Chrystos

Not to be confused with Christos (disambiguation).

Chrystos  (born November 7, 1946, as Christina Smith) is a Menominee two-spirit self-educated writer and activist who has published various books and poems that explore indigenous Americans's civil rights, social justice, and feminism. Chrystos is also a lecturer, writing teacher and fine-artist.

They have our bundles split open in museums
our dresses & shirts at auctions
our languages on tape
our stories in locked rare book libraries
our dances on film
The only part of us they can’t steal
is what we know.

— Chrystos

Life and career

Chrystos – a resident of Bainbridge Island, Washington since 1980 – is a lesbian- and two-spirit-identifying writer, who uses the gender-neutral pronouns they and their. Born off-reservation in San Francisco, California as part of a group called urban Indians, Chrystos was taught to read by a self-educated father, and began writing poetry at age nine. Chrystos did not have English as a first language, and picked it up in the form of Black American street slang while residing in housing projects, only to be scolded and humiliated later for using this register of English. Chrystos also suffered sexual abuse by a relative, and experienced an emotional and abnormal childhood due to an abusive and depressed Euro-immigrant mother, and a father who was ashamed of his Menominee heritage. At the age of seventeen, Chrystos was put into a mental institution for a summer, and claims that survival on the streets would have been uncertain if that had not happened. Chrystos continued to voluntarily enter such institutions for several years, until realizing that it was making the issues worse.

A self-described political poet, Chrystos was inspired by familial angst stemming from white cultural hegemony, and more positively by the work of Audre Lorde, Joy Harjo, Elizabeth Woody, and Lillian Pitt, among others, to produced a series of volumes of poetry and prose throughout the 1980s and 1990s (see bibliography below). The work relies on a diverse mixture of characters and ideas, and focuses on social justice issues, reaching towards a better understanding of how issues such as colonialism, genocide, class and gender affect the lives of women and of indigenous peoples. Much of the writer's childhood is evident in works about street life, gardening, mental institutions, incest, "the Man" (authoritarian patriarchy), love, sex, and hate. The works are primarily intended for an audience of Native American / First Nations, people of color more broadly, and lesbians. They are also aimed at raising awareness of Native American heritage and culture, while breaking down stereotypes. Chrystos self-illustrated many of the covers, and usually had the books published in Canada to work around censorious American publishers and "very little support for writers" in the United States. Chrystos edits minimally, by reading the work aloud and sometimes removing words or changing the way that the lines appear. Breaths, thought, and correlation organize the lines of the poems, which use visually oriented language to create orality. The author takes the approach that poetry and oral readings of it are not truly separate, and embeds internal rhymes, puns, intentional clichés, and other word play into the poetry.

Chrystos has won awards and honors that include a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the Human Rights Freedom of Expression Award, the Sappho Award of Distinction from the Astrea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and a Barbara Demming Grant; and also won the Aude Lorde International Poetry Competition.

Activism work by Chrystos includes efforts to free Norma Jean Croy and Leonard Peltier, and on behalf of the rights of tribes such as Diné (Navajo) and Mohawk.

Bibliography

• This Bridge Called My Back (anthology) Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1981; contributor
• Not Vanishing, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1988, ISBN 0-88974-015-1
• Dream On, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1991
• In Her I Am, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1993
• Fugitive Colors, Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1995, ISBN 1-880834-11-1
• Fire Power, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1995, ISBN 0-88974-047-X
• Some Poems by People I Like (anthology of 5 poets; Sandra Alland, editor) Toronto: SandrasLittleBookshop, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9739540-1-2; contributor

See also

• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
• Native American Studies

References

• Bealy, Joanne. "An Interview with Chrystos"; Off Our Backs, Vol. 33, September 2003, p. 11
• E. Centime Zeleke. "Speaking about Language". Canadian Woman Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2, 1996, pp. 33–35.
• Retter, Yolanda. "Chrystos". Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered History in America, Vol. 1. Edited by Marc Stein. Detroit: Scribner's; 2004, pp. 214–215,
• "Chrystos", biographical entry at the Voices in the Gaps database of the University of Minnesota; 2009. (PDF download from the target page.)