Generous Spirit : Selected Works by Beth Brant

Finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction

A Generous Spirit: Selected Work by Beth Brant collects the writing of Beth Brant, Mohawk lesbian poet, essayist, and activist. During her life, Brant's work gave voice to an often unacknowledged Two-Spirit identity, and today, her words represent continued strength, growth, and connection in the face of deep suffering. A Generous Spirit is Brant's portrait of survival and empathy at the intersection of Native American and lesbian experience. Edited by noted Native poet and scholar Janice Gould, A Generous Spirit recounts and enacts the continuance of her people and her sisters with distinct, organic voices and Brant's characteristic warmth. Her work is a simultaneous cry of grief and celebration of human compassion and connection in its shared experience. Through storytelling, her characters wrest their own voices from years of silence and find communion with other souls.

Janice Gould is of mixed European and Concow (koyangk'auwi) descent and grew up in Berkeley, California. She is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, where she received degrees in Linguistics and English, and of the University of New Mexico, where she earned her Ph.D. in English. She recently earned a Master's degree in Library Science from the University of Arizona. Janice's books of poetry include Beneath My Heart (1990), Earthquake Weather (1996), Alphabet (an art book/chapbook, 1990), Doubters and Dreamers (2011), The Force of Gratitude (2017), and Seed (2019). She is the co-editor of Speak to Me Words: Essays on American Indian Poetry (2003), published by the University of Arizona. Janice is an associate professor in Women's and Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, where she developed and directs the concentration in Native American Studies.