Drowning in Fire by Craig S. Womack

Abstract

B o o k R e v ie w s 9 5 warrior to honor his wife’s Nez Percé heritage. Gary becomes a student of vision quests, sweat baths, and Native American lore, in addition to being a well-meaning pain in the neck to his wife and in-laws, who love him anyway. My favorite in the collection is “The History Teacher and the Poet,” a story about a man’s obsession to find a woman known only to him through a picture on the dust cover of a poetry book left behind in a motel room. The story gives McFarland the opportunity to comment directly on his adopted home state: “We crave remoteness, the lack of traffic and even of neighbors, or maybe especially of neighbors, and we’re willing to pay for it with winter. Prizing dis­ tance as we do, we tend to be a bit unneighborly” (213). Drowning in Fire. By Craig S. Womack. Tucson: U n iversity o f A rizona Press, 2001. 294 pages, $35.00/$ 17.95. Reviewed by Lisa Tatonetti U niversity of W isconsin, O shkosh Although there has been a steady rise in the publication of literary work by and about two-spirit, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, and/or queer Native writers since the mid-1970s, Oklahoma Creek-Cherokee author Craig Womack’s Drowning in Fire is one of the first novels to situate a gay Native character as its central protagonist. This follow-up to Womack’s already influen­ tial book of literary criticism, Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism (1999), is most notable, however not for its status as any “first,” but for its nuanced presentation of the intersections between tribal culture and sexuality. Drowning in Fire depicts, among a number of storylines, Josh Henneha’s coming of age as a gay Creek boy in rural Oklahoma. The novel begins in 1964 Weleetka, Oklahoma, as Josh’s Aunt Lucille—a trumpet-playing, strong-willed Muscogee woman who is the unifying force in the novel—heals his earache while, or perhaps more correctly, by melding Muscogee origin stories with tales of family history. This intermingling of various time periods and histories sets the stage for the fluid narrative movement: the 1964 opening is followed by a 1972 episode in which Josh explores his feelings for his Creek schoolmate, Jimmy Alexander, while contending with a constant barrage of homophobia from his adolescent peers; the story then turns to 1911, where a young Lucille learns the power of Muscogee cosmology when her sexually abusive White father dies in a fire. The most recent sections, set in 1993, depict Josh and Jimmy’s redis­ covery of each other as both friends and lovers. In many cases, the narrative transcends the boundaries of linear time entirely. Thus Josh and Jimmy don’t merely hear and recall stories of the Muscogee’s fight against U.S. government allotment policies; they physically participate in these significant historical events. The liminal nature of the people, place, and events underscores Womack’s claim for Muscogee autonomy: the fight for tribal sovereignty does not belong to a dusty inaccessible past; sovereignty, like Muscogee history, is a living on­ going part of tribal life. As Josh Henneha explains, “Creek Land [i]s still waiting WAL 3 8 .1 S P R IN G 2 0 0 3 for us to take it back” (247). Alongside his claims for sovereignty, Womack also maps a historical space for gay identity in Drowning in Fire with the characters of Tarbie and Seborn— contemporaries of turn-of-the-century Muscogee activist Chitto Harjo— whose love for each other is equaled by their love for the Muscogee Nation. Tarbie and Seborn help Josh understand his place in Muscogee culture, show­ ing him that he is not aberrant because of his sexuality, as the rampant homo­ phobia of Christian discourse has led him to believe, but is, instead, part of a grounded and culturally specific tribal continuum that includes men who might today call themselves gay or two-spirit. In a literary era where gay iden­ tity, especially in the case of gay men, is often still cast as “disease” (see...