SNAPSHOT OF A POET: "WHAT ARE YOU READING?" (#4)

[Poets are invited to participate in this series of snapshots of poets' reading habits.  For information, go HERE.] 

Leny M. Strobel on Reading

1)  What are you reading now?  As well, what is in your To-Read-Soon stack?

Dunong at Batas: Documenting Indigenous Wisdom and Customary Law by Tebtebba Foundation

Keeping Slug Woman Alive by Greg Sarris (re-reading)

The Idea of Wilderness by Max Oelschlaeger

Quantum Mind and Healing by Arnold Mindell

To finish reading:

I-Hotel, Karen Tei Yamashita

Angel de la Luna, Evelina Galang

Chair of Tears, Gerald Vizenor

2) Please share a comment about the books, e.g. recommendations, disappointments, embarrassment (a "Guilty Pleasure"), that certain titles are mandatory for your work, or anything else you want to share about your reading list.

Book titles come to me; I do not seek them out, at least not consciously. I think the above titles reflect my ongoing interest in ecoliterature, ecopsychology, and ecophilosophy and indigenous knowledge and wisdom. I am also interested in the language of western science as it attempts to create a bridge to indigenous science.

As for literature (Yamashita, Galang, Vizenor), I look forward to being surprised by these authors and their creative/innovative ways of storytelling, their uses of trickster logic, and ways of teasing out manifest manners (Vizenor's terms).

As for my most recently published edited anthology, Back from the Crocodile's Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory, I feel very proud of the narratives we (with co-editor, Lily Mendoza) have chosen. The chapters represent cutting-edge theorizing in Philippine and FIlipino American Indigenous Studies. It is academically-grounded and yet accessible and fun-to-read.

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Confession: There are times when I feel that Facebook has ruined my literary self. I think the kind of distraction and fragmentation that it engenders takes away from the focused attention that writing and reading requires. The ways that social media is rewiring our brains and shapes our capacity to think and reflect has (scary) consequences.

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Recommend: Becoming Animal by David Abrams. Also his The Spell of the Sensuous.

Eileen’s Note: The pictures display more books on Leny’s bedside areas than what she listed. She said she just doesn’t have the time to sort through the books that she’s yet to finish.  She also said she’d like to read more books by Bruce Chatwin, whose The Songlines is currently buried by other books.