A review by katharina90
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott

emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Sometimes it felt a little all over the place, but it was an interesting memoir. 

The essays touch on many facets of the Indigenous lived experience, both past and present, while also highlighting other interconnected issues from capitalism and state violence to homophobia and transphobia.

Because the author has lived in the US and Canada, off and on reservation, and is a biracial individual with the ability to pass, I think she brings a unique perspective to the conversation. 

I really enjoyed her comparison of nation states/governments to abusers who dehumanize and gaslight whomever they don't view as people, in order to extract from them.

"We're here, in diaspora on our own lands."

"What do you want? Are those desires based on extraction? Are they dependent upon capitalism or colonialism?"

"Racism, for many people, seems to occupy space in very much the same way as dark matter: it forms the skeleton of our world, yet remains ultimately invisible, undetectable. This is convenient. If nothing is racist, then nothing needs to be done to address it."

"No, 'diversity,' as Tania Canas so succinctly puts it in her essay 'Diversity is a White Word,' is about making sense of difference "through the white lens…by creating, curating and demanding palatable definitions of ‘diversity’ but only in relation to what this means in terms of whiteness." It’s the literary equivalent of 'ethnic' restaurants: they please white people because they provide them with 'exotic' new flavours, but if they don’t appease white people’s sensitive taste buds they’re not worth a damn."
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