THE FILIPINO SHELFIE: LENY MENDOZA STROBEL

 THE FILIPINO SHELFIE: LENY MENDOZA STROBEL

What are your reading habits and/or tendencies (e.g. favorite type of reads)?  

 I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been picking up books by young queer authors writing about science+humanities (arts, literature, philosophy).  At this late stage in my life, I am interested in reading about a future where I will not be, but my descendants will be. I find that it is mostly indigenous (or BIPOC) authors who write about this visionary future. Is it because they have a longer memory of the past? They’ve kept the Stories alive.

I am not enamored anymore by a neoliberal, humanistic, anthropocentric reading of the world. Aren’t we in a post-humanist, post-activist, post-post colonial world yet?

I am also reading commentaries on Patanjali’s Sutras for my Yoga Studies.

I follow some folks on Substack (Suleika Jaouad, Jean Vengua, Rowen White).

 

What are you currently reading? 

Just finished: How Far the Light Reaches, Sabrina Imbler; The Disordered Cosmos, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein; An Immense World, Ed Yong; Catching the Light, Joy Harjo; Inherited Silence, Louise Dunlap.

For Reviews: Greg Sarris, The Forgetters  (reviewing); Hilary Giovale, Becoming a Good Relative (forthcoming; solicited review). The Story in our Bones, Osprey Orielle Lake (solicited review)

Stephen Buhner, Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm 

Klee, Benally, No Spiritual Surrender: Indigenous Anarchy and the Defense of the Sacred

 

If you’re a published book author, choose a book(s) and think about how you hope readers would read it?

Glimpses: A Poetic Memoir: Published in late 2019 and then the pandemic happened. It’s my most personal book where I hint at the parts of my journey that I hadn’t talked about in the previous books. It’s a conversation with Eileen Tabios’ MDR. 

If you’re one of the people who have asked me:  How can I be like you? How can I be on the same path that your journey has taken you to? – I answer these questions in this book. 

I know what the questioners mean. They are asking how I—an immigrant from the Philippines—was able to carve out an academic career, get tenured, write books about decolonization and indigenization, run a nonprofit, and co-create a decolonization/decolonial movement in the diaspora. In Glimpses I reveal some answers that point to the Moon, so to speak. Sometimes I wish I am more erudite, more persuasive, more prescriptive in my answers but it’s not in my nature. Also, the Moon reveals herself to the Seeker. 

In Glimpses I hope the reader is inspired to explore their poetic self—that deepest part of us that resists languaging in English and still finds a way to crawl around its crevices to find the hidden gems. 

For a review of Glimpses, please read: https://palomapress.org/2019/11/06/hamto-reviews-glimpses/

And this, too: http://halohaloreview.blogspot.com/2020/04/glimpses-by-leny-m-strobel.html

 

Please share some favorite books. 

Babaylan: Filipinos and the Call of the Indigenous and Back from the Crocodile's Belly. 

Books by these authors: Martin Prechtel, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Greg Sarris, Linda Hogan, Joy Harjo, Davi Kopenawa. 

Once upon a time I relished the books of Luce Irigaray, Gaston Bachelard, Gloria Anzaldua, bell hooks, Edward Said, Paolo Freire, Audre Lorde, Octavia Butler, and many others.

All the poetry and novels of Eileen Tabios.

 

Ask yourself a reading-related question you concoct, and answer it. 

Question: What got you fascinated with the young queer authors writing about Science+Humanities?

Answer:  It was a departure from the usual, I guess. I got tired of reading about the limits of identity politics in the U.S. because I wasn’t seeing a way out of that box. I got tired of reading about Trauma—personal, collective, civilizational. I got tired of reading about modernity and its discontents. Then I realized that there are young queer authors writing about identity politics but not as the central theme but merely providing a context  or subtext for discussing science and they are writing in a way that’s literary/artful that makes science a fascinating read for someone like me. 

 

*****

Leny Mendoza Strobel is a settler on Wappo, Coast Miwok, and Pomo lands (aka Sonoma County, Ca). She tends a vegetable and flower garden and five chickens in a suburban tract home. She is trying her best to live a local, small, and quiet life after decades of an academic life that focused on the process of decolonization and indigenization. Now she wants to learn:  how to take naps in the afternoon; occasionally binge watch, without guilt, Korean dramas and non-Hollywood films; practice yoga and qi gong with discipline; take long walks and notice everything!! Sometimes she feels she has one more book to write so she continues to ruminate on it. Her previous books  are still in print—thanks to new readers who are beginning their decolonization journeys.  In the meantime, find her newer essays,  and online talks on her website or on https://lenystrobel.medium.com/