Rockcreekreviewmay 2023

The Rock
Creek Review
"What is Justice?"
May 2023:: Volume 3, Issue 1
A Glimpse at How Far We've Come

and How Far We've Yet to Go
The Rock Creek Review
What is Justice?
Volume III
May 2023
Heidelberg University
English Department
ISSN: 2689-7415
The Rock Creek Review- May 2023
An Undergraduate Journal of Literary Studies
ISSN: 2689-7415
©2023 Heidelberg University
https://inside.heidelberg.edu/departments-offices/english/rock-creek-review
Founding Editors, Dr. Barry Devine and Danielle Lester
Logo design by Ethan White
Cover design by Kelsey Stanfield
Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Barry Devine
Managing Editor: Kelsey Stanfield
Editors: Makenna Finnegan, Sophia Lee, Kelly Peterson, and Cameron Spraggins
Published by the English Department of Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio.
Chair: Dr. Emily Isaacson
310 E Market Street, Tiffin, Ohio, 44883

Images on the Cover, Used Under Creative Commons Licenses and Cited by Order of
Appearance Left to Right, Top to Bottom.
Duke University Women Participating in a Take Back the Night March. Duke University
Archives, 2013, https://www.hoover.org/research/end-feminism. Accessed 10 Oct.
2022.
Gray, Ben. Stop Asian Hate Rally Draws Huge Crowd in San Francisco, Associated Press,
20 March 2021. https://abc7news.com/stop-asian-hate-rally-san-francisco-crimes-
protest-sf-lives-matter/10441260/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
#MeToo Protestors Holding Signs, Global Fund for Women.

https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/movements/me-too/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
A Gay Pride Parade in London. Getty Images, 6 July 1996. https://daily.jstor.org/the-

stonewall-riots-didnt-start-the-gay-rights-movement/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Clay, Robert. Gay Rights Activists March in San Francisco. Alamy Stock Photo, 1978,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-gay-activists-challenged-politics-
civility-180969579/. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Ryder, David. Man Holding “Black Lives Matter” Sign. Getty Images, 13 July 2013,
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/blacklivesmatter-hashtag-first-appears-
facebook-sparking-a-movement. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
Man Holding “‘Justice’ Do You Know the Meaning?” Sign. Richard B. Russell Library for
Political and Research Studies, June 2022. https://libs.uga.edu/russell-
library/exhibits/iamaman. Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
“Give Me Freedom or Give Me Death” Hunger Strike. Associated Press, 14 July 2016.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/editorial-education-civil-right-n606356.
Accessed 10 Oct. 2022.
About the Editors
Kelsey Stanfield is the Managing Editor of The Rock Creek Review. She is a
third-year English and Communication major with a minor in Philosophy. Kelsey
has been honored to be recognized as an Emerging Student Leader in 2022 and to
receive the Charles M. Legalley Prize in Speech in 2022 in recognition of her
contributions to the Heidelberg Speech Team. She is currently the President of the
Berg Allies and the Berg Body Positivity Association and the President-Elect of her
sorority, Zeta Theta Psi. When she is not organizing events or catching up on
assigned readings, she can often be found working as a writing tutor and tour guide
for Heidelberg University. With what little spare time she does have, Kelsey enjoys
drinking concerning amounts of fruit tea and listening to thrifted records.
Makenna Finnegan is an editor of the The Rock Creek Review 2023 team
and an editor for Morpheus Literary Magazine 2022-23. She is a sophomore AYA
English Education major. Makenna wishes to be a high school English teacher and
eventually go on to earn her PhD in something related to literature. Makenna acts
as both a writer and the entertainment editor for The Kilikilik. She also is a tutor
for the P.A.C.E program. Makenna was a finalist for the Garver Memorial Prize for
First-year writing. In her spare time Makenna reads an abundance of books along
with painting and drawing her unique ideas.
Sophia Lee is a third year English Literature and Music double major from
Wooster, Ohio. She is the secretary for the Delta Sigma Chi sorority, and vice
president of the Tau Mu Sigma music honorary. She is also a member of the Sigma
Tau Delta English honorary and the Alpha Lambda Delta first year
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academic success honorary. Sophia is the principal clarinetist in the Heidelberg

University Symphonic Band. Sophia was an editor on the 2022 Morpheus Literary
Magazine, and she currently works for the Owen Center for Teaching and Learning
as a writing consultant and academic coach. In her free time, you can find her
sitting outside reading novels from the romantic period to the present.
Kelly Peterson is an editor of The Rock Creek Review 2023 team. Kelly is a
sophomore Environmental Science & Sustainability major with a concentration in
watershed science and a minor in Business Administration from Copley, Ohio. She
is also involved with Heidlberg’s Alliance for Sustainability and a tutor for the
P.A.C.E program. Kelly hopes to work in a field related to resource management
and/or conservation. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, skiing, and doing arts and
crafts.
Cameron Spraggins is a third-year student from Dover, Ohio studying

history and writing. He is a captain of the Men’s Golf Team, an active member of
the Sigma Tau Nu Fraternity, and writes for the school newspaper. After
graduating, Cam plans to pursue a graduate degree in International Affairs and
study American foreign policy. In his free time, he can be found hanging out with
his friends, playing golf, or reading about American culture.
Dr. Barry Devine is the Editor-in-Chief and a Founding Editor of The Rock
Creek Review. He is an Assistant Professor of English at Heidelberg University and
teaches Irish and British literature, Literary Theory, and Women's Literature.
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A Note from the Managing Editor
Dear Reader,
What a year it has been!
I first joined The Rock Creek Review staff as an editor in January 2022. I had the
pleasure of reading a plethora of unique, diverse literary criticism. As a mere proof
editor, though, I had no clue that I would soon be extended the opportunity to
assume the role of Managing Editor. However, accepting the offer was one of the
best decisions I could make.
Looking back on our previous two editions, I knew I had big shoes to fill. Emileo
Swain had established a strong reputation for The Rock Creek Review as its first
managing editor, and Chayenne Powers had certainly risen to the challenge as his
successor. With the help of my Editors Makenna Finnegan, Sophia Lee, Kelly
Peterson, and Cameron Spraggins, and the support of our Editor-in-Chief Dr. Barry
Devine, I have been able to create what I hope is an accomplished third edition.
Selecting a theme for the third edition was difficult, but also incredibly easy. Trying
to find one thought that could encapsulate the broad field of literary criticism was a
formidable challenge. Yet, when I looked around the world, I realized that the
answer was right in front of me. I saw people marching in the street, calling for an
end to racial violence. I heard the cries of women who felt their reproductive care
was under attack. Now, I feel the pain of transgender and queer individuals as they
fight for autonomy over their own bodies. In a time when justice feels unattainable,
it is important to examine what justice is.
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Plato posed the question, “What is justice?” in his iconic book The Republic and
proceeded to create a world that he saw as just. Though his own response may be
disagreeable, the suggestion of an in-depth examination of a term we so desperately
call for remains important. While we strive for it, justice seems to be elusive and
ambiguous.
On behalf of The Rock Creek Review editorial team, I encourage you to read these
essays as a response to the question posed. Our submissions this year span across
issues of justice, such as the justice sought in fictional worlds and how justice looks
in our own. I implore you to examine closely how each author interprets and defines
justice. Then, dear reader, I ask that you look within yourself and ask, what is
justice?
Thank you for reading The Rock Creek Review,
Kelsey Stanfield
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Volume III: What is Justice?
Contents
1: Class and “Comical” Characters in Romeo & Juliet and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Elena Rabin
10: Patriarchal Limitations to Cosmopolitanism
Sarah Varnadoe
19: Paradoxical Legitimacy: Understanding LGBTQ+ Christianity

through the Poetry of Jay Hulme
Maddison Tenney
34: “Notes from Coosa” and Indigenous Cosmopolitanism
Meredith Stafford
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42: Cosmopolitanism and the Call for Justice in Lehua M. Taitano’s

“Current, I”
Katherine Harber
56: How the Relationship between the Environment and Gender Effects
the Depiction of Characters in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water
Sean R. Leard
65: Personal Growth Amidst Environmental Injustice in Linda Hogan’s

Solar Storms
Megan Engelhardt
78: The Alchemyst, the Powerful, and the Power of Ideology
Grace Rietscha
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Elena Rabin is a third-year undergraduate student at Oberlin College

majoring in English and minoring in History.
Class and “Comical” Characters in Romeo & Juliet

and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Elena Rabin
Oberlin College
Shakespearean plays are often efficiently categorized as either tragedy or
comedy, setting up genre expectations for readers or viewers. However, the themes,
complex characters, and dialogue within his plays defy assimilation to this binary;
Shakespeare seems at times to be “at war with comedy” and the simplicity of an
audience’s expectations of humor. A result of this “war” is an unease to the laughter
that his jokes or witty dialogue elicit; we are laughing because we’re being led to do
so through wordplay or physicality, but perhaps the content itself is at odds with
this portrayal and reaction. The paradox of comedy is that where there is a
punchline, there must be (for lack of a better metaphor) someone getting punched.
In Shakespeare’s work, somebody or something always seems the butt of the joke,
therein lying the tragic component of tragicomedy. The person (or God, or fate, etc.)
making the joke has power over its subject and power over others’ perception of that
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subject. In this paper, I will use examples from Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer
Night’s Dream to demonstrate how several “comedic” scenes, while often played for
laughs, have a darker tone to them that in these instances primarily come from
humor at lower class characters’ expense.
The first example of this phenomenon that I will explore is an exchange
between Lady Capulet, a moderately wealthy woman, and her daughter Juliet’s
nurse who is a lower-class citizen and servant of the household. The two are trying
to pinpoint Juliet’s age since she will soon be getting married and Nurse launches
into an explanation of how Juliet must be younger than fourteen. The memories and
anecdotes that she references are often played comedically which makes sense given
that on the surface Nurse is somewhat ridiculous; she’s always worrying, running
about, and generally serves as the comedic relief in contrast to Juliet’s earnestness.
Even scholars condemn the Nurse’s digression as “a vast irrelevance” that
“comically slows the action of the episode and provides us with a picture of robust
indelicacy combined with supremely confident simplemindedness” (Sutherland, 127;
Toole, 21). However, I reject this interpretation and propose instead that when
looking past this outward appearance of humor and into the actual content of her
speech, it becomes apparent that her memories are far from a laughing matter.
Nurse tells Lady Capulet “Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen. /
Susan and she, God rest all Christian souls, / Were of an age. Well, Susan is with
God; / She was too good for me. But as I said, / On Lammas Eve at night shall she
be fourteen” (Shakespeare 1.3.18-22). Nurse knows that Juliet is not fourteen
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because she knows her daughter who died as a child was the same age and her
fourteenth birthday hasn’t happened yet. The contrast between this statement of
profound grief and the audience’s potential laughter to it is striking.
Additionally, beyond learning of the tragedy of her daughter’s death, we learn
that Nurse knows her daughter’s birthday while Lady Capulet does not know
Juliet’s. The implication that this lower-class servant is a more caring mother and
is more invested in her child than the wealthy Lady Capulet makes us question the
assumptions we made of their characters and abilities because of their
socioeconomic statuses. Shakespeare takes a moment of situational humor – Lady
Capulet doesn’t know her own daughter’s age and the Nurse is telling a long,
repetitive story – and makes us question responding with laughter. He folds in
implications of their class differences by making plain the Nurse’s grief and ability
as a mother even as we and Lady Capulet don’t take her seriously. Furthermore, by
aligning us with Lady Capulet and giving us the same power over Nurse that she
has, our laughter implicates us in the perpetuation of these power dynamics.
The artisans in A Midsummer Night’s Dream also demonstrate the way that
class defines and tragedizes comedy within Shakespeare. Puck refers to the players
as “rude mechanicals" (Shakespeare 3.2.10). The OED defines “rude” as
“uneducated or unsophisticated people…impolite or discourteous people as a class.”
Through their minimizing and even derogatory title, the players are set up as
“lower-than” characters who are present for our entertainment, but also to serve as
a reminder of the superiority of the Faeries, Theseus, Hippolyta, and the lovers.
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When the players perform in Act V, they are met with skepticism and a reluctant
audience to take them seriously; there is talk throughout their performance about
their mistakes and ridiculousness. Hippolyta says of Quince, “Indeed, he hath
played on this prologue like / a child on a recorder: a sound, but not in government”
to which Theseus responds, “His speech was like a tangled chain: nothing /
impaired, but all disordered. Who is next?” (Shakespeare 5.1.122-125). The royals’
comments on the unsophisticated and simple nature of the performance are justified
if we take it for granted that the “rude mechanicals” are actually rude and
untalented as actors; on the surface this is a fair assumption given their true
professions as a weaver, carpenter, tinker, joiner, tailor, and bellows-mender.
Theseus’ final question, “Who is next?” also shows us that he views the players as
interchangeable and only valuable for as long as they may be fodder for his laughter
and derision. In her article “Playing No Part But Pyramus: Bottom, Celebrity, and
the Early Modern Clown,” Louise Geddes writes that “the play itself condemns
Bottom’s attempts at artistry as hubris” (77). However, there is no actual evidence
for the mediocrity of the performance in the text beyond the comments made by its
upper-class, onstage audience. The play does not “condemn Bottom’s attempts,”
unlike Theseus, Hippolyta, and the audience. Like with Nurse in Romeo & Juliet,
we are led into alignment with the laughing high-class character(s), allowing us to
vicariously experience their sense of superiority.
In his 2016 production of Midsummer at the Folger’s Shakespeare Library,
director Aaron Posner rejected the idea of the players’ performance as mediocre
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fodder for the audience’s laughter. A reviewer of the show wrote of Act 5, “The
tedious and brief play broke the mold of the ridiculous and delivered the only
sincere and beautifully performed deaths of Pyramus and Thisbe I have ever seen.
So much so that it left me feeling guilty about the assumptions I had initially made
regarding their characters.” This presentation of the players and their skills gets to
the heart of what Act V seems to be about beneath its façade as a happy ending of
sorts. The reviewer continues on to say that “until this production I had never
stopped to consider that Bottom could have or be driven by actual talent instead of
just by delusions of grandeur for unattainable talent…surprising as it was
refreshing, Bottom’s validation left tears of sadness instead of laughter in
everyone’s eyes” (Skow, 3). Posner leaned into the potential that Shakespeare
created for exposing the socioeconomic discrimination underlying the end of the
play. The result was a more emotional and reflective experience for the offstage
audience who were forced to confront how the play had made them active
participants in that discrimination. By refusing to make assumptions of characters’
abilities based on their class, Posner revealed how tragic and limiting it is when we
do so; if we instead allow the possibility that the “rude-mechanicals” are talented,
the result is a more moving story as a whole and a play-within-a-play
that might just do its Ovidian source material justice.
Bottom’s transformation and Titania’s subsequent pursuit of him also
provokes the audience into laughing at the lack of agency the two experience; it is
important to note the power dynamics inherent in this “comedy” as Oberon, a

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powerful male figure, manipulates a lower-class character and a woman. Bottom
remarks “I see their knavery. This is to make an ass of / me, to fright me if they
could; but I will not stir from / this place, do what they can. I will walk up and down
/ here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not / afraid” (Shakespeare 3.1.16-
19). Once again, our first impulse is to laugh at Bottom’s predicament, his visual
appearance, the play on the word “ass,” and the image of a donkey-man singing in
the woods to prove his bravery. However, unlike the play in Act V where the
characters’ choices and abilities are the butt (ass?) of the joke, here it is Bottom’s
total lack of control that is the comedic fodder.
Oberon is playing a joke on Titania, although her forced pursuit of Bottom
and our laughter at the two of them is also a punishment and reassertion of their
status; they are not the most powerful. Oberon begins by laughing at this
“romantic” farce he is the puppet-master of before relenting and saying of Titania,
“Her dotage now I do begin to pity. / For meeting her of late behind the wood, / Seek
sweet favours for this hateful fool” (Shakespeare 4.1.46-48). Oberon dehumanizes
Bottom by literally making him part animal and again by insulting him as a
“hateful fool.” Bottom is not to be pitied; only Queen Titania deserves that from us.
Oberon laughs at his trick until he sees Titania “seek sweet favours” from Bottom at
which point the joke is taken too far. There is a “tension between order and disorder
that characterizes A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (Geddes, 76). We are supposed to
laugh at the disorder and appearance of upheaval within the class hierarchy but
when upheaval takes place through romantic mixing between someone on the
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bottom (Bottom) and the Queen, order must be restored. We are given permission to
laugh at and withhold pity from Bottom despite the only difference between him
and Titania, who we do pity for and find her predicament tragic, being their class.
Geddes also writes that “The play repeatedly encourages Bottom to overstep
dramatic boundaries then mercilessly mocks him for doing so…” (70). However,
Bottom is not so much encouraged to overstep boundaries as he is thrown into
situations outside of normal expectations for his person (acting as Pyramus, being
transformed into a donkey) and then laughed at for not fitting into these new roles.
The laughter is not inherent or necessary to the play but comes from accepting the
exploitation of Bottom’s socioeconomic position and corresponding vulnerability.
Nurse in Romeo & Juliet and Bottom and the other players in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream are most often characters played for laughs; their actions and
struggles are a spectacle for an audience that is encouraged to consider them
comical even when their situation is tragic. They illustrate the theatrical paradox of
“fake” personhood; since they are characters, we laugh at them but simultaneously
we must grapple with the uncomfortable knowledge that they are also real people
onstage demonstrating real dynamics of power and control. What do we do when the
content is real, but the characters are not? Shakespeare leaves the door open to
interpretations like Aaron Posner’s that defy the assumptions we are also open to
make about the nature of a scene, a character, etc. Upper class characters in these
two plays such as Oberon, Theseus, and Hippolyta do laugh at the expense of lower-
class characters, but do we have to laugh along with them? The tragedy of Nurse,
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Bottom, and the players is that we have the power to laugh at them and that we
choose to do so despite the textual evidence for the hardships they experience.
These characters are important because they make us question the potential
comedy has to be a tragic exploitation and reassertion of power dynamics, especially
class differences. Shakespeare rejects a simplistic view of comedy and tragedy and
instead weaves the two together in an examination of class hierarchies,
audience/actor power dynamics, and the stereotypical assumptions we make.
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Works Cited
Em Skow, “Review: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Folger Theatre,” in DC
Theater Arts, 1, Nov. 2016, https://dctheaterarts.org/2016/02/01/review-3/.
James Sutherland, “How the Characters Talk,” Shakespeare’s World, ed. James
Sutherlandand Joel Hurstfield (London: Edward Arnold, 1964), p. 127.
Louise Geddes. “Playing No Part But Pyramus: Bottom, Celebrity and the Early
Modern Clown.” Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 28, 2015,
pp. 70-85. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44505190. Accessed 1 October
2022.
Shakespeare, William. Arden Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Bloomsbury, 2017.
Shakespeare, William. Arden Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. Bloomsbury, 2012.
William B. Toole. “The Nurse’s “Vast Irrelevance”: Thematic Foreshadowing in
‘Romeo and Juliet,’” South Atlantic Bulletin, vol.45, no. 1, January 1980, pp.
21-30. JSTOR, https://www.stor.org/stable/3198834. Accessed 30 September
2022.
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Sarah Varnadoe is a sophomore at Berry College. She is double majoring in

English and Digital Storytelling. She enjoys studying the young adult and
fantasy novels and hopes that gains more acceptance in the academic world.
She plans to pursue a career in editing. In her free time, she enjoys reading
fantasy and romantic comedy novels, going to bookstores "just to look
around," watching movies, and listening to music.
Patriarchal Limitations to Cosmopolitanism

Sarah Varnadoe
Berry College
In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf argues that women are naturally more
inclined to explore the world and its diverse cultures due to the constraints of their
birth country. However, this also imposes limitations on the extent of women’s
cosmopolitanism. Martha Nussbaum asserts that one must understand their own
country and culture before they can learn about other countries’ in her article
“Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” She explains that if women are so displaced in
their own country that they try to become a world citizen too quickly, they can never
truly be cosmopolitan. Woolf brings to attention the important issue of women
creating a constricted cosmopolitanism while trying to escape the limitations of the
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patriarchy. Woolf’s argument for women’s world citizenship in comparison to
Nussbaum’s ideas on cosmopolitanism highlights how the bounds of patriarchy are
great enough to also limit escape.
Woolf continuously emphasizes how women were not granted all of the rights
in their country that men were. She highlights how, even when women are able to
do something, men often have to approve it, and if they do not, the women lose what
limited power they have. She writes:
…both the Army and the Navy are closed to our sex. We are not allowed to
fight. Nor again are we allowed to be members of the Stock Exchange…The
less direct but still effective weapons which our brothers, as educated men,
possess in the diplomatic service, in the Church, are also denied to us. We
cannot preach sermons or negotiate treaties. Then again although it is true
that we can write articles or send letters to the Press, the control of the
Press—the decision what to print, what not to print—is entirely in the hands
of your sex. It is true that for the past twenty years we have been admitted to
the Civil Service and to the Bar; but our position there is still very precarious
and our authority of the slightest. (Woolf 11)
In this quote, Woolf lists various rights that men have in England that women do
not, calling to attention the extent of the power men hold over women. She
continues by discussing how even women that are part of the elite class hold very
little power and how the power that they do hold is so slow that it is virtually
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ineffective. She states the “influence of the kind that can be exerted by the
daughters of educated men is very low in power, very slow in action, and very
painful in use” (Woolf 13). Woolf is part of the elite in that she is the daughter of an
educated man; however, this does not afford her the power it would to the son of an
educated man. She has some influence in that she can whisper in her father’s ear
and perhaps convince him to do something out of affection for his daughter, but she
herself cannot take any truly effective action. This is true even in terms of
education. As part of the elite, she should be able to get a college education, but “the
daughters of educated men are not members of Cambridge University” (Woolf 30).
Therefore, they cannot receive the same education or speak on matters of education
as men of the elite class can. This difference in rights was vast enough that it
caused a rift in women’s relationship to the men in their country, and therefore, the
country itself since the men ran it and determined which rights women had.
Women were in such a subservient position that they could not even give
their opinion on topics deemed as men’s tasks. For instance, Woolf mentions how
the letter she is responding to is “remarkable” and “unique” because “when before
has an educated man asked a woman how in her opinion war can be prevented”
(Woolf 3). Throughout her life, war was considered a man’s job, as made clear by
women not being allowed to join the Army or Navy. This letter was the first time
that she was allowed to partake in the topic of war in any manner, and it is still
merely asking for an opinion without the promise of putting her thoughts to use.
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This extreme lack of rights for women led Woolf to believe that she was “a
stepdaughter of England” (Woolf 13) rather than a full daughter of England as men
would consider themselves sons of their home country. Her disconnect from her
country and women’s low status are made clearer in her discussion of how a
woman’s idea of patriotism is different from a man’s:
But the educated man’s sister—what does ‘patriotism’ mean to her? Has she
the same reasons for being proud of England, for loving England, for
defending England? Has she been ‘greatly blessed’ in England? History and
biography when questioned would seem to show that her position in the home
of freedom has been different from her brother’s; and psychology would seem
to hint that history is not without its effect upon mind and body. Therefore
her interpretation of the word ‘patriotism’ may well differ from his. And that
difference may make it extremely difficult for her to understand his definition
of patriotism and the duties it imposes. (Woolf 8-9)
Woolf believes that men would unanimously agree to fight in a war and kill others
for the sake of loyalty to their country because of the position they are afforded
merely due to being men (Woolf 8). However, as a woman, she does not feel this
same patriotic feeling or the sense of duty that accompanies it, and that is due to
her inferior position in British society. Her being devoid of the patriotism men have
thanks to their rights leads her to say “As a woman I have no country. As a woman
I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world” (Woolf 129). This
statement makes it clear that Woolf considers women citizens of the world, or
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cosmopolitans, because of their lack of rights in, and therefore patriotism for, their
home country. No matter which country women come from or go to, they will always
be treated unequally because patriarchal standards are everywhere.
Woolf’s claim is substantiated by Jeannie Im, a senior language lecturer at
New York University who provides further evidence of how women were treated as
disposable and inferior citizens in Britain. Im discusses how there was “a series of
Acts on both sides of the Atlantic [that] formalized the policy of coverture or
relational nationality, whereby women lost their nationality when they married a
foreign national” (Im 570). She remarks how, in Three Guineas, Woolf discusses the
“citizenship gap” that leaves women susceptible to statelessness (Im 571). Woolf
expounds on how a woman’s “political views must then be entirely reversed, and her
filial piety transferred” (Woolf 175) to the nationality of the man she marries
because of the laws that Im believes were enacted to prevent “intermixture of ethnic
and racial groups” (Im 571). This too shows how women were considered disposable
citizens. They were denaturalized if they married a foreigner, but the same policy
did not apply to men marrying foreign women. Furthermore, Im highlights how
“these citizenship policies put women at risk for statelessness because marriage did
not guarantee that a woman would be naturalized in her husband & country, and
women were not guaranteed repatriation once they lost their citizenship” (Im 571-
572). Women would have been forced to become citizens of the world if they married
a foreigner because Britain would denaturalize them and there was also the
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potential that they would not be naturalized by their husband’s country.
Consequently, they had no country to call home.
However, women being forced to become world citizens either because of
marriage laws or because of lack of rights does not automatically make them
cosmopolitan. In fact, it may hinder their cosmopolitanism. A common
misconception about cosmopolitanism is that to be cosmopolitan, you do not have a
home and that you should learn about all people everywhere right away with no
special attention on your country of birth. Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher
and the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the
University of Chicago, rejects these ideas. Her definition of cosmopolitanism is
based on the Stoics’ concept of concentric circles:
The Stoics…suggest that we think of ourselves not as devoid of local
affiliations, but as surrounded by a series of concentric circles. The first one is
drawn around the self; the next takes in one’s immediate family; then follows
the extended family; then, in order, one’s neighbors or local group, one’s
fellow city-dwellers, one’s fellow countrymen—and we can easily add to this
list groupings based on ethnic, linguistic, historical, professional, gender and
sexual identities. Outside all these circles is the largest one, that of humanity
as a whole. Our task as citizens of the world will be to ‘draw the circles
somehow toward the center’ (Stoic philosopher Hierocles, 1st-2nd CE)…
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In other words, we need not give up our special affections and
identifications…We may and should devote special attention to them in
education. (Nussbaum)
This idea of concentric circles eradicates the possibility of women being
cosmopolitan simply because they are forced to be world citizens. Women who feel a
vast lack of connection to their home country do not fulfill all of the necessary
concentric circles. They may not even, in some cases, fulfill the second one. If their
male family members enforce women’s lack of rights too severely within the home
and the family dynamic, a rift may form between the women and the male family
members that would not allow the woman to make it past the initial concentric
circle. Some of the other unfulfilled concentric circles are more obvious, such as the
“fellow city-dwellers” and “fellow countrymen.” All of the circles with the exception
of the first one around the self include the men that are oppressing women, the very
reason that makes women feel as if they have no country to call their own. The men
in a patriarchal society are the ones who determine what rights women have, and it
is women’s lack of rights and treatment as second-class citizens that cause the
disconnect between them and their home country, therefore not permitting them to
be cosmopolitan.
Woolf examines how a “lack of rights and privileges” is transformed into
“freedom from unreal loyalties” (Woolf 78), but having “unreal loyalties” to your
home country prevents you from being truly cosmopolitan. As Nussbaum states,
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special attention must be given to your own nation. An understanding of yourself is
necessary for cosmopolitanism, and this can only occur when you understand your
home country and culture. Patriarchy forces women into a statelessness from which
there is no escape. Women who are forced to become world citizens, as Woolf claims
they are, may be forced into it before they understand their country enough to be
cosmopolitan. Another possibility is that women’s lack of rights leads to a growing
contempt for their country that causes them to not want to have a special attention
on it, therefore not allowing them to be cosmopolitan. No matter which route they
follow to become citizens of the world, the consequences of patriarchal society limits
women’s cosmopolitanism.
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Works Cited
Im, Jeannie. “Gift Subscriptions: Underwriting Emergent Agencies in Virginia
Woolf’s Three Guineas and Agnes Smedley’s Daughter of Earth.” MFS:
Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 59, no. 3, 2013, pp. 569–90. EBSCOhost,
https://doi.org/10.1353/mfs.2013.0036.
Nussbaum, Martha. “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” Boston Review, 23 Sept.
2022, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/martha-nussbaum-patriotism-
and-cosmopolitanism/.
Woolf, Virginia. Three Guineas. Harvest Books, 2016.
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Maddison Tenney is a Queer Latter-Day Saint, artist and activist. She grew
up in Oregon and rural Utah. She is currently finishing a bachelors in
English Literature with minors in Art and Global Women's Studies. Her
work explores the liminality of her identity and her relationship with deity.
Paradoxical Legitimacy: Understanding LGBTQ+

Christianity through the Poetry of Jay Hulme
Madison Tenney
Brigham Young University
“Blessed are the queers;
Who love creation enough to live the truth of it,
Despite a world that tells them they cannot.”
Jay Hulme (90)
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, transgender author, Jay Hulme, stole a bible,
devoured its pages, and found God. He met weekly on a park bench six feet from his
local priest, found Christianity outside of culture, and connected with Christ
through imperfect people and brittle bible pages. I will use the theoretical
background of liberation theology, feminism, and queer religious ethics to explore
how Hulme’s work expands the religious praxis of queer Mormonism. By

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understanding the implications of Hulme’s claim to divine legitimacy, his poetry
expands the current understanding of how LGBTQ+ Latter-Day Saints balance the
conflict between religious rejection and heavenly legitimacy. Hulme suggests that
queerness is not the antithesis to divine connection but the antithesis to a stagnant
patriarchal church culture that belies Christianity’s doctrine. Queerness, both as a
lived sexuality and as a theoretical concept, brings humanity back into religious
orthodoxy. In our post-Christian age, queerness provides a needed revival that
destroys hypocrisy and revives Latter-Day Saint religious tradition.
This paper explores how Jay Hulme’s poetry expands the lived implications of
the potentially contradictory forms of legitimacy that arise within the intersection
of the LGBTQ+ community and Christian theology. The scope of this paper is not to
explore the truism of God, the different religious claims to authority, or even the
truism of Latter-Day Saint theology utilized within this paper. I will then apply this
to the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as an experiment
in critical literary application and analysis. Within queer LDS discourse, there are
two primary critical conversations. Petrey, McDannell, and Ostler take a historical
approach, navigating the relationship between the queer community and the praxis
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints citing cultural trends as the
foundation for homophobia within Church doctrine and policy. At the same time,
Bird, Christofferson, and the contributors to Mormon Feminism conclude that while
there are spaces within the Church to be openly queer, they are either silent or
exclude the ability to be in queer relationships within the church. While McDannell
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and Ostler argue that the church’s past practice of polygamy is inherently queer by
today’s standards and provides a complex step forward for the cultural acceptance
of LGBTQ+ individuals, Petrey cites the church’s conservative views on sexuality
and gender as a blocking point for future development. There is little work
currently done within this discourse that explores how the complete expression of
queerness is not an exception to some divine mandate. Hulme’s work enters the
conversation, arguing that queerness is not exceptional at all, but it is the key to
achieving holy unity with Christ and revitalizing Christianity.
Liberation theology within Christianity reapplies the call to “set at liberty
them that are bruised” and provides a valuable background to contextualize
Hulme’s work (Luke 4:18 KJV). The inclusion of Hulme’s work into the discourse of
queer Christian and Mormon theology also follows the intertextual framework of
Julia Kristeva. She wrote, “we understand texts not as self-contained systems but
as differential and historical, as traces and tracings of otherness since they are
shaped by the repetition and transformation of other textual structures” (Alfaro
268). The act of drawing from and writing within the interplay of the bible as a
literary text, combined with the cultural performances of Christianity, strikes at the
root of queer academic practices and Mormon cultural tradition. As a literary text,
the New Testament calls directly for the inclusion of the “other,” which Hulme uses
to critique the phenomenon of Christian rejection of the LGBTQ+ community.
Cosgrove argues that at the basis of liberation theology is seeing hypocrisy within
Christianity, liberation theologists call for a complete social and political liberation
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of both state and church (506). The work Hulme does is, at its root, liberation
theology. Still, instead of calling for the freedom of a group of people from a social
system, Hulme calls for the release of Christ from cultural Christianity. Hulme
writes, “these structures you’ve built would be trampled / beneath the leveling
might of our Savior’s feet,” reminding the reader of the independence movements of
Latin America during the 1960s and ’70s where liberation theology found its roots
(43). However, while Hulme does critique different churches’ cultural practices of
Christianity, Hulme does not call for a complete rejection of Christianity or
complete societal reconstruction. Instead, he calls for a queering of Christianity that
utilizes foundational views of Christ as both captive and liberator to transform
devotional practice into transcendental grace.
Hulme’s poetic call for a “queerer church” pushes our understanding of the
tension between liberation and belonging within Protestant Christian theology and
expands our knowledge of queering a literary text. Historically, queerness, by
definition, has been limited to the culture, society, or values it seeks to reject
(Whittington 158). Instead, I define queerness, similar to Dozier, as a wholly new
transcendent experience or understanding outside of the patriarchal norms and
values that currently define one’s worldview (298). Similar to the arguments of
Butler, I argue that the values of a patriarchal society belie the ethics of
Christianity. Queerness is more than a rejection. It is a liberation that divides
silver-plated social values from divine alignment. Within this paper, I will use the
word queerness to reference sexualities other than cisgendered heterosexuality, and
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as a critical move to gain new insight and understanding through Sedwick’s
methodology. Sedgwick referred to queer as “the open mesh of possibilities, gaps,
overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses, and excesses of meaning when the
constituent elements of anyone’s gender, or of anyone’s sexuality, aren’t made (or
can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (8). Queerness invites us to challenge
current understandings of biblical texts and seek resolution in spaces that challenge
us to apply Christianity’s foundational grace, inclusion, and love.
Queering Christianity in this way may initially feel uncomfortable, but
Hulme argues that discomfort is a disconnect with patriarchal culture, not divinity.
He writes in the poem, The Love of God; The Loss of Church, “Shake the dust of
their hearts / from the soles of your feet,” citing that the rejection he faces as a gay
man isn’t from God Themselves. It is a byproduct of the cultural dysphoria
surrounding his congregation’s contemporary understanding of Christ. His phrases
parallel the admonition of Christ in the New Testament, who Matthew quotes, “If
anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and
shake the dust off your feet” (Matthew 10:4 NIV). He concludes this stanza by
writing, “There’s a God out here far bigger / than the best of them.'' This separation
between congregational culture and Christ can feel like a dismissal of organized
religion as a whole. However, Hulme doesn’t call for a rejection of Christianity, but
instead sees his rejection as an opportunity to reshape his congregations to align
with biblical teachings more closely. While a church made up of imperfect people
will innately be an imperfect reflection of Christ’s teachings, Hulme balances this,
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and still calls for a complex and more nuanced understanding of Diety and religious
legitimacy. Hulme doesn’t altogether reject all forms of organized religion, but
instead seeks spaces that leave conservative Christian culture in favor of grace-
filled inclusion.
Ultimately, Hulme cites contemporary Christian culture as the stumbling
block preventing an alignment with New Testament theology and doctrine. In the
thread of Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality, Hulme notes human prejudice as the
instigator for current attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ and not a Heavenly mandate
writing:
God sings hymns
based on sermons,
based on books,
based on Bibles,
based on old
mistranslations.
God got lost
in this translation. (39)
The cultural understanding of Christianity, Hulme argues, isn’t a direct God-to-
person pipeline, but we build it through imperfect layers of meaning that
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accumulate and inform each other. Hulme places cultural artifacts of Christianity,
while in conversation with his religious legitimacy, at a lower priority than his
relationship with the Divine. Within Hulme’s framework, legitimacy from God is
vastly more important than cultural or social legitimacy- even when it conflicts with
religious legitimacy. For Latter-day Saints, this creates a divisive complication.
Currently, the Church teaches that the only way to secure a space in the highest
realms of Heaven is through heterosexual, cis-gendered marriages performed in
temples. For queer members, they can remain celibate, enter into mixed-orientation
marriages, or church leaders will excommunicate them for being in LGBTQ+
relationships. The complete expression of queerness, neither celibacy nor ex-
communication, provides an option within Mormon theology for heavenly success.
At its core, the church rejects queerness. Despite this, Ostler argues that current
church policies surrounding the LGBTQ+ community are mired in cultural
prejudice. They call for a return to the original tenets that inspired the faith (96,
107). Holme expands this conflict, and suggests holiness is found in rejection by a
church culture that upholds unethical patriarchal values. From this, lived
queerness acts as sanctification for divine favor and an opportunity for systemic
change.
Hulme utilizes the metaphor of the renovation of the Coventry Cathedral
physical building to envision the implications of this cultural divorcement, saying,
“What you hold on to / doesn’t have to be this; heat-kissed stonework and / fallen
beams” (65). He argues that what we believe is essential to our faith; the cultural
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25
relics of tribalism and homophobia could be released in favor of something that
“preach[es] promises of peace” (65). Hulme creates meaning in the sting of rejection.
Instead of the current either/or approach to queerness and Christianity, Hulme uses
discomfort as a tool to reconnect himself with Deity while inviting organized
religion to slough off toxic narratives surrounding LGBTQ+ identities. Legitimacy
with God borne during rejection sits at the heart of the New Testament storytelling.
As the central figure, Christ openly troubles and rejects the cultural creations
surrounding popular understandings of Judaism. He invited his followers to queer
traditional interpretations of the Old Testament. Instead, He practiced a religion
that held to the tenets of the Old Testament without its accompanying cultural
practices. He proposed the way to find this new religious tradition was by having a
personal relationship with Divinity. Compared to the New Testament narrative,
Hulme’s invitation to “Repair the damage / without renewing all that has been”
provides a practical navigational tool for LGBTQ+ Latter-Day Saints to sort
through their faith and keep what they can repair from cultural corruption.
Restructuring requires more than just keeping the good parts. It also
requires confronting beliefs that queerness is inherently sinful. Hulme’s most
powerful poem imagines Christ dancing in a gay bar. Like the woman’s story with
an issue of blood, a boy reaches out to Christ and begs to be healed of his queerness.
Hulme images Christ saying, “my beautiful child / there is nothing in this heart of
yours / that ever needs to be healed” (88). Within this framework, neither internal
queerness nor queering our understanding of Christianity is a liability. Hulme
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26
transforms them into innate and eternal strengths. Ostler argues for the inherent
queerness of Latter-Day Saint theology, saying, “Becoming queer in Christ means
that we encompass a broad spectrum of genders, orientations, races, abilities, and
experiences. Embracing our collective queerness and peculiarity is an important
step towards godhood” (44). Hulme and Ostler propose that queerness is not a step
away from Christianity or godliness, but the explicit lived expression of queerness
aligns individuals with Divine legitimacy. Akin to the transcendental alignment
offered during sacramental rituals, the lived expression of sexuality and identity
becomes a holy union with Divinity. Hulme compares in the poem, The Alter Frontal
at St. Nicks’s is a Rainbow Flag, a lesbian couple’s partaking of the eucharist to the
communal body of Christ. He writes:
A toddler cries.
His mothers rise to a squat, hold his hands,
walk him slowly round the aisles. They circle the front
where he was baptized alongside one of his mothers. (Hulme 53)
In the middle of this queer family, Hulme proposes that they are “The body of
Christ. The Blood of Christ. / The fellowship of Christ” (53). In this space, Hulme
resolves the paradox between Christian cultural rejection of the queer community
with Christian tenets and the foundational call in the gospel of Matthew to love God
and love neighbor. He centers the LGBTQ+ family as an expression of divinity
itself. The queer community transcends the label as a neighbor, and in their
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27
rejection, they become the contemporary embodiment of Christ. To love the queer
community is to love a lived embodiment of God. The recent rejection of the
LGBTQ+ community by organized religion that LGBTQ+ Christians and Latter-Day
Saints face is unjust, but Hulme molds their othering into holy union with the
divine, even when it contradicts current organizational practices and policies.
However, Hulme continues to hold space for those whose congregations
crucify them at the feet of cultural supremacy. He explores themes of martyrdom
and othering as a gateway into holy unity through the poem, In Search of St
Sebastian. In comparing how he was rejected as a gay man by his church culture,
Hulme compares himself physically with the stained glass representation of St
Sebastian in his cathedral writing:
It’s said if you stand on the pew and
line it up - just right- you’ll see yourself
somehow both dying
and daring, in the agony
of his eyes. (55)
Hulme finds himself rejected by his church because of his sexuality; St Sebastian’s
countrymen reject him for his religious belief, yet he resolves his destruction
through daring to exist despite persecution. Hulme nuances the paradox of being
LGBTQ+ and Christian through similar moves to Hegel’s dialectic. Hulme believes
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28
his identity is given by God and feels like he is given divine legitimacy from Them.
Despite this, Hulme faces rejection from organized religion and Christianity,
claiming to speak for God. To resolve this conflict, Hulme travels the roads of
Damascus and Jerusalem and cites that the real issue isn’t God, nor Christian
tenets, but the man-made cultural artifacts surrounding both. Queer Mormons,
despite organizational rejection, are currently doing the same, which I argue is one
way to solve the moral quandary within cultural Mormonism and queer Latter-Day
Saint practice.
As a queer Latter-Day Saint myself, I argue that if the church as a whole
continues to value contemporary Christian culture over the biblical teachings of
Christ, it will lose its foundational moorings and eventually crumble like Hulme’s
Coventry Cathedral. Meanwhile, I do see space where we can “learn to forgive, / let
us build an edifice that speaks of this; let us turn / this shattering to sunlight, and
preach a promise of peace” (Hulme 65). When Joseph Smith faced rejection by his
community because of the legitimacy he believed came from God, he created a new
space to hold both his newfound relationship with God and the tenets of biblical
faith he grew up with. He founded a church with an open canon, encouraged
individual legitimacy and relationship with God, and put personal revelation before
organizational legitimacy. Hulme, a transgender, queer man over 200 years later,
goes through the same journey with his faith and shares how he resolved conflicting
legitimacy through poetry. Hulme ends his work with this proposal, “And blessed
are those / who believe themselves unworthy of blessing; / what inconceivable
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wonders you hold.” Hulme suggests that those who experience rejection hold the
answers to creating a larger, queerer church. When faced with the conflict between
Mormonism and validity and acceptance from God, LGBTQ+ members of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints resolve this conflict by embracing the
innate queerness of themselves and their religion, even if they have to face rejection
by a culturally organized religion. While they may leave their pews, their rejection
places them next to St Sebastian, Hulme, and Christ himself.
When the Church rejects its LGBTQ+ members, it belies its queer origins and
the inherent queerness in the New Testament teachings of Jesus Christ and the
apostles. Christ proclaimed his mission that, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to
heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18 KJV). Christ
cited his divine legitimacy as justification enough despite the rejection by Jewish
leaders. As Latter-day Saints, if we truly intend to adhere to our founding
principles, we must reject cultural exclusion in favor of the holy embodiment of
inclusion and encourage a queering of our doctrine, policy, and praxis. Queerness is
not a rejection of Christ but an internal alignment with the divine, a holy rite,
which inevitably puts us at odds with patriarchal cultural values. To expand our
theology, we must be unafraid to be a ‘peculiar people’ and find meaning and unity
from the inevitable cultural rejection that comes when we practice radical inclusion
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and grace. Otherwise, we will continue to fall short in creating communities of
belonging, and the body of Christ will never have all its vital members.
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Works Cited
Alfaro, María Jesús Martínez. “Intertextuality: Origins And Development Of The
Concept.” Atlantis, Vol. 18, No. 1, Aedean, 1996, pp. 268–85,
Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/41054827.
Bird, Charlie. “Without the Mask: Coming Out and Coming Into God’s Light.”
Deseret Book, 2020.
Brooks, Johanna, and Rachel Hunt Steenblik. “Mormon Feminism: Essential
Writings.” Oxford University Press, 2017.
Butler, Judith. “Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits Of ‘Sex.’”
Routledge,1993.
Cosgrave, William. “The Theology Of Liberation.” The Furrow, Vol. 37, No. 8, The
Furrow, 1986, pp. 506–16, Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/27678317.
Cheng, Patrick S. “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, And Transgender Liberative Ethics.”
Ethics: A Liberative Approach, Edited By Miguel A. De La Torre, 1517 Media,
2013, pp. 207–22, Https://Doi.Org/10.2307/J.Ctt22h6szv.16.
Dozier, Raine. “Beards, Breasts, and Bodies: Doing Sex in a Gendered World.”
Gender and Society, vol. 19, no. 3, Sage Publications, Inc., 2005, pp. 297–
316, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30044595.
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Harris, W. T. “Hegel’s Four Paradoxes.” The Journal Of Speculative Philosophy,
Vol. 16, No. 2, Penn State University Press, 1882, Pp. 113–22,
Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/25667903.
Hulme, Jay. “The Backwater Sermons.” Canterbury Press, 2021.
McDannell, Colleen. “Sister Saints: Mormon Women Since the End of Polygamy.”
Oxford University Press, 2019, pp 165-171.
Ostler, Blaire. “Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction” By Common Consent
Press, 2021.
Petrey, Taylor G. “Tabernacles Of Clay: Sexuality And Gender In Modern
Mormonism.” University Of North Carolina Press, 2020.
Sedgewick, Eve Kosofsky. “Tendencies: Queer And Now” Routledge, 1994, pp. 1-20.
Whittington, Karl. “Queer.” Studies In Iconography, Vol. 33, Princeton University,
2012, pp. 157–68, Http://Www.Jstor.Org/Stable/23924280.
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Meredith Stafford is a sophomore student at Berry College pursuing a double
major in Creative Writing and German.
“Notes from Coosa” and Indigenous

Cosmopolitanism
Meredith Stafford
Berry College
As a self-identified multicultural person and a member of the Muscogee Creek
Nation, the work of poet Jennifer Elise Foerster is fraught with exploration of her
indigenous roots. In her poem “Notes from Coosa,” she searches for evidence of her
Muscogee heritage in pursuit of what she calls “invisible maps” over a landscape that
has changed since the residence of her ancestors. However, as her poem explores both
specific and global identity, it problematizes the existence of Eurocentric
cosmopolitanism, an ideology that purports to stand for world unity while
simultaneously centralizing European cultural viewpoints. Foerster develops a sense
of cosmopolitanism in “Notes from Coosa” through its exploration of cultural loss and
the natural world, ultimately advocating for the development of a hybridized version
of cosmopolitanism.
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In “Notes From Coosa,” Foerster explores the loss of her Native American roots
through finding evidence of their displacement in the natural world. She begins the
poem lamenting that she finds her ancestors “[...] nowhere that is here nor there. /
Below the sunken Uchee path—iron ore” (Foerster 1-2). These lines show that her
Muscogee ancestors exist just outside of her reach in a space of liminality, neither
“here nor there” because evidence of their existence lies far beneath traceable trails.
Not only does this poem convey Foerster’s own disconnect from her people, but it also
implies their history of displacement and erasure in the United States. Foerster
additionally reckons with this history of being forced off their land, saying, “If it were
easy to leave our bodies / in the fork of Red River, two mounds of earth” (Foerster 9-
10). Her specific use of “fork” conveys a splintering off of cultural history where they
were torn from their geographical roots; it is difficult for Foerster to find a past that
has been deliberately erased. The Red River borders Oklahoma and Texas on former
Native American territory, furthering her motif of divides through mirroring cultural
differences with the river bisecting this contested territory. The “two mounds of
earth” that she mentions have multiple meanings, both culturally and in the physical
world. Firstly, it refers to the two land masses on either side of the river, but even
moreso the mounds that many Native Americans built. It also connotes burial
mounds, summoning implications of indigenous genocide at the hands of colonialism.
Connecting these ideas to the Western modernist idea of cosmopolitanism, Native
American descendants are unable to truly connect with their cultural origins,
meaning that they would fail to achieve this type of cosmopolitanism since it
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35
necessitates a deep understanding of their own citizenship. Therefore, Foerster’s
writing illustrates the difficulty that indigenous peoples have in attaining the typical,
Western sense of cosmopolitanism because of Native Americans’ disconnect from
their cultural roots, necessitating a different version of cosmopolitanism that
accounts for their struggles.
Whereas Foerster is unable to make a concrete connection to her ancestors, she
finds culture through the natural world. She further grieves over her inability to find
her native forebears in “[...] the language where I lost you/ as if you were a sentence
in this poem / and this poem an archive of the forest” (Foerster 13-15). Here, Foerster
makes a connection that fringes on metafiction, saying that this poem itself is her
way of trying to “archive” the forest, and by extension, archive her ancestry. The idea
of the natural world chronicling its inhabitants conveys its ability to retain the
cultural and historical imprints of a group of people, meaning that land is inseparable
from its occupants. This idea is later present in the final lines of the poem, wherein
she observes that on the bluffs, there are “[...] strawberries thinly scattered/and in
the old beaver ponds, briar root, / a bread made of it for times of famine” (Foerster 17-
19). The strawberries mentioned in these lines are evidence of indigenous modes of
subsistence and Foerster is able to find even more evidence of her ancestors through
a sign of survival: the very briar roots they would have used to make bread during
famines. Through these scattered bits of natural evidence, she is able to find a link to
past indigenous ecological knowledge, and through this, the poem necessitates a new
way of considering cultural belonging: one that is interwoven with the environment
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itself. Consequently, “Notes from Coosa” conjures the cosmopolitan idea of “global
citizenship” in a uniquely indigenous way, in which boundaries have no bearing on
cultural identity, but rather all humans are intertwined through the natural world.
Contrasted with the original definition of cosmopolitanism, this new version would
not purely focus on European-descended identities, such as American citizenship, but
take into consideration colonialism’s erasure of marginalized identities and how the
shifting landscape has cataloged this history. In this way, the poem not only reaches
a cosmopolitan conclusion, but also proposes a solution to Eurocentric ways of
thinking such as connecting geography with a new form of post-colonialist
cosmopolitanism.
In a similar fashion, Barney Warf’s journal article “Cosmopolitanism and
Space” explains this link between physical geography and ideology, seeking to
subvert the domination of Eurocentric narratives. The essay itself opposes
nationalism and the prioritized existence of nation-states on the basis that these
divides enshrine certain ways of thinking above others, promoting exclusionary ideals
and xenophobia (Warf 5). Through this argument, Warf outright rejects the notion of
Eurocentric cosmopolitanism, further contending that cosmopolitanism should take
into account how cultures are affected by their geographies and the differences that
spatiality creates in values. The article concludes that, because ideology is linked to
place and circumstance, the hybridity of cosmopolitanism should be embraced,
stating that a geographical focus of ideology reveals that “[...] no single ideology
exemplifies cosmopolitan ideas; rather a series of context-dependent practices in
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which broad notions of cosmopolitan civility are tailored to the specifics of individual
cities and cultures form complex hybrids of similarity and difference” (Warf 5). By
comparison, Foerster’s poem similarly presents a spatially-cognizant portrayal of
cosmopolitanism. Because Native Americans have experienced both deep cultural
connection to their indigenous lands and displacement from these spaces, it is
necessary that cosmopolitanism takes into account these geographical complexities.
It should also consider how the removal of many Native Americans from east of the
Mississippi River and subsequent forced assimilation through residence schools
resulted in the mingling of European and indigenous culture. Therefore, this new
version of cosmopolitanism should not blindly enforce the same European values on
all other cultures, but should seek to thwart the domination of white, colonialist
narratives in favor of honoring indigenous roots through acknowledgement of their
links to geography.
Furthermore, in his article “Nationalism, Indigenism, Cosmopolitanism:
Critical Perspectives on Native American Literatures,” Arnold Krupat demonstrates
how to apply this indigenous-conscious cosmopolitanism towards analyzing native
works. As was demonstrated by Warf, the distance between the ideas of nationalists
and indigenists is immeasurable, but Krupat broaches a solution to this divide
through cosmopolitanism. In response to nationalists, Krupat acknowledges that the
crux of the ideological divide hinges on the concept of sovereignty, wherein First
Nation peoples want to be recognized as independent nations, but have not been
afforded sovereign rule because of colonialism (Krupat 618). In contrast, indigenists
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come from a position of geocentric ideology, in which physical place is more important
than sovereign boundaries. Krupat puts forth cosmopolitanism to bridge these
cultural divides because it recognizes the long history of hybridization that has
complicated the connection between spatiality and its peoples. Through taking into
account this ever changing sphere of multiculturalism, he advocates for a
cosmopolitan hybridization approach to overcoming cultural colonialism. In practice,
considering the works of indigenous people in a cosmopolitan way means that critics
can both acknowledge the political significance of sovereignty and combine it with the
importance of place-specific values. Krupat summarizes that cosmopolitanists know
that “[...] a commitment to sovereignty and the home place are ‘roots’” that Native
American literature is sure to carry with it wherever it may go—or, indeed, choose to
remain” (Krupat 622). Likewise, Foerster’s poem presents this same idea of
indigenous roots being both the physical geography where those roots originated from
and the ways in which those roots have changed through multicultural hybridization.
Through showing the native links to the environment, “Notes from Coosa” further
shows that indigenous people cannot be viewed as the cosmopolitanist idea of
“citizens of the world” without first acknowledging their spatial struggles from
colonialism.
Therefore, based on these concepts, it becomes clear that Foerster’s poem is not
only an example of native cosmopolitanism, but can become a guide within itself for
how to approach cosmopolitanism as a global ideology with spatial implications. Even
as she explores the changing natural world of native Western America territory,
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“Notes from Coosa” is never able to quite reach a strong connection to Foerster’s
indigenous roots because of the impact of colonialism and erosion of the land itself.
Foerster ultimately concludes that the issue of finding her roots is a difficult one, not
able to be solved through a purely geocentric exploration, as even she herself has “[...]
burned the remaining pine” (Foerster 16). However, despite this barrier between past
and present that Foerster acknowledges as inevitable in indigenous lives, she does
not judge the hunt for these roots as fruitless, because the poem itself becomes a way
for her to connect with the natural world, meaning that the culture of her ancestors
is not irrecoverably lost in time but lives on in her pursuit of it. In this way, Foerster’s
words become a roadmap for others in reconciling indigenous cultural loss with
modern implications of cosmopolitanism.
Overall, “Notes from Coosa” is a poem that bridges divides past and present,
ancestry and modernity, geographical origin and world citizenship. Foerster’s writing
ultimately reaches the conclusion that cosmopolitanism should account for the
complexities of spatiality and the long history of colonialist erasure of indigenous
cultures. From this verdict, cosmopolitanism can be seen as a remedy mediating
between the loss of native roots and subsequent cultural hybridization. In its totality,
cosmopolitanism should not only unite people across cultural and physical
boundaries, but also acknowledge the reasons for and impacts of those divides in
order to create an ideology that is truly globally applicable.
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Works Cited
Foerster, Jennifer Elise, Author, Speaker, and Sponsor Library Of Congress. Poetry
And Literature Center. Jennifer Elise Foerster reads and discusses Notes
from Coosa on. 2020. Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress,
www.loc.gov/item/2020785221/.
Krupat, Arnold. “Nationalism, Indigenism, Cosmopolitanism: Critical Perspectives
On Native American Literatures.” The Centennial Review, vol. 42, no. 3,
1998, pp. 617–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23740008. Accessed 2
Dec. 2022.
Warf, Barney. “Cosmopolitanism And Space.” Geographical Review, vol. 102, no. 3,
2012, pp. iii–vi. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41709186. Accessed 2
Dec. 2022.
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Katherine Harber is a sophomore majoring in English and French and

minoring in history at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. She is the copy editor
for Berry’s newspaper, the Campus Carrier, and serves as a mentor to first-
year students with Berry’s Office of Academic Transitions. Katherine enjoys
studying 18th and 19th century American literature and history. In her free
time, she enjoys embroidery, dancing, and exploring new places.
Cosmopolitanism and the Call for Justice in

Lehua M. Taitano’s “Current, I”
Katherine Harber
Berry College
The idea of cosmopolitanism has long been hailed as an equalizing force, as a
way to solve global issues and to break down traditional barriers and biases that
impede cross-cultural interaction. The cosmopolitan emphasis on learning about
one’s own culture and then expanding outward to encompass the entire world allows
for a great deal of exploration, both of the self and of cultures and worldviews beyond
one’s own. Since both poetry and cosmopolitanism can be seen and used as
groundbreaking forces, it is no wonder that cosmopolitan ideas can often be found in
poetry, especially poetry written by poets from marginalized identities. Through the
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lens of philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s definition of cosmopolitanism, Lehua M.
Taitano’s poem “Current, I” can be considered a cosmopolitan poem because it
emphasizes the importance of knowing the self before learning about the world
without ignoring the importance of expanding one’s knowledge and worldview beyond
one’s immediate community. Poems like “Current, I” that develop a cosmopolitan
worldview are also proponents of justice for marginalized identities. This is achieved
not only through cosmopolitanism’s unique approach to identity and culture but also
through the way in which these poems allow writers from marginalized identities to
speak openly about their experiences and to create a space for themselves in fields
which have been historically closed off or hostile towards them.
In addition to cosmopolitan ideas, the condemnation of colonialism is a
recurring theme in the work of many Indigenous American figures, such as in a
speech given by Anton Treuer, a Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University.
Treuer’s speech examines how identity is linked to language and culture and how
important a sense of self and community is for a fulfilling life. In his speech, Treuer
asserts that colonialism is “something that has thoroughly dehumanized everyone”
(226). Indigenous Americans, as survivors of colonialist efforts, continue to grapple
with the trauma of the attempted erasure of their identities and cultures. Works like
Lehua M. Taitano’s poem “Current, I” demonstrate this struggle and reiterate the
profound amount of damage that colonialism has caused. Each individual handles
trauma and adversity in different ways, and as previously mentioned, poetry has long
been an outlet for writers to work through their experiences and struggles. The use
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of poetry to process trauma and to call for justice is reflected in much of Joy Harjo’s
work. Harjo is an accomplished Muscogee poet who served three terms as the United
States Poet Laureate. In her article “Poetry Can Be All This: All of You, All of Me, All
of Us,” Harjo explores the idea of poetry as a liberating force and as an outlet for self-
expression. She explains her realization during her youth that “poetry lived within
our native lands, our communities,” that poetry was for everyone, including her
(Harjo 2). For poets like Harjo and Taitano, poetry is a way to celebrate their
Indigenous American identities and cultures, while also bringing light to the
injustices of colonialism that have haunted Indigenous American communities for
centuries. In addition, Harjo explains that, for herself and her community, “[…]
poetry became a refuge in those times of gathering together, standing up, and
reconfiguring” (2). Harjo discovered that she could use poetry not only to express
herself, but to give her community a voice as well. She realized that poetry is not
simply a form of passive rumination upon suffering, but an active outcry against
injustice and wrongdoing.
Before examining the cosmopolitanism of a specific work, it is important to
establish how cosmopolitanism is defined in this context. The idea of cosmopolitanism
was first introduced by Stoic philosophers, and later explored by Enlightenment
philosopher Immanuel Kant. A number of philosophers have since provided
alternative views on the subject, including Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum’s 1994
article “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” defines and contextualizes the idea of
cosmopolitanism for a more modern, globalized world. According to Nussbaum,
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cosmopolitanism is the view that all people should be seen as human equals, with no
regard for nationality as a differentiating factor between groups. It emphasizes the
idea that all humans are a part of a global community. Nussbaum takes this idea a
step further in “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” by asserting that it is also
imperative to examine oneself and one’s immediate community before seeking to
know more about other cultures or the world in general. She draws on Stoic
philosophers’ ideas of concentric circles to make this argument: “The first one is
drawn around the self; the next takes in one’s immediate family; then follows the
extended family; then, in order, one’s neighbors or local group, one’s fellow city-
dwellers, one’s fellow countrymen” (Nussbaum 2). The concentric circle model allows
for one to know oneself and one’s community properly, as a strong sense of self-
identity is necessary for understanding other cultures without losing one’s own
identity in the process. Nussbaum is not calling for a self-centered worldview, but
rather one that seeks to situate the self appropriately within the world, a worldview
that acknowledges the importance of an individual’s own experiences and culture in
comparison with other cultures.
Despite Nussbaum’s emphasis on the self, she is not advocating for the removal
of national, cultural, or other identifying distinctions between groups of people, nor
is she dismissing the importance of such distinctions for the creation of community
and belonging. Rather, Nussbaum argues that these distinctions do not need to be
considered “superficial,” and that “[…] we may think of our identity as in part
constituted by them” (2). Humans can and should retain the various allegiances and
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differences that allow them to identify with others similar to themselves. However,
these allegiances should be acknowledged in order to better connect with others and
with one’s own identity, and the ultimate goal should be a sense of global citizenship:
“We should work to make all human beings part of our community of dialogue and
concern…and give the circle that defines our humanity a special attention and
respect” (Nussbaum 2). In order to be cosmopolitan, finding commonalities with
people across the world is just as important as connecting with one’s neighbors.
However, forming connections with others begins in one’s immediate community,
which is why Nussbaum advocates for the stoic idea of concentric circles. The
concentric circle model emphasizes the necessity of finding one’s own identity and
community before seeking to learn more about the world beyond that community. It
is far more difficult to meaningfully engage with other cultures and identities if one
does not have a sense of self identity. Furthermore, Nussbaum’s definition of
cosmopolitanism is a judicial way of looking at the world, as it focuses on the
distinguishing features between individuals and groups while maintaining a focus on
global citizenship and the equality of all people, regardless of these distinguishing
attributes.
In the context of “Current, I”, the concept of justice is best defined as the
pursuit of equity and fairness between all members of a society, and by the idea that
past wrongdoings against specific social groups should be acknowledged and rectified.
The concepts of cosmopolitanism and justice, as well as the relationship between
them, are displayed throughout Lehua M. Taitano’s autobiographical poem “Current,
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I” as Taitano explores her identity and how she fits into a world that would rather
she stay hidden, as well as analyzing how her identity as a queer Indigenous
American woman has affected her worldview. Lehua M. Taitano identifies as a queer
CHamoru woman, and her explorations of her queer and CHamoru identities in
“Current, I” add another level to the poem’s cosmopolitanism. The CHamoru, or
Chamorro, people are the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands, including Guam,
where Taitano is from. For members of marginalized identities, such as the LGBTQ+
community or an ethnic minority group, discovering one’s identities can be difficult
because these identities are often affected by the presence of the dominant culture’s
more negative views of them. Even if the culture is not openly hostile towards a
certain identity, there are still individuals who may be, as well as lingering systemic
biases against members of marginalized groups. Through the discussion of her queer
and CHamoru identities in “Current, I,” Taitano creates a dialogue about
marginalized identities and how members of these identities experience the world
differently than members of a majority identity, and it is through dialogue that
deeper understandings of people and cultures are reached. Only by exploring other
perspectives and learning about others’ experiences can one become more
cosmopolitan and begin understanding the call for justice for people of marginalized
identities, and “Current, I” helps facilitate that understanding.
A technique that Taitano employs in “Current, I,” which creates a sense of
cosmopolitanism in the poem, is the use of both singular and plural first-person
pronouns. After a note explaining the significance of the scientific symbol ‘I’ as an
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indicator for the intensity of an electrical current, the poem opens with “Consider: we
are made almost entirely of water and electricity,” which creates a sense of
commonality between the speaker and the reader (Taitano 1). By beginning with
inclusive language as well as with a focus on the common state of all human beings,
Taitano lays the groundwork for a cosmopolitan theme in her poem. Placing emphasis
on the equality of and similarities between all people is a crucial component of
cosmopolitanism, and its inclusion in the beginning of the poem helps to create the
poem’s cosmopolitan theme. In another display of cosmopolitan ideals, the poem
shifts to first person singular pronouns like “me” and “I” as the speaker begins to
explore her ancestry and identity (2-3). Then, the poem shifts back to first person
plural pronouns, beginning with, “Our people were shaped from stone and the pulsing
sea,” which is a reference to the CHamoru creation story (Taitano 4). Because Taitano
identifies as CHamoru, this exploration of the CHamoru creation story is a
representation of her personal experience of drawing a sense of strength and
community from her CHamoru identity. The speaker later describes the CHamoru
people as “whole together,” another suggestion of the sense of community that
Taitano feels in regard to her CHamoru identity (Taitano 5). By displaying the
uniting power of collective stories and beliefs within a community through the
example of the CHamoru creation story, Taitano further emphasizes the importance
of knowing the self and drawing strength from one’s community, an idea which, as
previously noted, Martha Nussbaum also argues for in “Patriotism and
Cosmopolitanism.”
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Later in the poem, the speaker describes herself as “Prism, I. And culture
bending through me,” which is a simultaneous acknowledgement of both personal
identity as well as one’s connection to one’s culture (Taitano 12). This sentence alone
is remarkably cosmopolitan in its blending of the self with one’s culture and
community, a blending which effectively prepares an individual for further self-
reflection as well as further exploration of cultures beyond one’s own. Taitano
furthers the idea of the enthusiastic exploration and discovery of the self by
acknowledging the oppression that members of marginalized groups often face when
trying to engage in self-discovery: “The world spits grapples tries to tie me up in
basements to rid themselves of my insistence” (12). Here, the speaker directly
confronts the dominant American culture’s discomfort with her identity and existence
and acknowledges the United States’ history of trying to erase people like herself from
the cultural narrative. This acknowledgement pushes back against those who would
try to silence her and those like her, and emphatically declares the speaker’s refusal
to be subdued when faced with injustice and suffering.
In one of the speaker’s most emphatic declarations of her identity and her
autonomy, the speaker says in the final lines of the poem, “I expand, I empty, I carry
within a hundred thousand wombs of spectacular light” (Taitano 13). The speaker’s
heritage and her confidence in herself allow her to define herself on her own terms,
not by external expectations or pressures. Through the use of insistent phrases
containing first person singular pronouns, Taitano develops the speaker’s
unassailable sense of self, which refuses to be subdued by others’ potential discomfort
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with her identity as a queer CHamoru woman. The combined use of both singular
and plural first-person pronouns throughout the poem gives “Current, I” a distinctly
cosmopolitan theme that equally acknowledges the importance of having a strong
sense of self along with the view that one is not merely a citizen of a particular country
or culture, but a global citizen. It is this deliberate use of language that makes
“Current, I” not just a poem about the self and one’s identities, but also about how
the self relates to culture and to the rest of the world, which makes “Current, I” a
cosmopolitan poem.
In addition to her CHamoru identity, Taitano also identifies as queer, an
identity which further complicates her presence in a country where the dominant
culture has only fairly recently begun to shift towards acceptance of the LGBTQ+
community. She acknowledges the sometimes painful experience of existing
unapologetically as oneself when it seems that the world does not want to make space
for one’s identities. In her exploration of queer identity in “Current, I”, Taitano
analyzes the relationship between queerness and the self. The speaker asserts that
she is “concurrent with every iteration of subatomic movement,” declaring her sense
of connection with the natural world, her innate sense of belonging to the universe,
and her self-confidence (Taitano 8). She then asks, “How, then am I queer? Queer?
Queered?” which reflects the speaker’s sense that “queer” is a label that has been
projected onto her, not necessarily one that she fully resonates with (Taitano 9). The
speaker’s sense of self does not require a label like “queer,” but nevertheless she has
adopted the label because it is what the majority culture in America expects her to
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do. The speaker explains, “I am also only (queer) because there is a world outside of
mine” (Taitano 8-9, author’s parentheses). The speaker is only queer because the
majority culture in America considers her sexuality to be outside the norm. By
deconstructing the use of labels like “queer,” Taitano furthers the poem’s
cosmopolitanism, because cosmopolitanism requires one to critically examine and
deconstruct cultural frameworks, especially if those frameworks exist to divide
society into ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups.
Though the LGBTQ+ community has reclaimed the word “queer,” it was
originally used as a slur to shame and ostracize people who did not conform to
heterosexual, cisgender norms. Furthermore, with the poem’s deconstruction of the
“queer” label, Taitano also calls for justice for queer people like herself. The speaker’s
questioning of the “queer” label demonstrates a miniscule part of the queer
experience in the United States. She acknowledges that, “If the world were only me,
I would seem just so,” that the only reason her queer identity makes her stand out as
“different” is because American culture considers queerness to be abnormal, that if
the speaker were in her own world, she would not have any reason to consider herself
“abnormal” (Taitano 10). By exploring how queer people experience life differently
than heterosexual people in America, Taitano is able to subtly call for a change in
America’s cultural view of queer people, a shift towards equal and just treatment for
the LGBTQ+ community. Because of its ultimate goal of equality between all humans
regardless of nationality or other identities, cosmopolitanism is an inherently judicial
worldview that can, when implemented appropriately, be a force for justice for
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marginalized groups. The cosmopolitan view of the world and the self that the
speaker takes in “Current, I” advocates for a sense of global citizenship and equality
between all humans, which can only be reached if justice is pursued for those who
have historically been denied equal treatment in culture and politics.
In a similar vein as her analysis of queer identity in “Current, I”, Taitano’s
analysis of her Indigenous American identity in this work takes a cosmopolitan view
of ethnic and cultural identity that condemns the United States government’s historic
violence towards Indigenous Americans and calls for justice for indigenous groups.
The speaker alternates between the condemnation of violence against indigenous
people and the celebration of indigenous culture, specifically CHamoru culture. In
one such denunciation of the violence and injustices committed against Indigenous
Americans, the speaker explains that, “[…] my mother was conceived during a war
waged on brown bodies and birthed me under a moon obscured by flags” (Taitano 2).
In one sentence, Taitano effectively highlights the violence against her people that
has been a shadow over her life and her mother’s life and even her grandparents’
lives. She directly acknowledges how Indigenous Americans were singled out and
stripped of their autonomy, and subtly yet clearly communicates the suffering that
resulted from the atrocities inflicted upon Indigenous Americans by the United
States. Additionally, the mention of a “moon obscured by flags” evokes the sense of
intrusion and destruction that Indigenous Americans have experienced for centuries
as a result of the harmful idea that non-Western cultures are somehow “primitive” or
“backwards” and must be erased. Throughout the poem, the reader is confronted with
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the destructive nature of colonialism and forced to acknowledge the need for justice
for those wronged by colonialist and racist practices and beliefs.
“Current, I” embodies the idea that poetry is for anyone, and that it can be used
as an outlet as well as a way to advocate for oneself and one’s community, just as
Harjo explains. The use of poetry to advocate for justice and to unite and comfort a
community is especially cosmopolitan, because it focuses on the humanity of those
who have faced injustices. Taitano uses “Current, I” to condemn the centuries of
violence that Indigenous Americans have faced and to call for a better future in which
those injustices are acknowledged and atoned for. The poem’s theme of
cosmopolitanism helps to emphasize the importance of these actions, because
cosmopolitanism requires injustices to be corrected and inequalities to be addressed
in order to create a world of equal human beings who consider themselves citizens of
the world, instead of focusing solely on their own nations and forsaking all others in
the process.
Lehua M. Taitano’s poem “Current, I” has a uniquely cosmopolitan theme
because it emphasizes the importance of both the self as well as knowledge of the
world and the correction of injustices in order to create a world of global citizens.
Based on the concentric circle model of cosmopolitanism, knowing oneself and one’s
community is a crucial foundation for authentic cosmopolitanism, which Taitano’s
poem explores in depth. In addition, the deconstruction of dominant cultural
narratives around marginalized identities, as well as the acknowledgement of
injustices that members of those identities have historically faced are also important
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for developing a holistic, authentic sense of cosmopolitanism. Not only that, but these
actions also help further the movement towards justice for marginalized
communities. The combined ideas of cosmopolitanism and justice in “Current, I” allow
the poem to function as an unapologetic assertion of the self and the community that
points the reader towards ideas for a better future for humanity as a whole.
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Works Cited
Harjo, Joy. “Poetry Can Be All This: All of You, All of Me, All of Us.” Studies in
American Indian Literatures, vol. 16, no. 4, 2004, pp. 47–50. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20739517. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.
“Lehua M. Taitano Reads and Discusses Current, I on July 19, 2020.” The Library
of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2020785231/.
Nussbaum, Martha C. Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism. Boston Review, 1 Oct.
1994, https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/martha-nussbaum-patriotism-
and-cosmopolitanism/.
Treuer, Anton. “Indigenous Voice: Language and Identity in America’s Native
Nations.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 163, no. 3,
2019, pp. 220–26. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45380632. Accessed 1
Dec. 2022.
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Sean is a Sophomore at Berry College in Rome Georgia. Originally from
Lavonia Georgia, Sean grew up on a small hobby farm and is interested in
music, psychology, and writing of all kinds. He plays saxophone, has written
two short screen plays, and is in a punk band called The Strangers.
How the Relationship between the Environment

and Gender Effects the Depiction of Characters in
Helon Habila’s Oil on Water
Sean R. Leard
Berry College
Helon Habila writes a fantastic novel on the subject of environmental conflict
in the Niger Delta. The book follows a young man named Rufus, who is on the tail of
a story that has huge potential to take his career to the next level. As he traverses
the delta with washed up reporter Zaq, he learns that the story he is chasing is more
than just a means to fortune and fame. As corporations destroy the environment,
militant fighters wreak havoc in the name of retaking control of resources for the
people, and the military fights a seemingly never-ending battle against these
hardened rebels. All the while, the locals are caught in the middle of the three parties,
finding little respite in their oil-drenched homeland. Through Habila’s puzzle piece
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style of storytelling, the reading slowly assembles an intricate picture of what the
situation in the Niger Delta really is. The images Habila conjures are filled with
characters of different backgrounds, identities, and unique motives. The interactions
between these diverse characters demonstrate an interesting trend throughout the
story as well. In Helon Habila’s novel Oil on Water, the male character’s personal
exploits come at the expense of the environment, as well as the female character’s
well-being.
In Habila’s story, many characters are in it for themselves, and the men in this
story are no exception to this. For example, the Major is a high-ranking officer of the
Nigerian military, tasked with battling the rebels hidden in the humid enclaves of
the Niger Delta. These rebels are notorious for kidnapping, the risks of which the
Major is all too familiar with. His own daughter was a victim of kidnapping at the
hands of a group of young men; she was assaulted by them, suffering greatly, and the
men did not see justice by the law. The Major decided to take the law into his own
hands to avenge his daughter. The narrator learns that this experience has haunted
him ever since. The Major’s fight against the militants includes many questionable
tactics such as torturing his prisoners every morning by dumping gasoline on their
heads, drenching them in the wretched fuel. Rufus witnesses The Major douse a
group of prisoners firsthand, watching as he “started to pour the water on the head
of the man on the outer right. Then the unmistakable acrid smell reached [him]”
(Habila 59). The Major is also not averse to destroying property, striking fear into the
innocent inhabitants of the riverway. Rufus is told by The Major himself that the once
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untouched and peaceful island of Irifeke “is now mostly ashes and rubble, bombed by
the gun helicopter over there” (Habila 166). It seems that these immoral and
destructive methods may be about more than just serving his country. Furthermore,
surely pouring out gasoline and bombing villages cannot be healthy for the already
war-ravaged environment. Another example of a man with a questionable mission is
The Professor, the leader of the militants. The Professor preaches liberation of the
environment and the end of military interference with their fight for justice. One
scene shows The Professor telling Rufus what he must write about his mission in the
Delta, telling Rufus that when he returns home, he must:
Write only the truth. Tell them about the flares you see at night, and the oil on
the water. And the soldiers forcing us to escalate the violence every day. Tell
them how we are hounded daily in our own land. Where do they want us to go,
tell me, where? Tell them we are going nowhere. This land belongs to us. That
is the truth, remember that. (Habila 232)
This rabble-rouser is responsible for many kidnappings in the nearby city of Port
Harcourt, his most recent victim being the wife of a notable employee of a powerful
oil corporation. The money from this ransom will certainly be used to help pay for
some of their most recent losses. Rufus learns from a militant that “The Professor
needed to raise money quick quick to pay for a consignment of guns he was expecting
from overseas” (Habila 213). The militants stand to make “At least five million”
(Habila 226). It is later made apparent that The Professor is willing to put his
hostage's safety at risk if this money is not delivered. The Professor tells Rufus to
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inform Mr. Floode that “his wife is safe, but after two days, if we don’t hear from him,
we can't guarantee her safety anymore” (Habila 231). Knowing how much the
militants could profit from their hostage and seeing how willing they are to harm her
suggests something important. The Professor must be quite confident in his ability to
find another hostage as valuable as Isabelle, especially in his time of need. This
reinforces the idea that The Professor only sees this innocent woman as a means to
an end, despite her lack of involvement in supporting the oil industry. He could easily
replace her with another asset as if she were a burnt-out light bulb, no longer of use.
The Professor is also a bit hypocritical in how he goes about fighting for the
environment. His methods include such tactics destroying oil depots. The Professor
tells Rufus that his soldiers are “going out on an operation; you may have noticed the
whole camp getting ready. By this time tomorrow, one of the major oil depots will be
burning” (Habila 231) While in the grand scheme of environmental liberation, this
may be a small cost to pay. Regardless, there is no way that entire depots of oil spilling
into the soil can benefit the local inhabitants. These examples show how the
hypocritical quests of these men leave a path of destruction, endangering countless
innocent men, children, and of course women, as well as the environment.
The oppression of women in this novel is entangled in the exploitation of the
environment by patriarchal figures. The women in this story have their own goals
and ambitions, but these are cut short by the men seeking their own fortunes,
whether it be their claim to seek environmental liberation, or outright exploit it. The
character Isabelle is a prime example of a woman who just wants to be happy but is
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taken advantage of by men for their own gain. Isabelle is the woman taken hostage
by The Professor and is the wife of Mr. Floode, a wealthy and important employee of
a major oil corporation. Isabelle is having a tough time when she is kidnapped, which
only makes things worse. After years of a strained marriage to her distant husband
(both literally and figuratively), she decided she was “going to go to Nigeria on a
surprise visit,” and “get pregnant” (Habila 200) in order to save their marriage.
However, sometime after she arrives in Nigeria, where her husband is currently
employed, she learns that he “was seeing someone else” (Habila 200). Not only does
Isabelle learn that her husband is cheating on her, but the “affair had been going on
for a while … and that she was pregnant” (Habila 201). After her plans to fix things
are ruined by Mr. Floode’s selfishness, she learns that her driver, Mr. Salomon, was
engaged to the maid that Mr. Floode was having an affair with. He tells Isabelle that,
“Yesterday she told me she was pregnant,” and that, “She is pregnant by the Oga [Mr.
Floode]” (Habila 202). Despite the connection they now share through grief, Mr.
Salomon decides to hold Isabelle for ransom after being convinced by his friends. This
act is justified to Salomon by one of these friends, who tells Salomon that “technically
it wasn’t even kidnapping’ [he would] just be collecting payment for all the pain these
people caused [him]” (Habila 220). The plan eventually goes awry, with Salomon and
Isabelle ending up in the clutches of The Professor. Floode’s connections to the
exploitation of the environment make his wife a perfect target for kidnapping by the
enemies of his employer. While Salomon’s connections to environmental degradation
are much vaguer, he is still a man taking advantage of a woman’s value for his own
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personal gain, which he does despite their common suffering. Rufus’s sister is another
noteworthy example of a woman whose own ambitions are foiled by selfish men and
the conquest of natural resources. The father of Rufus and his sister Boma was once
a teacher and a practicing Christian. Rufus recalls how everyday his father “wakes
us up at six a. m. daily to seek God's intervention in our affairs” (Habila 67). His fall
from grace is propelled by the search for a better paying job after the oil company
leaves town. When the oil company leaves, their father and many others are left
unemployed and in search of new work. Rufus recalls that “he [had] lost his job, just
like half the town. They had all worked for the ABZ Oil Company, and now the people,
once awash in oil money, watch in astonishment as the streets daily fill up with
fleeing families” (Habila 67). The father turns to selling illegally refined oil, telling
Rufus that “This is the only business booming in this town. I buy from little children.
I buy cheap and I sell cheap to the cars that come here at night” (Habila 69). His
father shows him a “large barn at the back of the house,”of which Rufus remarks how
“Even before he opened the door [he] could smell the petrol, and when he turned on
the light, [he] saw more than ten drums” (Habila 69). The dangers of such a practice
are made apparent when a fire starts. There was “An explosion in the barn with the
oil drums. The fire flew on the wind from house to house, an in minutes half the town
was ablaze.” (Habila 3). It is this blaze, caused by Boma and Rufus’s father’s barn of
petrol, that maims Boma. Rufus laments that “as [his] sister burned, and [his] family
disintegrated, [he] was in Lagos listening to lectures, eating dinner in Chinese
restaurants, and [he] didn’t hear the tragedy till [he] returned home with [his]
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journalism certificate” (Habila 3). Once again, another woman in this novel is the
victim of a man’s selfishness, as well as the dangers created by resource extraction.
Her father’s illegal petrol starts a fire that maims his own daughter, petrol that, while
he chooses to sell illegally, would not have to be sold at all if the oil company had not
left him unemployed. These examples demonstrate the adversity faced by two of the
most significant women in this novel’s cast of characters at the hands of men and the
exploitation of the environment.
In conclusion, the connection between the environment and gender is
demonstrated numerous times throughout Oil on Water. Feminine characters are
repeatedly taken advantage of by men who are only worried about their own personal
gain. In the same light, these men are also not concerned about the plight of the
environment unless it serves to get them closer to getting what they want, whether
that is revenge, money, fame, or happiness. This similar conclusion was also made in
an article published in the International Journal of Language and Literary Studies,
that states that:
The patriarchal exploitation of women and the natural environment is the
novel's other major issue. Women in the novel are depicted as victims of men
in many ways. They are represented as victims of rape, assault, and abduction.
Women and girls are exploited by men from all walks of life. Furthermore, the
novel bluntly depicts the exploitation of Mother Earth. International oil
companies are repeatedly accused of extracting oil for their profit and then
polluting the environment in the novel. As a result, the novel depicts the
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parallel exploitation of both women and nature in general. (Michael& Daniel,
16)
In the end, it is powerful men’s search for their own happiness through the
exploitation of environmental catastrophe that, much like the oil on the water,
smothers the ambitions of the women around them.
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Works Cited
Habila, Helon. Oil on Water. W.W. Norton, 2011.
Michael, Ngusse, and Abiye Daniel. “Ecofeminist Issues in Helon Habila’s Novel Oil
on Water.” International Journal of Language and Literary Studies, vol. 4,
no. 2, 2022, pp. 205–222., https://doi.org/10.36892/ijlls.v4i2.806.
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Megan Engelhardt is from Pinckneyville, Illinois and a junior at Lyon
College. She is a Business Administration major with an emphasis in
accounting and finance.
Personal Growth Amidst Environmental Injustice

in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms
Megan Engelhardt
Lyon College
Linda Hogan’s novel Solar Storms (1995) tells the story of Angel, a young
indigenous woman who has lived in foster homes her whole life. When she turns
seventeen years old, Angel is united with her great-grandmother Agnes Iron, who
tells her to come to stay with her. Agnes lives in a fictive place called Adam’s Rib, a
coastal indigenous community adjacent to the upper Midwest region of the US, but
in dispute between the US, Canada, and their indigenous nations. At Adam’s Rib,
Angel also meets with Dora-Rouge (Agnes’s mother) and Bush, her step-
grandmother, and the caretaker of Angel’s alienated mother. Angel begins to form
relationships with her family members and other residents of Adam’s Rib. She
learns many new skills that help her assimilate into a new way of life, such as
swimming, canoeing, and fishing. One day, two men arrive at Adam’s Rib and
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inform the community of BEEVCO corporation’s plans for building dams on the
lands of the so-called Fat Eaters, which is near Dora-Rouge’s ancestral homeland of
Holy String Town. Soon after their encounter with the two men, Angel, Bush, Dora-
Rouge, and Agnes decide to travel to Holy String Town, a fictive place near the
Boundary Waters region. Bush wants to aid in the resistance movement against
BEEVCO’s plans in Holy String Town whatever ways she can. As to the others’
reasons for traveling, Angel wants to meet her mother Hannah, Dora-Rouge wants
to die peacefully in her ancestral homeland, and Agnes wishes to accompany her
mother Dora-Rouge. The rest of the novel follows the four women as they make the
long, treacherous journey to the land of the Fat Eaters to support the locals’ fight
for their indigenous rights. Hogan’s novel incorporates two major narratives,
namely that of Angel’s personal growth and that of the native resistance against
BEEVCO’s dam-building project near Dora-Rouge’s ancestral homeland. These two
narratives are intertwined throughout the novel, such that Angel is able to find a
sense of purpose and her place within her new indigenous community after joining
the resistance movement. The experiences she has in Holy String Town (the site of
the proposed dams) and the people she meets while protesting the dam construction
(including significant indigenous activists) contribute to the changes that take place
in Angel’s personality throughout the novel.
Angel’s character develops greatly from the beginning to the end of the novel,
creating an important narrative arc. Angel, having grown up in the foster care
system, attempts to assimilate into the life she would have lived with her
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indigenous family members. When Angel arrives in Adam’s Rib to meet her
grandmothers, Angel is depicted as a girl who does not know who she is or where
she belongs. Angel is mentally and physically scarred from her childhood, her face
contains scars given to her by her mother, who seemed to have been taken over by a
violent mythical force that inhabited her. Angel fears many things, hiding her facial
scars wherever she goes. The three women Angel joins in Adam’s Rib play
important roles in Angel’s personal growth and healing process. Theresa Smith and
Jill Fiore explain how Angel is helped by Dora-Rouge, Agnes, and Bush. The co-
authors write, “As Dora-Rouge, Agnes, and Bush begin to provide missing pieces
that mirror the reality of Angel’s identity, and as she finds her place among them,
Angel begins to see possibilities of a very different self” (Smith and Fiore 73). The
women provide a path for Angel to grow into the woman she likely would have
become if she grew up in the care of the women and the rest of their people instead
of in a series of foster homes. Bush especially aids in Angel’s mental growth. Angel,
previously terrified of water, asks Bush to teach her how to swim in the freezing
water (Hogan 92). Taking on new and frightening challenges is something that
Angel would not have considered previously before arriving at Adam’s Rib. With
Bush’s encouragement, Angel develops the mental toughness and bravery needed to
learn this new skill, showing the growth of her character. Later in the novel, Bush
also explains to Angel that her scars should not be looked at as a sign of weakness,
but one of healing (Hogan 125). Angel puts this wisdom into practice when later she
is asked by Tommy, Angel’s love interest in the novel, where she acquired the scars.
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In response, Angel pretends not to notice the scars (Hogan 125). Angel’s response
proves that she can see past her childhood trauma, and she is now able to see that
there is more to her than her scars.
Angel begins to form deeper connections with the people in Adam’s Rib,
especially with Tommy. Their relationship becomes a significant indicator of her
emotional growth. Before Angel’s arrival at Adam's Rib, she suffered from an
extreme lack of self-esteem and self-respect, which caused her to be content with
unhealthy forms of relationship. As Irene Vernon explains, “Similar to other
traumatized women, Angel engages in unhealthy relationships, for she has a
diminished sense of self and little self-respect” (Vernon 44). Before returning to
Adam’s Rib, Angel would give herself to any boy or man who would take her,
regardless of the presence of love (Hogan 54). Once she even used sex as a tool for
gaining money, proving her lack of self-respect (Hogan 117). Signifying a change in
emotional maturity, Angel develops her first healthy relationship with Tommy,
proving how she is beginning to find her sense of self, and gaining respect for
herself and her body. Creating deeper relationships leads her to realize the
importance of community and love, two things she never found in the series of foster
homes she previously lived in. Angel continues to grow mentally and emotionally
throughout the rest of the novel with the help of friends and family.
Angel’s personal growth narrative is also propelled by her finding active roles
in her indigenous community, including being the caretaker of Dora Rouge and her
stepsister Aurora. First, Angel takes on the role of being Dora Rouge’s caretaker
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when they commence on their journey to Two-Town and Holy String Town. On their
lengthy journey to Two-Town, Angel often carries Dora Rouge, who cannot not walk,
in a chair over long stretches of land. As Smith and Fiore explain in their article,
Angel is acting by the native custom of returning the favor of the grandmother’s
healing and wisdom by acts of respect and service (Smith and Fiore 74). These acts
show Angel acknowledging their indigenous customs and due to this transition into
being a caretaker, rather than being one who needs to be taken care of. Her next
caretaking role comes later, after reaching Two-Town and meeting her estranged
mother, Hannah. Until meeting Bush, Angel did not know anything about her
mother. Before Angel goes to visit Hannah, Bush explains to Angel that her mother
is dangerous and the reason for the scars on her face. Two weeks after Angel meets
Hannah, she dies of an unexplained stab wound. Angel comes to the realization that
Hannah’s drawbacks as a mother have shaped her into the person she is at present.
She explains, “Her desperation and loneliness was my beginning. Hannah had been
my poison, my life, my sweetness and pain, my beauty and homeliness. And when
she died, I knew that I had survived in the best of ways for I was filled with grief
and compassion” (Hogan 251). This realization signifies a major change in Angel’s
self-image. Angel sees the importance of her “compassion” along with other
characteristics that would not be as strong if her life had been different. Even
though she never fully got to know her mother, Angel is now able to fully accept her
situation for what it is, and is able to move on from her past. Also, meeting Hannah
has allowed her to find her baby stepsister, Aurora, of whose existence she was
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previously unaware. Angel acts as a mother to baby Aurora, carrying on her role as
a caretaker, as a way of staying connected to her people. Such a motherly role gives
Angel another outlet to come to terms with her past trauma, by preventing her
stepsister Aurora from falling into the foster care system.
The second important narrative arc in the novel is the native resistance
movement against BEEVCO’s dam construction projects in Holy String Town.
Although Solar Storms is a work of fiction, the book is inspired by real life events,
as noted by Laura Castor. In 1971, James Bay, near the border between the United
States and Canada, became a center of tension between the government of Quebec
and the native Cree communities. The government wanted to use hydropower
technologies to be able to harness the power of the rivers to generate electricity. The
proposal was passed on the basis that the water would benefit all Canadians, while
displacing Cree communities and separating them from their source of food. Castor
states that, “The diversion of the LaGrande and Eastmain Rivers produced
widespread, comprehensive damage to the James Bay ecosystem and displaced Cree
communities who suffered from marked increases in rates of alcoholism, family,
violence, and suicide” (Castor 158). These extreme negative consequences of
diverting the rivers were left unnoticed by the mainstream media until numerous
environmental groups helped draw attention to this injustice. With the help of
environmental groups, in 1975 the Cree, Quebec government, and the hydropower
company signed an agreement stating that the government and power company
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must negotiate with the Cree as an independent nation. However, the project
continued for more than 25 years afterwards.
Similar to the historical James Bay conflict, there is a conflict in the novel
over natural resources between the hydropower company BEEVCO, and the
indigenous peoples who live close to Holy String Town. The BEEVCO company
along with the government has started the process of building a reservoir consisting
of several dams which would destroy and flood the native’s land. These activities
force the natives to leave the land they have occupied and lived off for more than
10,000 years, in the interest of electricity for the people in the surrounding area.
The power company acts on the fact that the natives do not have legal rights to the
land in the form of deeds and, because of this, neither BEEVCO nor the government
provide any compensation to the natives despite destroying their homes. The effects
of this construction will be seen for miles around the original site due to different
bodies of water being reshaped and many land areas being flooded.
Oftentimes, and in this case, the natives are forced to suffer for development
that they either do not want or do not benefit from. Once the process of construction
began and the land was being torn apart in search of minerals, the natives were
taken to “resettlement sites” and forced to live in overcrowded “fast-made shacks”
with a food source consisting of a few Coca-Cola and candy machines (Hogan 226).
Once Angel, Dora-Rouge, Agnes, and Bush arrive on the Fat-Eater’s land, Angel
narrates, “The people were in pain, and even if Dora-Rouge had known the people of
the last generation or two, she would never have recognized their puffy faces and
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empty eyes, their unkempt, hollow, appearance. It was murder of the soul that was
taking place there. Murder with no consequences to the killers” (Hogan 226). The
previous passage proves the extent of the negative effects of the construction of the
dam on the indigenous people’s land. The people are not physically recognizable
because of how defeated they feel after being forced to resettle in shacks and old
military huts by the government. By building the dams, BEEVCO and the
government are not only tampering with the land and ecosystem but are also
inflicting damage to these people’s lives and “murdering their soul.” Destroying the
land also results in a separation from the sacred connection indigenous people share
with their land. As Angel narrates “Above us and to the east, trees were being
felled, the coal stripped away, and roads had been cut into every sacred site the
people had grown from, known, and told stories about” (Hogan 295). This passage
further shows how the natives’ lives are being torn apart by ripping them from the
land which has, over many generations, become a sacred place to them and their
people. Nixon gives this injustice a name of “slow violence” to better explain the
range of effects that it causes on the natives. Nixon says, “By slow violence I mean a
violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction
that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not
viewed as violence at all” (2). As Nixon explains, this does not exclusively affect the
natives forced to move in the forms of “nutrition, health, infant mortality, life
expectancy, and environmental viability” but will affect all future generations as
well (152). It is not a form of violence that society is used to, but violence was
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inflicted upon these people just the same. The people who once occupied the land
are now seen as what Rob Nixon refers to in his book Slow Violence and the
Environmentalism of the Poor as “surplus people,” or people “deemed superfluous to
the labor market and to the idea of national development” (Nixon 151).
To combat this injustice, the characters in the novel get involved in a
resistance movement with indigenous groups from the surrounding area. The
resistance movement is first introduced to the main characters at the beginning of
the novel when two men arrive in Adam’s Rib to explain the situation they are
facing on their land. Their goal is to obtain enough protestors to stop the
construction in time. Soon after their conversation, the women start the treacherous
journey to Two-Town. Once arrived in Two-Town, the women meet other protestors,
such as Arlie, a smart man who becomes very helpful within the resistance
movement, and Auntie, Bush’s passionate friend. The group later meets with the
BEEVCO workers who propose their construction plans to them, explaining how the
natives will not get a say in what they do. Resistance takes three forms within the
novel. The first form, direct action, is shown after the meeting. The group builds a
blockade made from junk and oil barrels, which will prevent the trains from
carrying the land and trees away. Bush holds a special job which makes up the
second form of resistance. She takes pictures and writes articles about the
happenings in Two-Town which are smuggled out by others in hopes of gaining
more attention and supporters outside of the town. The last form of resistance and
often the most overlooked form is the day-to-day acts of survival such as stealing
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food and escaping when the protests become more violent. When the resistance
movement gains more people, soldiers are soon deployed in the area, and the group
is faced with large amounts of teargas. Further violence ensues when the
construction workers attempt to bulldoze Tulik’s house, an elder Two-Town resident
who lets the three women stay with him while in town. His house is later burnt
down in retaliation for their protests. Soon after, Aurora falls ill. With the help of
other protestors, Angel and Bush rush back to Adam’s Rib to get medical attention
for Aurora. The other protestors’ readiness to help Aurora shows how protesting
together has created a bond between them.
Hogan provides the reader with several overlaps between the two important
narrative arcs mentioned above. Once the women reach the Fat Eaters’ land, they
find the once beautiful piece of land to be barely recognizable. The people, trees,
animals, and landmarks were gone due to the plans for the dams. Angel describes
the scenery, “It was a raw and scarred place, a land that had learned to survive,
even to thrive, on harshness… Like me, it was native land and it had survived”
(Hogan 224). This previous passage shows that Angel connects herself with the
land. The girl who felt like she did not belong anywhere, finds her identity in this
“raw and scarred” place. Angel’s realization is a milestone in her growth narrative
where she finally feels as if she belongs somewhere and has a purpose, to try to
protect the land. Her newfound purpose will cause her to grow into a stronger and
more confident woman throughout the rest of the novel. The passage is also a
crucial description that adds to the BEEVCO resistance narrative by setting the
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scene for the destruction that is being caused to the land calling it a “raw and
scarred place” that is surviving on “harshness.”
Another important overlap occurs right before the climax of the conflict
between the indigenous people and the people for the damming project. Angel
reflects, “For my people, the problem has always been this: that the only possibility
of survival has been resistance. Not to strike back has meant certain loss and death.
To strike back has also meant loss and death, only with a fighting chance. To fight
has meant that we can respect ourselves, we Beautiful People” (Hogan 325). Her
reflection proves how she has found her identity with the people that she united
with during the resistance movement. The shared purpose of fighting to protect the
land helps Angel to find herself and grow into a strong woman. Also, the passage
shows just how committed the people are to their cause. They fought an unfair
battle that they had little chance of winning, showing their strength and resilience
under dreadful circumstances. The overlapping of the two narrative arcs deepens
the plotline of Hogan’s novel.
Even after all their efforts, the protestors fail to stop the first phase of
construction which causes the area to be mostly flooded, destroying indigenous
lands and homes. After nearly a year, BEEVCO’s construction is finally paused,
when the conflict is taken to court and Tulik is asked to give his testimony. While
the court rules in their favor, they cannot undo the damage that has already done.
As Angel narrates, “It was too late for the Child River, for the caribou, the fish, even
for our children, but we had to believe, true or not, that our belated victory was the
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end of something” (344). Their movement for environmental justice ends on a
hopeful note that one day they may be able to regrow traditions without the
intervention of others. Throughout the novel, Angel grows from a scarred and self-
conscious girl into a strong indigenous woman. Her coming-of-age narrative often
overlaps with the native resistance movement against the construction of big dams
on indigenous lands. She is helped along in her growth narrative by the people she
meets and the rewarding experiences she has while fighting for indigenous rights in
her maternal homeland.
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Works Cited
Castor, Laura Virginia. “Claiming Place in Wor(l)Ds: Linda Hogan’s ‘Solar Storms.’”
MELUS, vol. 31, no. 2, 2006, pp. 157–80. JSTOR.
Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard
University Press, 2011.
Schultermandl, Silvia. “Fighting for the Mother/Land: An Ecofeminist Reading of
Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol.
17, no. 3, 2005, pp. 67–84.
Smith, Theresa S., and Jill M. Fiore. “Landscape as Narrative, Narrative as
Landscape.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 22, no. 4, 2010, pp.
58–80.
Stacks, Geoffrey. “A Defiant Cartography: Linda Hogan’s ‘Solar Storms.’” Mosaic:
An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 43, no. 1, 2010, pp. 161–76.
JSTOR.
Vernon, Irene S. “‘We Were Those Who Walked out of Bullets and Hunger’:
Representation of Trauma and Healing in Solar Storms.” American Indian
Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1, 2012, pp. 34–49
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Grace Rietscha is an English and Communication double major who recently

graduated from Virginia Wesleyan University.
The Alchemyst, the Powerful, and the Power of

Ideology
Grace Rietscha
Virginia Wesleyan University
Myths are full of gods, goddesses, and monsters that are unable to be checked
by humanity, allowing them to cause incredible destruction. Only rarely does a
human have the power to counteract them, while most people live at their mercy. If
that is the consequence of magic, is a world full of magic everything it seems?
Fantasy is used to show the effects of powerful beings and how they use that power
to control the world. It can discuss real world subjects using metaphor, showing
abuses of power as fantasy while really saying something about what is happening
in the real world. Fantasy novels tackle the question of what would happen in a
world with magical power; the novel The Alchemyst by Michael Scott shows that the
magical world has been ruled by ancient tyrants for millennia. The Alchemyst
follows twins Sophie and Josh Newman as they discover the historical figures
Nicholas Flamel, the titular Alchemyst, and his wife Perenelle Flamel are alive
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hundreds of years after their supposed deaths. They are in possession of the Codex,
a book of immense magical knowledge, until another unageing human from history,
Dr. John Dee, steals most of the pages and imprisons Perenelle for his magical
masters. Sophie and Josh are then swept up in the rush to protect Nicholas’s
remaining pieces of the Codex from the ancient beings known as the Dark Elders
who wish to use it to cause the end of the world. While on the run, the twins are
stunned by the revelation about magic existing in the world, as well as the news
that they are prophesied to change the world. The world contains a wide variety of
creatures that includes wereboars, the god-like ageless Elder Race, and humans
(referred to as humani by the Elder Race and other magical beings). Humans have
various levels of knowledge about magic existing in the world, with most being
ignorant of magic’s existence, therefore preventing them from training and using
their magical ability. In The Alchemyst, magic is used as a metaphor for power, with
magic serving as the power that is competed for within the book. Groups and
individuals are shown judging each other based on their magic to the point where it
affects their place in the hierarchy. The novel allows the reader to see how power
shapes the environment of the world even when the leaders are not present.
Ideology affects how people live their lives, giving their leaders control of them by
ingraining the ideas they live by into their heads. Even the characters who resist
Elder Race rule still believe in their ideology, thus showing how powerful ideology
is.
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In The Alchemyst’s world, power, especially magical ability, is seen affecting
every level of society. Louis Althusser talks about power in the real world,
specifically in terms of how leaders and organizations maintain control of society.
One way is through the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA), which he says includes
“the Government, the Administration, the Army, the Police, the Courts, the Prisons”
with the goal of control with force (Althusser 1290). A Repressive State Apparatus
controls through various forces, forcing the people to act in ways they do not want
under fear of punishment. Another way power is shown is through his idea of the
Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), as he says, “Ideological State Apparatuses
function massively and predominantly by ideology” (1292). It is seen primarily in
institutions like the family, church, or schools which teach ideology. These ISA and
RSA methods differ, but they work together to maintain power for the ruling class.
By perpetuating the ideology that maintains the world and convinces people of their
place, power is maintained as society generates future workers to carry out the
values of the society. Magical power is used as the basis for the society of the
magical world, as the Elder Race gained their place at the top due to their immense
magical ability and rank other beings by their magical power. However, by showing
the inconsistencies of the hierarchy of the magical groups, the system is proven to
be flawed. Magic is used to define the structure of the world, but magic is not a fixed
power. People can increase or decrease their own or other’s power, which affects
their status. The expected limits of power are shown to be false, and, therefore, the
magic that defines the hierarchy also forces changes in the hierarchy. This shows
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how weak the hierarchy and the ideology is. By studying the hierarchy of the
magical world in Scott’s The Alchemyst through the lens of Althusser’s Repressive
State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatus, this essay will show that the
ideological hierarchy the magical world is built on is fragile, and that the Elder
Race weaken their hold on power throughout the novel by adhering to their own
belief in their flawed ideology. The fact that the ideology is still holding on shows
YA readers the power of ideology, and the paradoxical nature of power.
In both the novel and the real world, the State Apparatuses are used for
control. In terms of control, the RSA is what people think of being controlled by in
society, as it is seen through punishments like monetary fines or physical force, not
the societal repression of the ISA. But RSAs and ISAs cannot be separated.
However, ISAs contain more power than the RSA, as stated when Althusser argues,
“Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real
conditions of existence” (1300). People use ideology to define their world, giving that
ideology the power to control and shape their world. They believe in the world the
ideology teaches them about, even if that is not really the world they live in.
Ideological State Apparatuses convince the people that they believe their ideology is
the best way, which causes them to ignore its flaws. They may not even realize all
the effects an ISA has on their lives, or that they are affected by multiple ISAs
every day. Successful ideologies are taken for granted.
The Elder Race use an ISA that promotes the ideology that because they are
extremely powerful beings who have the strongest magic power, they should rule
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the world. This ideology causes them to refuse to give up their fight for control of
the human world, ignoring the downsides of conquering the human world, and the
fact that they see a successful alternative. The Elder Race use their magic to place
themselves at the top of the magical world’s hierarchy and force others to respect
them as gods and goddesses. The most prominent supporters of the ideals of Elder
Race control are a faction called the Dark Elders. Scathach describes them by
saying, “There are those amongst the Elders who cannot accept that our time is
past, that this age belongs to the humani. They want to see a return to the old
ways… They are called the Dark Elders” (Scott 84). Scathach admits they have lost
the world, and that the world has moved on. The Dark Elder ideology refuses to
accept this. Their goal is to control the entire world, not just the magically created
lands hidden from humans called Shadowrealms, and force every other being in the
world to serve them. The pervasiveness of this world-ruling ideology is evident, even
in the more neutral stance of the Elder Race like Hekate. Her Shadowrealm
operates under the ideals of the Dark Elders, but on a limited scale. She has full
control of her Shadowrealm and all the beings within it, and the beings are subject
to her ISA where she teaches them that she is their creator and should be
worshipped as such, ensuring their loyalty. While she has no authority outside her
Shadowrealm, visitors to her Shadowrealm are still forced to respect her because of
her devoted followers. For someone who fights the Dark Elders in the novel, she
ironically acts to show the success of the goals of the Dark Elders in the magical
world, even though she does not support their goal of conquering the human world.
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The refusal of the Dark Elders to admit their loss shows the failure of their
ideology, as they could be following in Hekate’s footsteps of success and have
complete control in the magical world. Because Hekate’s method is so successful,
many Elder Race feel no need to conquer those outside of their Shadowrealms, as
their ISA and RSA are successfully working in tandem. Their in-fighting weakens
the Elder Race. When Hekate is killed in the conflict, the Elders reduce their
number and lose a powerful Shadowrealm forever. The Dark Elders therefore
weaken the magical world in their quest to conquer the human world instead of
gaining more power.
The Elder Race once had full control of the world, but they are unable to
accept the fact that they lost it. A long time ago, the Elder Race ruled from the city
of Danu Talis, also known as Atlantis. However, a battle destroyed the city, and was
so damaging it changed the very nature of the Elder Race forever through the
creation of the Next Generation. Scathach describes the change by saying, “We were
not Elders. All of us who were born after the fall of Danu Talis were completely
unlike our parents; we were different in incomprehensible ways” (Scott 310).
Scathach emphasizes the word “different,” placing it in italics to emphasize to the
reader that there are differences between the Elder Race and their offspring. These
were not seen as positive differences because they had very different biology which
gave them less powerful magic. The older generation are seen as respected gods and
goddesses, while the following generations are seen as less desirable and monstrous
creatures such as were-boars and vampires. These offspring became known as the
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Next Generation Elder Race (Next Gen). These differences caused the divide
between the two groups, leading to the present hierarchy. The Elder Race is unable
to create more powerful gods and goddesses, meaning they are unable to keep
increasing their power. It also means they could become extinct and lose all their
power. Humanity claimed the world, forcing the Elder Race to make changes to
keep better control of the magical world and their offspring, leading to the creation
of ISA and RSA in a smaller community of believers in the Shadowrealms they
created. Those losses cause the Elder Race to hold on to their remaining power.
Ideology affects everyone from Dee to the Dark Elders, even if they are not aware.
The Elder Race believe in their own ideology, and believe they need to reclaim the
human world despite all the evidence working against them. This flawed ideology
has persisted in the magical world for centuries, showing the power of ISA to
maintain power instead of embracing changes that could be more beneficial for
everyone.
This ISA appears through hierarchical categorization of the beings in the
magical and human worlds. The Elder Race rules the magical world, which consists
of less magically powerful magical beings as well as the occasional human magician.
The Elder Race uses underlings who believe in their ideology to act as an RSA,
which is designed to punish those who do not obey them. This makes it so when
ideology fails, they can still force the non-believers to respect them using the RSA’s
oppressive methods. This combination of an ISA along with its supporting RSA is
successful in allowing the tiny group first-generation Elder Race to control the
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magical world, but the RSA and ISA both fail when it comes to control of the greater
human world. The Elder Race have limited power as an RSA outside the magical
world. Furthermore, humans do not even know that the Elder Race or the magical
world exist, so they are not affected by the ISA and the ideology it produces. Despite
this separation, humans are still counted as the bottom of the socio-political
hierarchy. Yet they are the ones who control most of the world, which the Elder
Race was unable to take back when human civilizations were in their infancy.
Humans were put at the bottom to control them because they could upset the
system. The hierarchy is so weak that it is vulnerable to people who have never
heard of the Elder Race. After seeing how the ISA works, or at least claims to work,
the reader can then question its legitimacy within the book.
Fitting with the use of the real-world concepts of RSA and ISA, Scott’s world
of The Alchemyst resembles the real world. The fantasy genre indirectly comments
on real world events and themes, allowing the reader to draw parallels. As this is a
YA novel, it is important because it teaches young readers how to see how people
use power and ideology in their lives. In A Short History of Fantasy by Farah
Mendlesohn and Edward James, they argue, “The obvious construction of fantasy in
literature and art is the presence of the impossible and the unexplainable”
(Mendlesohn and James 3). Fantasy features magical power as well as kinds of
power seen in the real world. Multiple types of power feature within The Alchemyst,
with magical power featuring most prominently. Magical power is seen in a person’s
ability to do great feats of magic. The Alchemyst is part of the literary tradition of
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85
the fantasy genre. Many aspects of fantasy seen within The Alchemyst are also in
other famous fantasy works, including the effect of power, RSAs, ISAs, and humans’
conflict with non-humans.
Within the fantasy genre, Harry Potter has lots of literary criticism. Scott
works both with and against ideas seen in Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter series,
there is a hierarchy which leads to many similarities between The Alchemyst and
Harry Potter. Assumed superiority based on magical ability creates the hierarchy,
as wizards live separate lives with their gift of magic and deny muggles (non-
wizards) access. Wizards commonly believe their magic makes them better than
muggles. The literary critic Luisa Grijalva Maza argues the readers “slowly
internalize the greatness of the magical world with its castles, magic potions, tricks,
and magical creatures and, by the end of the first book, the predominance of
magical over nonmagical is accepted” (Maza). Not only do the wizards in the world
accept this idea, but the readers are also affected by it. The magical is also
separated from the human in The Alchemyst, as most humans remain unaware of
the existence of magic. Nicholas does not fight for the merging of the two worlds, or
the liberation of the Shadowrealms, but rather he fights to keep the two worlds
separate and the Elder Race out of human sight. Wizards are separated by
biological power from humans, just like the Elder Race are. No one in either book
series pushes to merge the worlds, leaving their options as either secrecy or
conquest, which shows how the ISA of the magical world affects them. This
comparison to Harry Potter is important to understand the effect of fantasy works.
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86
A comparison of how different ISA and RSA are structured allows the reader to
understand the ways in which power can be distributed and to learn about their
weaknesses.
The major power seen within The Alchemyst is magical power, particularly
regarding the ISA and the hierarchy it creates. Magical power is the cornerstone of
all the ideology in the book. It is how the Dark Elders ruled long ago, and why they
believe they should rule again. Many types of people appear in the book who have
magical abilities as part of their biology. This biological magic-based division
determines the structure of the magical world, as each group is ranked based on
their perceived biological power compared to others’ magical biology. First in the
ranking is the Elder Race, as Shadowrealm creators who have powerful magic and
physical prowess. Under them is their offspring, the less powerful Next Generation
of Elder Race, who range from being respected to working as servants for the
original Elder Race. Many other magical beings are also seen, though most are
shown serving the Elder Race. Below all the naturally magical beings are the
humans, who are almost entirely separate from the magical world. However, each of
these categories has rankings within itself, as some members of each group are
stronger than others. Human magicians are exponentially more powerful than
humans who do not use magic for example.
At the top of the hierarchy is the Elder Race, self-proclaimed gods and
goddesses of legends throughout history. They are the dominant force in the novel,
as they are the antagonists chasing the twins, the ones controlling non-Elder Race
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people like Dee or the wereboars, the ones in control of the magical world, and the
ones seeking to rule the human world. The Elder Race contains many types of
mythical creatures, though they are divided between the goddesses and gods of
legend (referred to as the Elder Race), and the Next Generation, the term used to
describe non-deity characters and monsters from mythology. Unlike the Next Gen,
first generation Elder Race are unable to be around iron or the Codex. Thus, the
Elder Race is revealed to have a variety of weaknesses and are not the infallible
powerhouses they pretend to be. Their Repressive State Apparatus fails outside the
magical world as they are unable to conquer humans. The Codex drove the Elder
Race out of the human world. The Codex is the only object capable of reversing
these spells, leading to the hunt for the Codex as they believe it is key to world
domination. They are incorrect, as iron is the reason the Elder Race lost the world
and will never be able to reclaim it. The book says, “In the way that lead was
poisonous to humans, iron, the metal of mankind, was deadly to the Elder Race”
(Scott 188). Iron is everywhere in the human world, much more now than when the
Elder Race were forced away by its presence. Some Dark Elders are in such denial
that they live on Earth, even though that choice keeps them confined to iron-free
areas. They are still clinging to life on Earth and refusing to let go. The Elder Race
claim that their difference from humans makes them strong, as it gives them
incredible magical power, which is the basis for the ideology that they should
control everything. This is where the Ideological State Apparatus fails. The Elder
Race justify their control because of their superior biology, yet it has major
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weaknesses other beings do not possess. The Dark Elders fail to separate their
ideology from their reality. The Elder Race could not freely walk in the human
world, even if they could overpower all resistance, because of the presence of iron.
The Dark Elders' plan itself is flawed, showing that even they, the beneficiaries of
their ideology, fall victim to it. The Elder Race are a comparatively weak species,
but they have been convinced by their ideology that they could and should rule the
entire world, even though the fight to do so will harm them.
Unlike the Elder Race, the Next Generation have adapted to the changing
world and are better suited for modern life, leading to their Elder Race relatives
trying to control them. Next Gen are more resistant to iron and the Codex, making
them better suited to the modern world, but they are less powerful magically.
Scathach, an ancient world-renowned warrior, describes, “I’m Next Generation-not
pure Elder like Hekate. I can bear to be around iron” (Scott 158). The Next
Generation is better suited to the changing world, as they do not have the original
Elder Race’s weakness to iron. Scathach describes the original Elder Race as being
“pure” (Scott 158). This implies that the Next Generation are impure members of
the Elder Race. The ideology of Elder Race superiority uses terms like this to
differentiate the Next Gen from the original Elder Race and cast the Next Gen in a
negative light, even if that is not what Scathach feels about herself. This negative
light prevents the Next Generation from recognizing their strengths.
While the original Elder Race has the same biology with different magical
focuses, the Next Generation varies wildly from each other, and not just their Elder
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89
Race ancestors. The book’s primary example of a Next Generation clan is the were-
boars, who serve their relative Hekate and show the difference between how the
first Elder Race and their Next Gen descendants are treated. Were-boars are not
given the respect given to the god-like members of the Elder Race, as they are
notable only as Hekate’s defenders. They enforce the very system, the very person,
who denies them their power, therefore participating in their own oppression. The
were-boars are used by Hekate, just like she uses the other inhabitants of her
Shadowrealm, in crucial roles in her RSA and ISA that use their extraordinary gifts
to benefit her. Hekate claims, “The clans still worship me as a goddess. I do what I
can for them” (Scott 112). She acts as a benevolent goddess to the were-boars who
worship her, giving them a place to live and supporting their growth. This is a
religion based around Hekate, and religion is one of the dominant ISA in people’s
lives. They help her enforce this view onto others, by working as her RSA and
threatening all who come near her if they do not meet expectations. RSA is shown
to be a weaker form of control. Her RSA is shown getting temporary results from
visitors, while her ISA gains her a dedicated army. Her ISA works with her RSA to
give Hekate full power within her realm.
Below the Elder Race, Next Generation, and were-creatures, are the humans,
even though humans control most of the world and were successful in driving the
magical beings away. Humans are looked down upon as their biology lacks the
Elder Race’s magical power. Yet they outcompeted the Elder Race so successfully to
claim control of the world that they do not believe magical creatures exist anymore.
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90
The biggest threat to the hierarchy of the magical realm are the prophesied twins,
Sophie and Josh, as they are naturally gifted with powerful auras and destined to
decide the fate of the world. What makes this a hierarchy-shaker is their human
biology. Dee dismisses that they could be prophesied since they are human,
thinking, “[…] they were twins. That was curious. He looked at them again and
then shook his head: they were humans” (Scott 67). Dee, an enormously powerful
human magician who works against the hierarchy system, thought it impossible
humans could have that sort of power. That is the power of ideology. It causes
people to doubt that humans can be powerful when they are living proof. The Elder
Race’s ideology causes people to find it unthinkable that humans could be
dangerous, proving how pervasive it is as Dee is a human thinking this. The
magical world took it for granted that the magical twins would not be human,
because humans do not typically have magical power let alone strong magical
power.
Nicolas’s ideology becomes the lens which the twins use to examine the
magical world, though they are not aware they are learning his ideology which gives
him control over them. While he is not teaching them to obey the dominant ideology
of the Elder Race, he is inducting them into the world, which involves teaching
them ideology. Teaching occurs in schools, which is one of the largest ISAs. Nicholas
teaches the twins his ideology about the magical world, as he plans to use them for
his own goal of defeating the Dark Elders. He lives his life in the human world, not
as a resident of the magical world. Nicholas does not hold the majority view of the
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91
magical world, who either want to remain isolated in Shadowrealms, like Hekate
and the wereboars, or have the Dark Elders lead to a reclaiming of the world by the
Elder Race. Both Dee and Nicholas try to sway the twins to their side with
calculated information, though while The Alchemyst is clear Dee is twisting the
facts when talking, Nicolas is portrayed as the correct choice despite leaving out
crucial details and not discussing options with the twins. Even when the twins
question Nicholas’s actions, they do not question the ideology he taught them about
the magical world. They refuse to listen to Dee’s points about the Elder Race’s
return to the world having benefits. While Dee is lying about their interests, the
twins have only had a few hours of experience in the magical world, so they are
mainly rejecting his claims based on Nicholas’s Elder Race ideology. The twins are
unwilling to question whether Nicholas’s ideology, their first ideology of the magical
world which they were unwittingly drawn into, is the better ideology. They do not
consider Dee’s ideology to be worth hearing, even though he has benefited greatly
from the Elder Race.
Dr. John Dee, supposedly the loyal servant of the Dark Elders, represents the
ultimate failure of the Elder Race’s hierarchy. He is powerful in both the human
and magical worlds. He may not be as biologically powerful as the Elder Race, but
he is very clever and uses methods to compensate for their difference in power. By
employing and empowering Dee, the Elder Race have given him opportunities that
he used to acquire the power to destroy them. Dee has learned from the Elder Race
and follows their example of how to build power by using the power of his loyal
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92
underlings to aid him. Perenelle thinks, “Dee had always been fascinated by the
idea of creating his own followers and had spent decades experimenting with
Golems, simulacra and homunculi” (Scott 251). Just like the Elder Race expect
other beings to serve them, Dee made his own creations to serve under him. He
wanted to be obeyed, just like the ISA helps the Elder Race achieve the status of
god or goddess. The ideology causes others to try and replicate the Elder Race’s
success. While his creations are mindless and not controlled through ideology, he is
also able to bend existing beings to his will to serve his goals. Nicolas describes how
Dee, “[…] loosed a Fire Elemental after us, a savage, mindless creature that almost
devoured the city. History calls it the Great Fire” (Scott 43). Dee has the power to
destroy an entire city, even if it is only achieved by use of a fire elemental. This also
shows Dee doesn’t care about human lives, just like the Dark Elders. He lives by
their ideology. He knows he, despite being a powerful human magician, cannot
match the raw power of others like the Elder Race or the fire elementals. But he can
use the power of those under him, and he does, just like Hekate with her were-boar
followers. He even does this in interactions with the Elder Race, even though the
Elders think they are in charge. He uses them to assist him when he calls in
Morrigan to track Nicholas, and again when he goes to find Bastet to use her raw
power in attacking Hekate. He uses them, just like the Elder Race call him to aid in
their goals by having him serve as the Codex holder for them. Instead of fighting
the hierarchy and ending up hunted like the Flamels, he uses the system to become
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93
powerful, despite its intent to convince him that he is weak and the fact that he
works for those who believe him to be powerless.
The hierarchy in The Alchemyst represents a flawed ideology that is failing,
and the Dark Elders’s efforts to reclaim the human world are weakening their hold
on the magical world. Scott shows the reader the value of questioning their beliefs
by showing the effect of the hierarchy and magic power. The importance of pointing
out these themes in the novel is to be able to show the theme of how power can be
used in many ways to the reader. Ideological hierarchies exist in the real world
based on gender, race, nationality, sexuality, religion, etc. By showing a fictional
hierarchy and showing characters resisting it, young adult readers’ minds will be
able to apply the lessons learned, and apply them to real world events and ideology
they encounter in the future. They will learn to question what they see in the
future, which is an important skill to teach young readers.
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94
Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an
Investigation).” 2001. The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, translated
by Ben Brewster, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 3rd ed., W.W. Norton &
Company, 2018, pp. 1285-311.
Maza, Luisa Grijalva. “Deconstructing the Grand Narrative in Harry Potter:
Inclusion/Exclusion and Discriminatory Policies in Fiction and Practice.”
Politics & Policy, vol. 40, no. 3, Wiley Online Library, June 2012, pp. 424-43.
Mendlesohn, Farah and Edward James. 2009. A Short History of Fantasy. Revised
and updated edition, Libri Publishing, 2012.
Scott, Michael. The Alchemyst. Ember, 2007.
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95

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The Rock

May 2023:: Volume 3, Issue 1

A Glimpse at How Far We've Come

The Rock Creek Review

An Undergraduate Journal of Literary Studies

©2023 Heidelberg University

Founding Editors, Dr. Barry Devine and Danielle Lester

Logo design by Ethan White

Cover design by Kelsey Stanfield

Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Barry Devine

Managing Editor: Kelsey Stanfield

Published by the English Department of Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio.

Chair: Dr. Emily Isaacson

310 E Market Street, Tiffin, Ohio, 44883

#MeToo Protestors Holding Signs, Global Fund for Women.

A Gay Pride Parade in London. Getty Images, 6 July 1996. https://daily.jstor.org/the-

About the Editors

academic success honorary. Sophia is the principal clarinetist in the Heidelberg

Cameron Spraggins is a third-year student from Dover, Ohio studying

A Note from the Managing Editor

What a year it has been!

Thank you for reading The Rock Creek Review,

The Rock Creek Review

1: Class and “Comical” Characters in Romeo & Juliet and

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

10: Patriarchal Limitations to Cosmopolitanism

19: Paradoxical Legitimacy: Understanding LGBTQ+ Christianity

34: “Notes from Coosa” and Indigenous Cosmopolitanism

42: Cosmopolitanism and the Call for Justice in Lehua M. Taitano’s

65: Personal Growth Amidst Environmental Injustice in Linda Hogan’s

78: The Alchemyst, the Powerful, and the Power of Ideology

Elena Rabin is a third-year undergraduate student at Oberlin College

Class and “Comical” Characters in Romeo & Juliet

Shakespearean plays are often efficiently categorized as either tragedy or

audience’s expectations of humor. A result of this “war” is an unease to the laughter

humor at lower class characters’ expense.

The first example of this phenomenon that I will explore is an exchange

Even scholars condemn the Nurse’s digression as “a vast irrelevance” that

indelicacy combined with supremely confident simplemindedness” (Sutherland, 127;

be fourteen” (Shakespeare 1.3.18-22). Nurse knows that Juliet is not fourteen

profound grief and the audience’s potential laughter to it is striking.

Additionally, beyond learning of the tragedy of her daughter’s death, we learn

assumptions we made of their characters and abilities because of their

socioeconomic statuses. Shakespeare takes a moment of situational humor – Lady

repetitive story – and makes us question responding with laughter. He folds in

has, our laughter implicates us in the perpetuation of these power dynamics.

as “rude mechanicals" (Shakespeare 3.2.10). The OED defines “rude” as

“uneducated or unsophisticated people…impolite or discourteous people as a class.”

their mistakes and ridiculousness. Hippolyta says of Quince, “Indeed, he hath

professions as a weaver, carpenter, tinker, joiner, tailor, and bellows-mender.

Bottom’s attempts at artistry as hubris” (77). However, there is no actual evidence

vicariously experience their sense of superiority.

In his 2016 production of Midsummer at the Folger’s Shakespeare Library,

just by delusions of grandeur for unattainable talent…surprising as it was

refreshing, Bottom’s validation left tears of sadness instead of laughter in

participants in that discrimination. By refusing to make assumptions of characters’

the result is a more moving story as a whole and a play-within-a-play

that might just do its Ovidian source material justice.

Bottom’s transformation and Titania’s subsequent pursuit of him also