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How to dress a fish

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    Certified Accessible By: National Network for Equitable Library Service
    Publisher:
    BC Libraries Cooperative, 2020
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    • Customizable display
    • Described images
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    Certified Accessible By: National Network for Equitable Library Service
    Publisher:
    BC Libraries Cooperative, 2020

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  • Author: Chabitnoy, Abigail
    Date:
    Created
    2019
    Summary:

    In How to Dress a Fish, poet Abigail Chabitnoy, of Germanic and Aleut descent, addresses the lives disrupted by US Indian boarding school policy. She pays particular attention to the life story of her great grandfather, Michael, who was taken from the Baptist Orphanage, Wood Island, Alaska, and sent to Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Incorporating extracts from Michael's boarding school records and early Russian ethnologies--while engaging Alutiiq language, storytelling motifs, and traditional practices--the poems form an act of witness and reclamation. In uncovering her own family records, Chabitnoy works against the attempted erasure, finding that while legislation such as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act reconnects her to community, through blood and paper, it could not restore the personal relationships that had already been severed.

    Contents:
    • I
    • Fox Hunting p. 5
    • Family History p. 7
    • Family Ghosts History p. 8
    • [grocery list, July 26, 2015] p. 9
    • Shebutnoy p. 12
    • Distance of Articulation p. 14
    • [Grandfather, fig. 1] p. 17
    • [Boy, bear, bird?] p. 18
    • [(fish)] p. 19
    • [Observe the Indian as subject] p. 21
    • [(never so much fish)] p. 22
    • [The earth was hollow around my feet.] p. 23
    • Elocution Lessons p. 24
    • [( )] p. 28
    • [Grandfather, fig. 2] p. 29
    • [fig. 3] p. 30
    • [fig.] p. 31
    • [(shark)] p. 32
    • [Not even bone.] p. 33
    • Lessons in Articulation p. 34
    • [Grandfather, fig. 5] p. 35
    • [Line. November, post fall month.] p. 36
    • Dream with Shark p. 39
    • Survey of Resource Articulation p. 40
    • [It was winter] p. 42
    • II
    • [Only the beginning is true] p. 45
    • [... the bodies were too soft.] p. 46
    • Early She Works with Bodies p. 47
    • [(conditionally)] p. 49
    • [Pyrrha did not turn back] p. 50
    • She Gets Her Power from the Water p. 51
    • [every able body] p. 53
    • [In a box] p. 54
    • Ways to Sustain p. 55
    • [some burning persists] p. 56
    • [I turned fish] p. 58
    • Dream with Shark p. 59
    • [In a pile of available bodies] p. 60
    • [The dream is only trees] p. 61
    • [she fell down dead] p. 62
    • Let's begin again p. 63
    • [fig. with ghosts] p. 65
    • [(That's not how) the one from the water survived.] p. 66
    • Qawanguq with Fox p. 67
    • [No one expected a flood] p. 68
    • [... the smell of fish baking] p. 69
    • [The water rose.] p. 70
    • Qawanguq with House p. 71
    • III
    • History Lesson p. 75
    • Collection Object p. 77
    • Before There Was a Train p. 91
    • [She coughed and the women came out] p. 92
    • Family History p. 94
    • Family story p. 96
    • or p. 100
    • [not a fish] p. 102
    • [I was only a girl] p. 103
    • As Far as Records Go p. 104
    • Articulation of Distance; Or, The Hero Is Daily Called to Mind p. 107
    • In Communion with the Non-Breathing p. 108
    • [shallow bodies] p. 109
    • Family Ghosts p. 110
    • Ways to Sustain p. 113
    • Re-articulation p. 115
    • Manipulating Manifesting (Re)Generating Landscapes p. 116
    • [Only the beginning is true] p. 119
    • How to Make a Memorial p. 123
    • Ways to Skin a Fish: A Genealogical Survey p. 129.
    Genre:
    Poetry, Indigenous materials
    Subject(s): Alaska Natives | Chabitnoy family | Indigenous peoples--North America | Off-reservation boarding schools | United States
    Original Publisher: Middletown, Connecticut, Wesleyan University Press
    Language(s): English
    ISBN: 9780819578488, 0819578487, 9780819578495, 0819578495
    Collection(s)/Series: Griffin Poetry Prize 2020