Tsianina

This week we read about Tsianina, a Native American  performer and singer based in Los Angeles in the early 20th century.  I love her as a liminal character, inhabiting between two times and spaces.

This is a draft for reflection for my class:

Tsianina

I loved the biography of Tsianina, the Native American singer who winks in and out of time and place.  The author is the grandniece of this singer and even lived in the same area at the same time.  But never met her.  So though she shares her name and is a great admirer, she is both in and out of her life.

Liminality, one of my favorite concepts.  When things are betwixt and between.  Not really in one place and not really in another.  But in both places at the same time.

Tsianina has such a liminal role, she’s devoted and expected to somehow be part of the forgotten lost past barely glimpsed.  The Indian maiden singing the old songs yet be part of the 20^th century and living in Los Angeles.  The beaded headdress, long braids and leather dresses.  Out of the foggy impeded time past but is she?  Or just part of the act in LA?

I especially enjoyed the snapshots of Tsianina outside of her Burbank home.  I can look Tsianina on the net and find dozens of the Indian maiden.  Why did the author decide to include those?  I’ve been to that mid-century sun-drenched Southern California world, those stucco bungalows.  And there’s Tsianina  inhabiting that world while still in the other.

Especially interesting as we just watched documentary on Annie Oakley, a similar figure though several decades earlier.  A female braided artifact, a sharpshooter,  of the old west.  Traveling with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, that touring anachronism, showing how this might look like but likely never were.  Also presenting as a model of womanhood from a previous time but still right here right now.