Writing as Healing Ritual: A Conversation with Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe
With her award-winning memoir Red Paint (Counterpoint, 2022), Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe has emerged as a writer who can convey deeply personal material while delighting readers with her mastery of language and formal experimentation. With her poetic debut Rose Quartz (Milkweed, 2023), LaPointe shows similar prowess as a poet who can dance along the line between mystery and accessibility; lyricism and storytelling; sound sensibility, and thematic unity.
On a jaunt through the Scottish isles, LaPointe took some downtime for a Zoom interview in the hallway of her hotel where her ideas and poetic insights shown through the lapses in Wi-Fi.
Shaun Anthony McMichael (SAM): Each of the four parts of Rose Quartz is named with a pairing of a healing crystal and a tarot card (e.g. Black Obsidian/ Ace of Wands). How did this pairing emerge as an organizing force in the work?
Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe (STL): Every day while writing Rose Quartz, I did three-card spreads of tarot. A three-card spread signifies past, present, and future. This practice originates from an experience that I had with a tarot card reader on Connie Island. The tarot readings gave me Rose Quartz. Amid the tarot readings I was doing, friends were giving me rose quartz, obsidian, jade, and amethyst. Though it all sounded super woo-woo to me at the time, they’d say, “Here, you really need this right now.” And I would put the stones on my altar and then I would go to work on the poems, their organization emerging autobiographically.
SAM: Storytelling becomes an organizing force in the work. This collection plots out like a well-paced novel, its themes arcing like multi-dimensional characters. How did the “story” of the collection unfold?
STL: The first poem I wrote for the collection was “Rose Quartz” which captured that moment in Coney Island. From there, I worked backward. I realized, oh, there’s a collection of material here! Each of the poems is memory-based. Even the bizarre ones. “Devil’s Night: The Central District” was an actual Halloween party where there was someone dressed up like Kurt Cobain. Readers remark on my imagination, but for me, writing these poems was a different way to tell a memoir.
SAM: Your work features allusions to pop culture and myth: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, but also PJ Harvey lyrics, band name references, and callbacks to the tv show Twin Peaks. Each allusion artfully shines light onto aspects of your biography. Did you have to pair back any of those outside elements? Were you concerned they would distract rather than emphasize your intent?
STL: I wasn’t concerned, but my editors were. There were some moments where they said, “You’re going on about the Goonies for way, too long.” I laugh now, but part of me was heartbroken at the time. It’s something I still struggle with. In my forthcoming collection of essays, Thunder Song (Counterpoint; 2024), I had two and a half pages about Keanu Reeves and Monica Bellucci, and my editor said, “I don’t think we need that much.” “But we do!” I laughed. With Red Paint, if left to my own devices, there would have been 75 more pages about movies like Lost Boys, The Goonies, and The Crow. Though I followed my editors’ advice to pair down some, these are touchstones for me. Yes, there’s my indigenous identity and heritage. But the things I fell in love with as a teenager deserved some space too.
SAM: Your color palette and motifs create not only a spiritual atmosphere; they conduct a poetic contraries into your work. For instance, the motif of water in Red Paint is a source of power but also a source of danger. Similarly, red is a color of healing, but also the color of loss. In Rose Quartz, stones symbolize a sense of petrification, even the frozenness related to trauma, but as the collection crescendos to its climax, the stone imagery shifts to signify an internal state of self-cohesion and solidarity as the poet establishes themselves. There’s something deeply pleasing about the contrasting polarities inherent in these core elements. Tell me about how these elements were rarified over the course of your studies and practice.
STL: You bring up a really good point. I think of several scenes in Red Paint: I’m floating on Lake Washington; I have an accidental near-drowning experience in a Jacuzzi tub; I went into the Skagit River and released things in my grandmother’s memory. With that last example, my friends were literally mad at me for a minute. They were like, “You can’t go into the river like that. It’s winter! That shit is rushing!” And I was like, “bye”! There is this danger, but also safety and empowerment in water. The lineage I come from—my mom, my grandma, my great grandmother, my great, great grandmother, all coast Salish women—we hear our spirit songs when we’re closest to water. Even after I’d started writing Red Paint, I didn’t know that detail and my mom told me that historically, our spirit power songs have come to us when we’re by bodies of water—rivers, lakes, seas. So, to me, water represents healing and power of course, but it also represents the emotional undercurrent of a tarot reading. I’ve also had scary moments with water and I discovered these contrasts while I wrote.
SAM: While we’re on the topic of discovery, in the poem “The Boat My Grandmother gave me” you write about realizing that language is a tool to return to your body after dissociative experiences related to personal trauma, but also returning to cultural identity after epigenetic and racial trauma. Does poetry document how you become aware of things like this or is poetry the vehicle for such awareness?
STL: I think it’s both. As I was writing Red Paint and Rose Quartz in tandem, there would be certain things, like reoccurring images, that I couldn’t press into a traditional prose narrative. Like with that concrete imagery of the canoe, there would be these things burned into my mind in a way best expressed in poetry. When thinking about these books as companions, they represent different parts of a process. Red Paint was an actual, active moment of healing on the page; I was moving through the healing as I wrote. But at certain times, I had to shift gears and move into the realm of poetry. “The Canoe My Grandmother Gave Me” is a perfect example of that. I had a whole chapter in Red Paint about that specific memory, but it just didn’t quite nail it. It didn’t feel good to me, my editors, or my trusted readers. But when I switched to poetry and focused instead on this concrete image of the canoe on the riverbank and the symbolism there, it became free and fun to write.
SAM: Rose Quartz and Red Paint depict healing as a recursive process that involves not one ritual, but several, not one journey, but several. I’m wondering how the writing of these books is a part and/or distinct from that healing journey.
STL: The project I was working on before Red Paint, the now-abandoned Little Boats… That’s what I thought was going to be my big thing. I spent years—all of my graduate program— working on it. It got really close! But it was ridiculous too. Little Boats was 409 pages with 67 chapters. And the process undid me; I kind of burned my life to the ground. But I couldn’t have gotten to Red Paint had I not gone through that undoing. If Little Boats was the damage and the wound, Red Paint was the healing.
SAM: The healing journey in Red Paint, in some ways, is incited by a professor’s prompt: “write a personal essay exploring your most traumatic memory”. I’ve heard of prompts like this from others as well; students receiving it and professors giving it. Through the hindsight of the harrowing journey that the prompt unlocked for you (traumatic responses, terror states, disassociation, decompensation), what do you think of that prompt now? Would you give that prompt to a student?
STL: 100%, no. Not to a student. It’s such a bittersweet thing. I mean, I got PTSD from my work on that writing assignment. Yet, I don’t regret it. The professor who assigned that prompt was a great professor! I’m thankful for her. But in hindsight, that prompt feels reckless. We should be more conscientious. I ask my students to go deep and explore darker undercurrents I notice in their writing. But I don’t want to blindly throw them into unpacking the chaotic Russian nesting doll of trauma in a creative writing class. I wish I had someone back then during my undergraduate to provide me with the tools that I needed such as access to therapy or offers of support. Those are huge things that I hope teachers now have more awareness around.
SAM: I so admire you for the healing journey you went on and for the strength you found in the process. Strength enough to forge a new genre: the ancestral autobiography! As epigenetics or the science of racial and intergenerational trauma becomes more mainstream (e.g. Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands), do you think there will be more “ancestral autobiographies”? Can you talk about any influences you had when setting out to write yours?
STL: I hope that there will be more. There should be! There’s a RadioLab episode “Gonads: The Primordial Journey” about how scientists have proven that we were eggs in our great-grandmother’s womb! We were literally in our great-grandmother and grandmother’s bodies. So, of course, we’re going to carry some of their experiences. And I hope that more ancestral autobiographies tap into that because it’s part of who we are! And the thing I’m most interested in is yes, we’re going to carry the weight of attempted genocide and generations of oppression. But are we not also going to carry epic strength?
SAM: Speaking of strength, you write about very tough feelings, some of them unresolved. For instance, you have two poems expressing frustration toward a family member. Were you worried about the effect the poem would have on your relationship with that person?
STL: Ah, the brother question. To be honest, I was more concerned with the effect those poems would have on my mom. My brother’s disappearance from our family took a toll on her. But I didn’t think about it until I gifted the book into her hands and realized she would read these brother poems and have to process them. This is going to break my mom’s heart, I thought. But in terms of my brother ever seeing these poems, I don’t even think that’s a possibility. It’s hard to write about family and to wonder how siblings are going to respond. But that’s the spirit of Rose Quartz—healing, even when it’s ugly.
SAM: In places I hear the influence of many poets contemporary (Karenne Wood, Dana Levin, Natalie Diaz) and classic (William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning). Other times, you imbue forms wholly you and unique (such as poem-as-mosh-pit in “Little Red: Against Me”). Against Me is a great band, btw. Who were you reading while you were writing these poems?
STL: I love that you got that band reference because I felt so nerdy after Rose Quartz came out, thinking about how that poem’s title is a total fangirl moment! But with that poem specifically, my answer is less about who I was reading and more about who I was listening to. That poem is a love letter to that band and my first basement show when I was a teenager in the U-district. I just remember hearing this insane noise and then seeing a dude literally playing on a bucket. Then I remember moshing and getting cramped up against the ceiling where I thought I was going to get knocked out while all the while thinking this is the best thing I’ve ever seen!
As for poets, while writing Rose Quartz, I was reading a lot of Tommy Pico, Matthew Dickman, and my mentor, Joan Naviyuk Kane. She’s the one who inspired me to start using my traditional language.
SAM: You write “teach me a word/better than survivor”, commenting on how the term “trauma survivor” has become tedious. Poets from Ezra Pound to Ocean Vuong are drawn to poetry to provide a new linguistic path. What in us makes us want this?
STL: As someone who wrote a memoir about surviving sexual assault and also being a poet who wants to explore that, it’s really important to provide a different narrative. I wanted to write a book about surviving something but not having it focus on weakness, wounds, or trauma. Providing a fresh narrative is so important. One of my favorite essays of all time is my mentor Melissa Febos’ “In Praise of Navel-Gazing”. I assign it to my creative nonfiction students right out of the gate because my students often wonder “Why are we telling our stories? Why bother?” One of my students used the ‘trauma porn’ term and I referred them to this essay, a fierce response to why, as survivors, as marginalized people, as BIPOC people, telling our stories is a radical act of self-liberation.
SAM: In the poem “Half Moon Bay” and elsewhere, you write how, in the face of racism, you’re overcome with a feeling of being alone. How does this contrast with getting your work out there and others’ reactions to it?
STL: “Half Moon Bay” depicts what it’s like for me to move through the world as a mixed-heritage person and a light-skinned Native person. I have to navigate moments like this encounter I had with an ex-partner’s racist relative. When this person saw me, she exclaimed, “Oh, you’re Indian!?!” I cringed and wanted to tell my ex to deal with this relative because they were being stupid. At the same time, I was trying to be respectful because this person was an elder. But she kept going. “You don’t look Indian. I mean, look at you. Are you Mexican?” It got worse. When she finally did accept that I was Native American, she said that line about how she grew up around “garbage Indians” because they lived by the dump. I wished I’d had a safe word or a flag to wave at my partner to tell them how fucked up this was. I ended up walking away for a moment. To me, that poem has multiple layers, the first being that I was confronted for not looking how I’m “supposed to” because I’m mixed heritage. I have a Native mom and a white bio-dad so my presence to this person was confusing. Then, hearing that their only relationship with Native people was seeing them as garbage Indians because their rez was on the dump. I wanted to be like, “Oh my God, just go!”
My experience in that poem is contrasted by some of the responses I’ve had to the book. I recently spoke at the opening of the ʔálʔal House (pronounced ‘All All’ in English), a new housing project built by the Chief Seattle Club in Pioneer Square. It’s an incredible housing unit where Native folks can live for free. They even have a whole wing for elders. It’s by far my favorite thing I’ve ever done as a writer. A while later, I got an email from one of the audience members. They told me how they were Coast Salish too and how they’re reading Red Paint while at a rehabilitation facility, having been diagnosed with PTSD. They told me the book was getting them through.
It was so beautiful to receive that email. It reminded me why I’m sharing these very private experiences. When I get petrified before a reading, I remember that email from another Coast Salish person on their own journey, and going through something, yet finding comfort from my work. I remember why I wrote these books. For fourteen-year-old me.
SAM: There are dozens of questions I could ask you about your poem “Teach Me to Say I Love You”, but I’ll settle on this one: How to end a poem is vexing. There are so many differing opinions. Some say a poem’s ending should be like the closing of a jewelry box. But this poem ends with a harrowing sense of anticipation. How do you know when a poem has ended?
STL: I want to answer like a badass poetry guru. But I’m still learning. Most of the time, I’ll have 3 to 5 stanzas at the end that I have to chop off; yet, I had to allow myself to write them. Even as I’m spewing those last stanzas out, I’ll know it’s not working, yet I allow myself to write them, rambling on, and knowing I’ll edit later.
Sometimes a poem starts with one moment. For instance, I’ll have an image and then build the poem around it. Like the “Teach Me to Say I Love You”, I end with the Lushootseed word ʔuʔušəbicid čəd. I wanted to end on the sound of it (Ohh-ohh-sha-beet-see chud) and then teach the reader how to say it, bringing the poem back to the idea of personal meaning through sound. That was the first poem in which I experimented with my traditional language.
The first time I read that poem aloud was at an indigenous women’s gathering. Beforehand, I was excited to read it. My mom was teaching me her language and had helped me with the words. But when I looked out at the audience and saw a bunch of tribal elders, I got nervous that I would get the words wrong. My mom encouraged me: “You’ve got this. Just do it!”. Afterward, the elders approached me. I was worried they were going to lecture me about my bad pronunciation or improper glottal stops. But they were just stoked that I was trying, which validated the way I chose to end that poem.
SAM: I’m so glad you write and read aloud in your traditional language, which brings me to my last question. Why won’t we as writers ever “be done writing/ about old things”? as you write in your poem “Redwoods”.
STL: I love this poem because it’s such a jerk. I was camping by myself up the coast. I had just left my partner in San Diego. I was doing this badass thing, driving up the coast with just me and my dog, camping. Every night I would start writing in my journal and as I got closer to northern California and the redwoods, I started thinking, “I’m not going to write a poem about redwoods!” Yeah, I’m a Native woman, but I’m also a punk woman, I’m a queer woman. I’m all these things. I don’t have to write about trees! That first night camping there, I started writing “fuck the redwoods”. The second night, I wrote, “Well, the redwoods are pretty!” And the poem progressed from there. I set out to write a poem stating that though I’m a Coast Salish woman, I don’t have to write about trees and Grandmas and cedar. But by the end of my beautiful seven days of camping there, the poem taught me something humbling. Damn it! I do need to write about trees.
Since 2007, Shaun Anthony McMichael has taught writing to students from around the world, in classrooms, juvenile detention halls, mental health treatment centers, and homeless youth drop-ins throughout the Seattle area. He is the editor of The Shadow Beside Me (2020) and The Story of My Heart (2021), anthologies of poetry by youth affected by trauma, mental illness, and instability. Over 80 of his poems, short stories, and reviews have appeared in literary magazines, online, and in print. He lives in Seattle with his wife and son.
Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribes. Native to the Pacific Northwest she draws inspiration from her coastal heritage as well as her life in the city. She’s the author of the poetry collection Rose Quartz (Milkweed, 2023) and Red Paint (Counterpoint, 2022), recipient of 2023’s Pacific Northwest Book Award, as well as starred reviews from Kirkus and Shelf Awareness. She writes with a focus on trauma and resilience, ranging topics from PTSD, sexual violence, the work her great grandmother did for the Lushootseed language revitalization, to loud basement punk shows and what it means to grow up mixed heritage. Sasha teaches creative writing at the Native Pathways Program at Evergreen and is a mentor for Seattle’s youth poet laureate program. Her essay collection Thunder Song is forthcoming in March 2024 through Counterpoint Press.
