it was like in the movies – you recognized it, but you couldn’t believe your eyes. Aunty Nishani, Ammi, a few American Green Berets (who’d also been on the same floor) rushed out of the hotel and towards the beach. They were joined by hotel employees fleeing for their lives. Ammi says she had to jump 12 feet onto the Galle Face Beach – to date she doesn’t know how she did it. She says her head was throbbing and she could hear a ringing noise in her ears, but she kept going. In every version of this story, she emphasizes that it was the thought of Mallie and I that kept her going. They’d run along the beach to the Galle Face Hotel, while shooting sounds permeated their environment. They were sitting ducks, obvious and visible, running along the beach. Upon reaching the Galle Face Hotel, Aunty Nishani’s dad had sent a Police Jeep to escort them to the hospital. En route to Nawaloka the vehicle was stopped. The Army didn’t believe the Police escorts; they didn’t believe that my mother and Aunty Nishani had escaped so soon. They assumed they might be LTTE Cadres in disguise. Ammi says she was more afraid at that point than she was on the beach. Here, they were trapped. Literally. And if something happened, the state of emergency and ensuing chaos would mean that their deaths would become collateral damage. Eventually they were released and both of them were admitted to Nawaloka. That’s when Ammi called Achchi.

Thathi had boarded the aircraft, and the doors had just closed when he heard about the bomb blast. He couldn’t leave and he didn’t know what had happened. He says it was the longest flight he’d ever worked on.

Aunty Nishani returned to the hotel within a matter of hours. The shooting hadn’t subsided but moved to Lake House, where the LTTE held hostages. Aunty Nishani needed her laptop and her report. My Loku Maama and our driver had accompanied Aunty Nishani. They’d taken a few pictures. The bed closest to the window is where Ammi slept. If she hadn’t woken up, I wouldn’t be telling you this story.

Figure 4: Aunty Nishani with her Police escorts retrieving her files

Figure 1: My parents in Aunty Nishani’s room a few days before the blast, when they’d visited her

Figure 3: The view of the car park from the room

Figure 2: The bed Ammi slept in, after the blast

Nawaloka Hospital was teeming with victims of the accident. There were also many security personnel. Ammi was interviewed by many intelligence officers. I think it got tiresome after a while. She’d been telling her story so many times. She says she had to take sleeping pills and attend psychiatric sessions to move on from this experience. These tidbits were news to me. Until recently I didn’t know the extent she’d been affected by this experience.

This story helped me join a larger community; one I encountered during my participation at the IfP Conference in Singapore. Initially participants were split up and we had many team-building and trust exercises, but later we had a few sessions which were harrowing, eye-opening and jarring. I remember more than once I went to my room, crying. I met a former child soldier, who gave us a different perspective of the war. I helped write a massive Time Line, where all participants attempted to pinpoint the exact incident that triggered the civil conflict; no one could. The only consensus was that the war was a culmination of events, and bad decisions. Now, in retrospect I realize that what we experienced was a miniature of a reconciliation discussion. We were students from Colombo, Jaffna, Batticaloa, Kandy and Galle, and Matara. Our community taught me a lot of important lessons about conflict: that this conflict was the culmination of many events; there is no ‘us’ versus ‘them’; that suffering is universal and it doesn’t matter where you’re from – if the conflict affected you, that affect had a forever kind of effect. This community we created is still in touch, but not as active as we should be. Sadly, being teenagers got in the way of us engaging in any large scale social movement.

In terms of a communal narrative, this experience has affected me in two ways: firstly because of how my extended family rallied around my parents and helped care for us while my mother recovered. Secondly, because through this experience I met members of my IfP community, some of them still continue to work towards reconciliation and the rebuilding of the North. I have written to a few friends, asking for permission to share their stories but they are yet to reply, once they do I plan on updating the blog post to include their stories as well. In terms of the nation, there is no need for me to present a history of our country’s civil conflict. That’s a topic that’s been hashed and rehashed. Even the WTC or Galadari Bombing (as this attack is referred to by the media), is an event in our nation’s narrative that has been criticised. In any social situation, if one person brings up the topic of the civil conflict, this topic is guaranteed to trigger memories of everyone in that social group. I believe this is because the conflict has affected every Sri Lankan in some way. Also because as a community and as a nation we are all subjects within these larger narrative frameworks – we want our stories to be heard, we want to say ‘I too have been affected, here’s what happened to me’. I hope that this blog post will address another extended community and encourage the sharing of stories.

[T]he story of my life is always embedded in those communities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships. The possession of an historical identity and the possession of a social identity coincide . . . What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognise it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition (MacIntyre as cited in Freeman, 2002, p.202) (emphasis mine).

MacIntyre’s lines struck home because I believe that the true meaning of a self-referential writer is embodied within a larger narrative. This is why I have chosen to tell you my mother’s story through my own. I believe that the memorable stories within my family, which are related to communities and the nation, are told by every person in my family. He/She will just have a different take on the same expereince, or he/she may pick a different experience. We are all story tellers, and as the digital era evolves I believe that we will have more spaces to tell our stories, we are all auto biographers/life writers in this sense.

References

Athas, I. (1997, October 19). Operation Twin Towers: How and why LTTE did it [News]. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://www.sundaytimes.lk/971019/sitrep.html

Freeman, M. (2002). Chartering The Narrative Unconscious: Cultural Memory and The Challenge of Autobiography. Narrative Inquiry, 12(1), 193–211.

SecureHotel: A Specialized Muir Analytics Threat Report. (2016, October). Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://securehotel.us/features/15-october-1997-bombing-of-the-galadari-hotel-colombo-sri-lanka

Smith, S., & Watson, J. (2001). Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. University of Minnesota.

Vittachi, I. (1997, November 2). Green Berets unlikely target of Tigers, says US [News]. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from http://www.sundaytimes.lk/971102/news2.html

Telling a Story: The Personal, The Communal and The National I am a blogger. No, I’m not an avid blogger, but it is a medium I am familiar with.

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The original version of the piece below was published on the author's Facebook page.

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Read more: Amid Black Lives Matter protests, fresh calls to remove statuary that hijacks the Caribbean's historical narrative

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