Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities by Lisa Tatonetti

Abstract

Reviewed by: Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities by Lisa Tatonetti Kai Pyle Lisa Tatonetti. Written by the Body: Gender Expansiveness and Indigenous Non-Cis Masculinities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. 296 pp. Paper, $25.00. In the past decade, scholarship in Indigenous feminisms, queer Indigenous studies, and Indigenous masculinities has flourished, including lively debate about the relationship between the three. Lisa Tatonetti’s book Written by the Body brings these three co-constituted yet unruly fields together in her wide-ranging analysis of what she terms “Indigenous non-cis masculinities.” Focusing on expressions of masculinity by Indigenous people other than straight cisgender men—women both cis and trans as well as queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming people of all genders—she powerfully argues that these expressions do not detract from Indigenous cis men’s masculinities but transform the concept of Indigenous masculinity altogether. By focusing on depictions of the body, erotics, and affect in various forms of Indigenous media, she develops the notion that these form “a somatic archive of Indigenous knowledge” (17). By the end of the book, she has forcefully shown how this archive of embodied knowledge can serve as a tool for decolonization, transformation, and the creation of new worlds. The book’s evidence encompasses a large array of historical material, literature, and film, beginning in the first chapter, which focuses on both real-life stories of nineteenth-century Indigenous women warriors as well as their earliest depictions in Native women’s writing. From there the book jumps forward to the late twentieth century with an analysis of the erotic in Native women and queer writers’ fiction and an investigation of the place of “big moms” in popular Native writing by Sherman Alexie, Craig Womack, and Louise Erdrich. Chapters 4 and 5 return to the nonfictional stories of Native women as portrayed in documentary films, particularly those who are queer or working in male-dominated spheres; Tatonetti revisits here her previous work on lesbian Ojibwe writer and activist Carole laFavor to demonstrate the impact laFavor’s work has had in Indian Country despite the lack of critical attention she has received. The final chapter addresses most directly the work of recent queer, trans, nonbinary and Two-Spirit writers and filmmakers, showing how they articulate what Tatonetti calls “an erotics of responsibility” that “move[s] beyond merely saying ‘we exist’” (219) into transforming [End Page 151] what Indigenous masculinity, femininity, and queerness actually look like. Although Indigenous masculinity serves as an organizing concept for the book, Tatonetti carefully avoids projecting any definition or even ascribing masculinity onto the Indigenous women and gender noncon-forming people she writes about. This is particularly noticeable in the chapter on “big moms,” some of whom Tatonetti notes are from matriarchal cultures where their actions and self-presentations are not outside the boundary of womanhood or femininity, while others do indeed move into what they themselves consider fields of masculinity. Instead of attributing masculinity to all these figures, her analysis foregrounds their engagement with the body, erotics, and affect to show that “gender is an embodied knowledge that Indigenous peoples use as a shield, as tool, or simply as play, every day” (8). Furthermore, she argues that Indigenous non-cis embodiments of masculinity are potentially central contributors to decolonization through the ways they denaturalize and undo cisheteropatriarchal norms that have been imposed upon and taken up by Indigenous communities. One of the most impressive things about the range of sources Tatonetti has brought together is her equal attentiveness to both high-profile figures of Native literature as well as to those whose work is less well-known. Zitkala-Sa and Louise Erdrich are comfortably placed alongside Carrie House and Carole laFavor, strengthening Tatonetti’s case for the widespread and diverse incarnations of an erotics of responsibility and Indigenous non-cis masculinities in Native literature. This abundance of sources anticipates any potential counterarguments that Indigenous non-cis masculinities are only a small side chapter in the larger story of Indigenous masculinity—counterarguments that Tatonetti hints toward having already received in the introduction. She deftly addresses these possible complaints by showing how Indigenous women and gender-variant people...