Lord Have Mercy for These Days

By Alice Rose Crow Maar’aq

We chugged down the Kusquqvak the summer before I turned five. I didn’t wear bright yellow rain gear, a puffy orange life jacket, or black rubber boots with red bands circling high on my calves. I didn’t wear a qaspeq. I was dressed for the occasion of boarding a hulking white ship with a booming Norwegian at its helm to head downriver to greet our Japanese trading partners. 

I went up the rope ladder in a cotton mail order dress Ma chose for me. My raven hair, precision straight, caught the breeze. A length of vibrant red yarn was knotted tight above one hand for protection. The wind blew. I strained to steady my hands and feet on each wooden rung of the slack rope ladder as it banged against the towering white hull. I climbed to Aunty Josy. 

On that part of our journey, in wintertime, Aunty Josy wore an elaborate Akulamuit style atkuk made with dozens of arctic ground squirrel skins and other carefully accumulated materials according to precise patterns handed across generations. She wore her atkuk over a flowery qaspeq with an imported milky square scarf knotted under a strong chin. 

As kids, it was familiar to eagerly await Akula women, like Aunty Josy, reaching generous strong brown hands into deep qaspeq pockets to bring out gentle, warm hands, a tissue, a piece of gum, a dollar. 

I was taught to sew long sleeves narrowing down to our wrists, and roomy hoods to draw tight with a simple bias tape scrap or fancy thumb-braided yarn string cinched with pony bead adornments tied to each end. I was taught to sew qaspiit designed to conveniently protect and pull out what is needed, long enough to cover our bottoms, to keep stinging mosquitos and gnats from vulnerable yet busy necks and arms. The women who taught me sewed and dressed themselves in qaspiit in celebration of who we are, to show where we are from. 

Times have changed since I was a little girl learning to make qaspiit. Only a few of us still sew, swim upstream, know by instinct to try to reach home. 

These days, on this part of our journey, qaspiit are sold by the thousands to be worn by women and men migrated from the tundra to a life of school, meetings, office work, and welfare. Qaspeqs are bought by politicians, and made for legislative staff to don on “Kuspuk Fridays” televised statewide on 360 North. Qaspeqs are worn by immersion students, school teachers, professors, and corporate leaders who don’t pick berries by the five gallon pail or put up fish by the hundreds to feed their families. Many qaspiit don’t have a drawstring to keep nuisances away, aren’t worn with the hood up anyway. Some kuspuks are loose misinterpretations without hoods, with misshapen pockets. It’s not easy to tell where a person is from by the qaspeq style they wear. Not like the ones Ma taught me to sew and wear while travelling the rivers and sloughs of our world. 

On this journey, we are admonished to remember the ones from before, the ancestors who brought us here, what was brought to them, now us. Studied informers are paid a stipend of bagged fruit and pocket money, but how does this help anyone traveling our sloughs and rivers? We name the sequence of sensations: the sting, the heat, the pulse, the itch. 

We join in to intone the triple recitations, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.


Kaapaat


Inside an elongated brown oval box are kaapaat Granny made. Even after all this time I bring up the lid to catch her scent in the heap of perfect black knots she tied. There is the oil of silver hair she braided to the very tips down past her waist before collecting strays between her palms and rolling stray hair into a careful tickly bundle she then stored with the rest. Her Ivory fragrance lingers. A whiff of iqmik brings her full smile close. When I bring up the lid, Granny smiles through warm knowing eyes, tobacco-stained teeth worn down by a lifetime of chewing skins.

Kaapaat are handmade embellished hairnets worn by southwest Alaska women, mostly Russian Orthodox, to signify marriage. It’s been over 30 years since Granny made my first kaapaq. Granny repurposed Popsicle and Creamsicle sticks to act as mesh gauges. She hand-strung red seed beads and blue bugle beads onto thick black thread. She continued to hand-knot the thread to create a vee pattern big enough to contain my long hair. Then she strung the net to black elastic to keep my hair in place. 


Granny went ahead on February 11, 1987. When I open the box and bring her kaapaqs to my face, Granny’s scent grounds me. It’s not really her scent. It’s mine from when my hair was long and raven black. It’s mine from when I coiled my hair around and around my hand to fold it into the kaapaq Granny made for me.


Copyright © Alice Rose Crow~Maar’aq. All rights reserved.



ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Alice Rose Crow~Maar’aq, was born and raised in Bethel, on the Kuskokwim River in southwest Alaska. She lives in Spenard, a westside neighborhood near water and where planes take off and land in southcentral Alaska. Ali is a momma, granny, lover, ilung, relative, and friend. She is a member of the inaugural class of the Institute of American (Indigenous) Arts low-rez MFA in Creative Writing Program, studying under the guidance of Chip Livingston and Elissa Washuta. 

Her memoir An Offering of Words is underway. In it, she explores what holds Central Yup’ik Eskimo and Athabascan people of the Kuskokwim steady in these times of rapid change and anomie. Ali is a member of the Orutsararmuit Native Council and is an original ANCSA Calista and Bethel Native Corporation shareholder.

Abrazando la Diversidad en la Escritura

Embracing Diversity in Writing 
By Aurora Garcia

Being a Latina whose first language is Spanish, I prefer to read and write in Spanish.  There are a couple different reasons for this. First, I love my language. Spanish is a rich, vast, delicious, poetic and fun language. I will in English, especially when something was initially written in English. However, I believe that we often lose some of the meaning the author had intended when writing is translated. Some things just cannot be translated. Yet, when it comes to diversity, not everything needs translating, because some feelings and situations are universal.

My favorite author is Gabriel Garcia Marquez and 
One Hundred Years of Solitude is my favorite book. Garcia Marquez, in my opinion, personifies a perfect writer.  First, the richness of our vocabulary is overwhelming. I can’t get over how he interlaces words that can be so simple and quotidian, yet he and only he could create such magic with those common words.  I love the way he can make you look at a life in a snapshot and make you know that character with all virtues and defects.  I’m in love with his sarcasm, sense of humor and realism. He is realistic in the way he paints a character and then he adds the magical realism that allows you dream and wonder how he came up with those ideas.

I believe that we should all be exposed to diversity in reading. The world is a small place and we need to focus more on the similarities than in our differences. I have read stories about people in China or India and it always goes back to how we can relate or understand their situation. 

Regardless of the culture, we share the same feelings and situations. It probably comes natural for me to feel that way, but it may not be the case for everybody. I witnessed a lot of racism and closed minds. I have seen Caucasians with a sense of entitlement and don’t care to even consider trying to understand other cultures. Or they will travel to other countries and expect the people to adapt to their American ways, instead of enjoying the differences and the richness that each culture has to offer. 

I’ve also seen a lot of rejection in the Latino culture in terms of language. Some may say that their country speaks the best Spanish. People have a need to compare and feel superior to others. For me, loving Spanish, I see differences in language as an excuse to make it more vast and interesting.  When I hear a different Latin-American accent or wording, I find it great and enjoy listening to the different ways of speaking. If everyone were more open and more welcoming to diversity in reading, it would open more possibilities for tolerance amongst everybody.

Thank you to author Terra Trevorwho invited me to join the growing number of readers, authors, publishers and writers who are passionate about diversity and have launched an online campaign calling for more diversity in publishing, and inviting writers to answer the following questions:

Q. Why do you write what you do? And, how does your work differ from others of its genre?

My writing is informal, and sometimes I feel awkward being called a writer. I write off and on, and sometimes there are long stretches when I read instead of write. I enjoy writing, but it is a process I cannot force. Also, when I read works by great writers, I question my writing. I write personal essays, intimate writing, but I also write about society. I believe as a Latina I can write about the mistakes we make as Latinos. It’s like in a family, you feel like you can tell your family what they’re doing wrong, but you cannot stand hearing anybody else telling them the same thing.

One of the first mistakes we make as Latinos is segregation. It would make a huge difference is if every Latin American could see other Latin Americans as part of the same culture. Just like in the language, it would make a tremendous difference if we embraced the different cultures and enjoyed the differences instead of being so defensive. Yes it is great to have a sense of pride in one’s country, but I don’t think it’s contradictory to at the same time have a feeling of inclusion towards others. Embracing the multiplicities of the Spanish language will make us stronger, and offer respect from other countries when they see segregation is not an option.

Q: How does your writing process work?

I write whatever appeals to me, and I believe my passion for writing (and reading) was inherited from my father who wrote songs and poetry.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Aurora Garcia is a nonfiction writer and essayist who was born in La Piedad, Michoacan, Mexico. She moved to California in 1989, when she was 14 years old. This is about the time when she began writing, but throughout her teen and young adult years she kept her writing to herself for fear of being exposed. Although fluent in English and Spanish she instinctively writes in Spanish, as it is her native language. 

Aurora lives with her husband and son. She loves life, nature, art, music, and diversity, admiring the contrasts and richness of her homeland culture, as well as the beautiful language that Spanish is. Aurora believes her passion for writing was inherited from her father who wrote songs and poetry.

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