Wow.
[LAUGHTER]
Good evening.
Buenas noches a todos.
What an honor to be here with you all tonight.
In her recent book, The Man Who Could Move Clouds, Ingrid
Contreras Rojas writes, "To believe
in ghosts was to know the remnants of a past violence
return.
A country that doesn't even believe in its own history
cannot believe in ghosts."
And yet it seems to me that certain ghosts,
certain violences, certain histories
haunt us whether we choose to believe
or not, whether we choose to look or not.
In Bojan Louis's Sinking Bell, the pain
of genocidal capitalism is not conceptual but personal.
Human scale, almost mundane.
Louis's debut collection of stories
follow Indigenous and settler characters
as they settle and struggle with their demons.
Matt Bell writing in BOMB says, quote,
"It's not so much that the characters win
or lose or triumph or change, but that they're
brought to the heart of their needs and their wants."
In their various settings in and around Flagstaff, Arizona,
they want and they need.
And Flagstaff, if you're listening,
it's time that you saw yourself in these stories,
to see that yourself as these stories see you.
But then the same could be said for you, Tucson.
It's time you saw yourself in these stories,
see them see you.
To read Sinking Bell is to not turn away.
In an interview with Alexa Luborsky published
in the Adroit Journal, Bojan says, quote,
"In essence, the central emotional landscape
of these stories is the image of a bell that is sinking.
It is, and has been rendered obsolete--
its purpose to summon, notify, signal, or warn is nullified.
Now, is the bell sinking in water,
in sand, in mud, or perhaps it is sinking metaphorically?
Could it sink through historical trauma or lived trauma?"
This is a book that has been in the making for 16 years,
with its roots in Bojan's time as an MFA
student at ASU in the mid-2000s and even before that.
Quote, "I needed to survive," Bojan says,
"and remake or alter myself in order
to finish writing Sinking Bell."
I like this quotation by Susan Sontag.
She says, "The function of writing
is to explode one's subject--
transform it into something else."
And Bojan and I share an early mentor
in the late Jim Simmerman, poet and professor
at Northern Arizona University.
Since then many transformations, many revolutions.
But to call Jim into the room, especially because he'd
be fond of this other Bojan quote,
"I'm all here for the heresy even for the heresy of self.
And I would be remiss if I did not
mention to you all that these stories are metal as fuck."
[LAUGHTER]
It's true.
Bojan Louis is Diné of Naakai dine'é, born for the Áshííhí.
He is the author of the short story collection Sinking
Bell, Graywolf Press 2022, the poetry collection Currents,
MkBk Press 2017, and the nonfiction chapbook
Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona, The Guillotine Series
2012.
His work can be found in Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected
Essays by Contemporary Writers, When the Light of the World
Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton
Anthology of Native Nations Poetry,
Native Voices Anthology, the Diné Reader:
An Anthology of Navajo Literature.
His honors include a MacDowell fellowship,
and he is a recipient of a 2018 American Book Award.
In addition to teaching at the Institute
for American Indian Arts, Louis is an assistant professor
at the Creative Writing MFA and American Indian Studies
programs at the University of Arizona.
Please, y'all, join me in welcoming the one and only
Bojan Louis.
[APPLAUSE]