User:B4Melly/sandbox

Janice Gould (born 1949) is a Koyangk'auwi (Konkow, Concow) Maidu writer and scholar. She is the author of Beneath My Heart, Earthquake Weather and co-editor with Dean Rader of Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. Her book Doubters and Dreamers (2011) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award.

Biography
Gould was born in San Diego, California and grew up in Berkeley. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley, earning degrees in Linguistics (B.A) and English (M.A.). She has also earned a Master's degree in Library Science (M.A) from the University of Arizona. She has also completed a certificate in Museum Studies. Her Ph.D. (English) was completed at the University of New Mexico. She was the Hallie Ford Chair in Creative Writing at Willamette University. In 2012 Janice completed a residency for Indigenous Writers at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is also a musician; she plays guitar and accordion.

Career
Gould has instructed at over 13 colleges and universities. She has instructed in the fields of English, Creative Writing, Native American Studies and Women's Studies and served as the Hallie Ford Chair of Creative Writing at Willamette University. As of 2019, she is an associate professor in Women’s and Ethnic Studies, and Native American Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. From 2014 to 2016, Gould served as the Poet Laureate of Pike's Peak. She has published 8 books. These books range from collections of her own poetry, chapbooks, art books and anthologies of essays. Her poetry has been published in over 60 journals, reviews and anthologies.

Gould has been the recipient of many awards for her literary achievements, including the Ford Dissertation Fellowship, the Astraea Foundation Grant, a "Spirit of the Springs" Award from the City of Colorado Springs, and from Native Literatures: Generations.

The Force of Gratitude
The Force of Gratitude is a poetry book written by Gould and published in April of 2017.

The following poem is published in The Force of Gratitude.

"Lavanda que te quiero lavanda"
This poem primarily describes a romantic partner through comparing different features of that partner to natural elements. Such descriptions include: “your body a meadow/ where daylight lingers into long nights.”

One theme of this poem is the sense of happiness and bliss that comes along with the summer season. This bliss is then reflected to this blissful feeling of being close to a romantic partner. For example, Gould compares her partner’s body to long summer days.

A shift occurs from the nostalgic descriptions of romantic, summer bliss when Gould writes in Spanish: “Ausencias y nostalgia, / la triste música del tango” which translates to absences and nostalgia, / the sad music of tango. The overarching tone of the poem becomes nostalgic and yearning when Gould describes San Francisco and the “smell of baked bread and black coffee.” This yearning tone continues on in the last line when Gould describes the “beautiful mouth” of her supposed lover.

Doubters and Dreamers
Doubters and Dreamers is a book of poems and narratives that reflect upon Gould's childhood. The continuous theme throughout this collection is the retelling of her complicated family dynamic, because she grew up with with mixed heritage of Koyangk'auwi Maidu and caucasian American descent. In this collection Gould also emphasizes the centrality of familial ancestry and inter generational legacies by reflecting on how her primary parental figures shaped her childhood.

The following poems are published in Doubters and Dreamers.

“Discontent”
“Discontent” is a poem published in Gould’s book, Doubters and Dreamers. It is a poem about her childhood which focuses on her mother’s strict attitude and obsessive mannerisms.

One stylistic feature of this poem is the manipulation of nine interconnected the stanzas that vary in length. The last three stanzas have one or two lines indicative of her internalized anger. Gould adds layers to the meaning by using enjambment; for example, the sixth stanza enjambs the seventh: “I slammed doors, pounded them / with my fists, screamed, 'Shut up, / shut up, shut up!' She couldn’t.” The seventh stanza starts: “leave us alone. She loved us / too much.”

Taking into account the end of the sixth stanza, “She couldn’t,” has dual meaning. The first meaning is that her mother could not “Shut up.” Furthermore, if the start of the seventh stanza is read in isolation: “leave us alone.” the line is interpreted as a command or a plea to be left alone. When the two stanzas are read together, “She couldn’t / leave us alone.” the meaning is simplified and speaks to her mother’s obsessive persistence.

“Flu, 1962”

“Flu, 1962” is a short narrative published in Gould’s book, Doubters and Dreamers. The narrative starts off with a description of Gould’s unease due to feeling ill while stuck in a traffic jam. Gould juxtaposes this “queasy” feeling with descriptions of the Ranch where she is driving for a weekend retreat. These descriptions include imagery of the various flowers she imagines will be on the ranch. The weekend retreat is run by the “Episcopal Young Churchmen” which is a youth group that is run by the Episcopal Church of the United States.

The narrative continues to describe one night of the retreat where Gould plays the guitar and sings about a song of a young girl who sleeps in her mother’s bed to avoid falling in love with an unfaithful partner. This theme of finding refuge within a mother is revisited at the end of the narrative when Gould climbs into bed with her mother in hopes to soothe her fever.

The closing lines of the narrative describes the feeling Gould’s mother’s “smooth palm” caressing her forehead. This description contrast the earlier imagery of Gould’s forehead on the window of the vehicle while stuck in traffic on the way to the retreat. This concludes the poem on the theme of the comfort and familiarity of a mother’s nurturing gestures.

Additionally in this narrative, Gould includes an interaction between her and her mother where her mother condemns Gould’s sexuality. This hateful interaction solidifies a strong bond between mother and daughter. Despite the constant emotional push and pull from her mother, Gould still finds comfort by laying in bed with her.

Themes
Janice Gould's work re-envisions Indigenous participation in Western society. Her scholarly articles and critical participation at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, marks the emergence of Indigenous poetry as its own study of literature. Politically driven, her poems investigate the truth behind her People’s history and directly confronts colonist amnesia. With themes of “love, loneliness, longing for connection, family, history, place, and music”, Gould’s poetry features the resurgence of Indigenous spiritual connection to the earth.

One consistent theme in Gould’s writing is highlighting and critiquing the mental model of Indigenous deficiency. Indigenous deficiency is a common myth that there is something inherently wrong with Indigenous Peoples and their sociopolitical position is a product of their agency.

LGBTQ2 themes are omnipresent in "Lesbian Landscape" and her new poetry book The Force of Gratitude. Gould has mixed-blood and identifies as a lesbian, because of this she uses the term "Indigenous Assemblage" to categorize race, sex, and gender. Being transgendered is not a modern phenomena, The Force of Gratitude features the resurgence of traditional Indigenous identity to explain that her father was Two Spirited. Most notably, her poetic efforts were recognized by the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice in 1992.

Speak to Me Words
Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary Indigenous Poetry is the only anthology of its kind. Indigenous poetry—a previously veiled and undefined genre of literature—emerges from obscurity in Janice Gould’s collection of essays.

Representative of Indigenous literature, Speak to Me Words is a blend of scholarly articles, criticism, and poetry. The anthologies scope goes back as far as the 1960’s and considers perspectives from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous men and women. In addition to Gould’s work, the anthology features contributions by Paula Allen Gunn, Carter Revard, and Simon Ortiz.

Indigenous literature is not post-colonial literature, Speak to Me Words identifies Indigenous literature as its own genre. In particular, Indigenous poetry is distinguished apart from Indigenous fiction and other narrative forms. The collected essays and criticism are characteristic of the authors who “address pan-Indian tropes of emergence, survival, return, and renewal”. In a unique fashion, each article is intertextually organized to showcase Indigenous history and identity. Traditionally, the study of Indigenous Peoples focuses on who they were. The focal point of this publication is about who Indigenous Peoples are today and "their hopes for healing in the future".

Articles

 * American Indian Women's Poetry: Strategies of Rage and Hope
 * What Happened to My Anger?
 * Lesbian Landscape

Selected Bibliography

 * Seed (2019)
 * The Force of Gratitude (2017)
 * Doubters and Dreamers (2011)
 * Earthquake Weather (1996)
 * Beneath My Heart (1990)
 * Alphabet (1981)

Grants and Scholarhips
Janice Gould is recognized for her poetry and scholarship and therefore has a long list of awards. A few of her most significant accomplishments are as follows:


 * Native Writer-in-Residence, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, Winter 2012.
 * Native Literature Generations Award, 2011.
 * Association of Research Libraries Diversity Scholars Fellowship, 2007.
 * Knowledge River Scholar, University of Arizona, 2006-2008.
 * National Museum of the American Indian Internship, 2007.
 * Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 1994-95.
 * ASTREA Foundation Award for poetry, 1992.
 * National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) literary fellowship, 1989.