Dragonfly

In this collection of fifty years of her poetry, Dr. Irene I. Blea brazenly relates her efforts to understand what she thought was wrong with her. She came to an understanding of social and historical factors that misinformed her colonized mind. Decolonization demanded evaluating her mind, body, and spirit. She portrays decolonization as a complex process involving the rejection and redefinition of the colonizer's language, embracing her own tri-cultural history, and commitment to ongoing learning and growth. This is a process that requires dedication and struggle to create a more just and equitable world. Irene Blea shares her transformation from the prescription of traditional female roles riddled by confusion and conflict to guide us to peace, and understanding of the physical, psychological, and spiritual process that brought her to what it means to be a female human in a sometimes-hostile world

The author writes, On January 1, 2024, I opened my eyes and asked into the crispness of my bedroom if I would die that year. I have been obsessed with my death for decades and wrote about it in my autobiography, Erené with Wolf Medicine. The room responded with, "I don't know." I decided to rise and make some coffee.

I have outlived most of my friends, and several seniors of my extended family. I do not want to die at home on a sweltering summer afternoon when everyone is working and not be found for a week bloated and smelling on the bathroom or kitchen floor. If I must leave this world, it should be after viewing the golden firefly that visits me in my yard each year one more time.

I am not okay living to a hundred, but do not want to die before I inform you that throughout my life, I wrote much poetry and that I was one of few women at the forefront of Chicano literature. This type of poetry was an important literary movement. Chicano and Chicana poetry was rooted in resistance to class discrimination, racism, and sexism. Early poets of the time created a genre that added to American literature another category. We had unique philosophical, topical, and aesthetic features different from the divisions of genres of the time.

This literary movement provided language for comparing, contrasting, and discussing literary words and works, and served as an introduction to the formation of curricula and anthologies.

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