WEBVTT

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Hi.

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Thanks, I appreciate that.

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Layli Long Soldier's
collection "Whereas"

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opens with an epigraph.

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No word has any special
hierarchy over any other."

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Growing up in a Miwok family,
the sentiment was new to me.

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Our language was only used
when English came up short.

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I held both languages,
but they were not equal.

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There was a tugging,
a jerking, the sense

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of being knocked off kilter.

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I saw this struggle and
successful navigation

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reflected in "Whereas."

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As I moved through the book,
a new balance was found.

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In this way, I better
felt my languages weight.

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Long Soldier's use of the
page caught me, the tumbling,

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the crossed out, the erased,
the succinct, the subsumed.

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In this way, "Whereas" speaks
to the [INAUDIBLE] [? peeving ?]

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sense of the unfamiliar.

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We are forced into a
precarity, a vulnerable state

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of disconnected distance between
communication, between words

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and the actions which have
been promised to follow.

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Long Soldier shows us that
to live alongside precarity

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requires more than railing
at those who forced us

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onto these ledges, though I must
admit, that seems useful too,

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and I would never
argue against it.

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Precision in the
face of precarity

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is what makes this collection
of poetry an honor to read.

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In one poem, the
speaker states, "I

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want to be correct
in my languageness."

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This care, this
devotion to respecting

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the heft of the written,
spoken, sung word

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reminds us language
does not always

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have to be hollow or legally
evasive, evasively legal.

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Instead, Long Soldier
has us knock against it,

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has us consider the solid
presence reverberating

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against our momentum,
and so we have

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been given a chance to witness,
to participate, to jump out

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of the circle and find
our own bond to language

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so that we may jump back
in once again, taking all

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that we have learned with us.

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Thanks.

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