Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory

by Qwo-Li Driskill

In Cherokee Asegi udanto refers to people who either fall outside of men’s and women’s roles or who mix men’s and women’s roles. Asegi , which translates as “strange,” is also used by some Cherokees as a term similar to “queer.” For author Qwo-Li Driskill, asegi provides a means by which to reread Cherokee history in order to listen for those stories rendered “strange” by colonial heteropatriarchy.

As the first full-length work of scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous Queer or Two-Spirit critique, Asegi Stories examines gender and sexuality in Cherokee cultural memory, how they shape the present, and how they can influence the future.

The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of Asegi Stories derive from activist, artistic, and intellectual genealogies, referred to as “dissent lines” by Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Driskill intertwines Cherokee and other Indigenous traditions, women of color feminisms, grassroots activisms, queer and Trans studies and politics, rhetoric, Native studies, and decolonial politics. Drawing from oral histories and archival documents in order to articulate Cherokee-centered Two-Spirit critiques, Driskill contributes to the larger intertribal movements for social justice.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Indigenous, LGBT, History, Gender, Historical

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 7, 2016

About the author

Qwo-Li Driskill is a Cherokee Two-Spirit/Queer writer, scholar, educator, activist, and performer also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent. Hir artistic and scholarly work appears in numerous publications, and s/he performs and facilitates workshops at events across Turtle Island. Qwo-Li holds a PhD in Rhetoric & Writing from Michigan State University, and is currently an assistant professor in the Department of English at Texas A&M University.

Reviews

[Sarah Schulman]

This formally innovative book serves as a corrective as well as a selected history, and also as a memoir and a critique. The medium is the message here as Driskill's over arching argument is that existing categories and genre divisions do not serve Native/Aboriginal/Two Spirit Studies. If we accept the claim then the book can be seen as coherent, if we don't it can feel hard to keep all the strands together. A great deal of important and crucial information, it doesn't fully cohere, if we demand that a book does that.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book I've read all year.

[Tosei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book that explores a reimagining (decolonizing) of how we study history, particularly in regards to indigenous histories that have been erased and dominated by European perspectives. Driskill takes European maps and writings and reimagines and analyzes between the margins the history presented to understand how Cherokee two-spirit and queer people may have existed in the past.

Highly enlightening, an extremely important read.

[Ben Truong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory is an autobiographical personal essay collection written by Qwo-Li Driskill. S/he is a Cherokee Two-Spirit/Queer writer, scholar, educator, activist, and performer also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent.

This book serves as an entry (A book by an Indigenous woman or Two-Spirit Indigenous person) in the Toronto Public Library Reading Challenge 2021. This entry was rather difficult for me to find as I was lacking in reading books written by Two-Spirit Indigenous authors.

For the most part, I rather like most if not all of these contributions. Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory is a wonderful collection of five personal essay about being a Two-Spirit person within the Indigenous community. Using traditional Cherokee basket-weaving as a metaphor, Driskill lays out a theory for dismantling the impact of colonization on Cherokee bodies, gender and sexuality using Two-Spirit readings of Cherokee history both before and after removal.

Like most anthologies there are weaker contributions and Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory maybe the exception. It is far from perfect, but it comes rather close. This is a highly informative book about decolonization, indigenous studies and queer theory.

All in all, Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory is a wonderful collection of personal essays that explores decolonization and queer theory within the indigenous community.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a slow start for me, but the momentum kept building and I felt inspired and lucky to be reading this by the end. This is despite the subject matter but because of Driskill's handling of it: their central thesis is that settler-colonialism needed to erase Cherokee queerness (of both gender and sexual orientation, which are themselves hegemonic ways of thinking about human behavior) in order to carry out the colonial project, in conjunction with the promotion of chattel slavery and lateral oppression. Even still! Queer and Two-Spirit memory and energy persists and can point a way toward a decolonial future. Driskill is so expansive in their scope, captured beautifully by a quote in the introduction: "Because if you can see that far into the past, you can see that far into the future." I love the phantom of memory they make space for in revisiting the historical record, and the voices of queer Cherokee activists at the end. These are connected by Driskill's double-walled basket metaphor, because there is space hidden between the walls that can be revealed if the weaver chooses to undo and then reweave their work.

[Ai Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was really incredible--it was so accessible while also being theoretically rich, and Driskill manages to be both tribally specific with hir framework and also provide opportunities for other Two-Spirit people in other nations to find ways to use hir framework for themselves. It also clearly does incredible work in pushing forward Two-Spirit critique, and situating that as a huge addition to queer studies and queer of color critique, which so infrequently address settler colonialism.

The second chapter will almost definitely be on a syllabus of mine in the future, and is just incredible historical work interwoven with Driskill's personal narrative. S/he manages to do so much here, in such a relatively small and accessible space.

[Roope Kanninen · Rating 2 out of 5]

En tiennyt cherokeetien historiasta, saatikka "kaksoishengistä" juuri mitään ennen tätä kirjaa. Driskill selittää heti alussa, että cherokeetien keskuudessa on erimielisyyttä siitä, onko kaksoishenkiys ylipäätänsä ollut osa kulttuuria ja kirjaa lukiessa pitää sanoa, että Driskill harvoin vakuuttaa argumenteillaan. Hän itsekin toteaa usein vain "mielummin uskovansa näin" tai että "henkilön kaksoishenkeydestä ei ole todisteita, mutta ei ole siitäkään ettei hän olisi ollut sellainen". Lisäksi kirjassa on pitkiä osuuksia, jotka koostuvat pelkästä sivistyssanoilla täytetystä jaarittelusta, ilman mitään konkreettista. Lopussa kirja paranee kyllä merkittävästi ja cherokeetien "ystävyysliitot" olivat jo vakuuttavampaa näyttöä seksuaalivähemmistöistä normaalina osana yhteisöä.

[kayla goggin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but very dense read. Using traditional Cherokee basketweaving as a metaphor, Driskill lays out a theory for dismantling the impact of colonization on Cherokee bodies, gender and sexuality using Two-Spirit readings of Cherokee history both before and after removal. Driskill examines gender as a structural system of oppression and a colonial imposition which was weaponized against Cherokee people to force them into Eurocentric categories. Very challenging reading for me but well worth it!

[Natasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a highly informative book about decolonisation, indigenous studies and queer theory. The author addresses gender as a structural system of oppression and a colonial imposition which was weaponized against Cherokee people to force them into Eurocentric categories. It gives so much crucial information about indigenous people and two spirits making it an important read for everyone who is interested.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a queer Cherokee, i read this with sorrow in my heart for our lost history. I broke down sobbing at times.
But i also have hope. We are still here. We are still surviving and even thriving. And we will continue to be here.
Wado to Qwo-Li Driskill.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was interested in this book and the look at queer two spirit history - it was more achedemic than I felt I could manage. Perhaps in a different frame of mind I might be bable to connect more to it.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great source but I wasn’t expecting it to be as academic as this. It still was accessible but just took a bit longer to get through -I feel like I learned a lot! I was hoping for a bit more narrative based on the title but that’s my own fault.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of a slow start for me, but once I was in it, I was hooked. There is some super valuable information here, and it’s woven together with invitations for the reader to challenge the way they view stories.

[Laur · Rating 4 out of 5]

non-fiction, accessible academia (from the pov of an academic at least)
I did think it was a story collection when i first checked it out, so note that if you expect the same

[Zell Murdy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative with a super helpful metaphor woven throughout. Driskill did a great job bringing together a lot of information. It did feel very speculative though, I was expecting a little more basis in fact but I understand the available information is limited and twisted by colonialism.