Degonwadonti (born May 6, 1941)

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Beth E. Brant (Indian: Degonwadonti) (* 1941 Melvindale, Michigan, other source say in the Tyendinaga reservation in Ontario) is a Mohawk writer.

Beth Brant is the daughter of a white mother (Scots-Irish) and a Mohawk father. She grew up with her father’s family, on the Bay of Quinte Mohawk in Ontario. Most of her life she stayed in the border region of Ontario, Canada and Michigan, USA.

She married at 17, and gave birth to three daughters. After she divorced her violent, alcoholic husband, she got a job to support her family through daily life. She didn’t finish her education. At the age of 33, she came out as a lesbian. In 1981 she began to write and publish anthologies on Native literature. Between 1989 and 1990 she lectured at the University of British Columbia, and in 1993 at the University of Toronto. She works temporarily as teacher for creative writing and lives in Detroit, MI.

Brant characterizes herself as a lesbian mother and grandmother, a Taurus, ascendant Scorpio, a dropout and a woman of the working class.

In 1984 and 1986 she was awarded the Creative Writing Award of the Michigan Council for the Arts, in 1991 the National Endowment for the Arts and 1992 the Canada Council Award in Creative Writing.

In her narratives, she broaches the issues that link her nationality and her homosexuality, like her experiences with racism and sexism, and takes the white immigrants of America into responsibility.
Mohawk Trail, 1985, ISBN 0-932379-02-8
A Gathering of Spirit, anthology of North American Indian women, 1988, ISBN 0-932379-55-9
Food & Spirits, narratives, 1991, ISBN 0-932379-93-1
Writing as Witness, Essay 1994, ISBN 0-88961-200-5
I'll Sing `til the Day I Die, talks with Tyendinaga presbyters, 1995, ISBN 0-9698064-2-6

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Brant


Degonwadonti, 1990, by Robert Giard (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/brbldl_getrec.asp?fld=img&id=1123913)

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices