Susan Devan Harness
Susan Devan Harness is a member of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes and award-winning author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption, as well as an American Indian transracial adoptee. She has written and presented nationally and internationally about American Indian assimilation policies, including adoption. Ms. Harness holds MAs in Cultural Anthropology as well as Creative Nonfiction, both from Colorado State University, where she is an affiliate of the Department of Anthropology and Geography.
Facebook: @susanharness.anthro.writer
Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?
Genre books, 10 pages at most. If I really want to like it, I’ll try it three times. However, if the book is something I have to read, for research, or learning more about a topic I am interested in, I’ll give it the regular ten pages, but then jump around to what interests me. I find the older I get, the pickier I am. My list of what I don’t like has gotten longer than what I do like. I have high expectations of a book. Any book. The back of cereal boxes. The story has to be good, tight, with depth of characters with whom I can relate. Sometimes I think having an exciting life and wide-spread interests creates very high expectations.
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
I was never drawn to contemporary art, with melting vases, and lines bleeding down a ten-foot canvas. I just didn’t ‘get’ them; I didn’t feel anything but confusion as I looked at them. A friend took me to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vancouver, BC, where one room held five large screens. Each screen showed a perspective of a city plaza, the main characters, an Asian man, or woman, stood in white, bloodied linen and gazed around as if looking for something, anything familiar. Vampires? Spirits? That was not clear, but the fact that the story unfolded as you followed a horse and buggy from screen to screen, told a story. The horse and buggy would exist down an alleyway, and enter the second screen, or perhaps not, but the clop-clop-clop on cobblestones could be heard moving on the stereo behind me. The direction of the hammer and anvil changed, the perspective of people in the plaza changed, the laughter of off-screen conversation changed. I sat there for hours, and didn’t see the loop. That’s when I fell in love with video art.
Vacation druthers. City or Rural, why?
Rural. Hands down. America, Europe, Central America. I want to see the people, and what they do on a day-to-day basis. I want to sit in a small café and listen to their conversations, even if they don’t speak my language. Especially if they don’t speak my language. In their laughter I see their eyes crinkle at the edges, their mouths pulled wide, the enjoyment they get from one another. I watch their gestures, how they drink their tea, their coffee, how they’re dressed, and I wonder about what they do outside of this space. I can’t help but smile when their voices rise in boisterousness, and their laughter carries in waves. I’m just drawn to the questions of their lives and how they live them.
Do you have another artistic outlet?
I knit and crochet. But basic things, easy sweaters, mittens, and throws. When I was younger my hand/eye coordination was not great, and my stitches were too tight, or too loose, seemingly out of my control. My mom gave up trying to teach me; both of our frustrations complicating our relationship. But I continued on my own, when perfection wasn’t the end result. I picked up quilting when my kids were young. I love the feeling of the fabric, the colors, the textures. I love the small stitches of hand-quilting, the way it quiets my mind and my body. And gardening reminds me of life, watching small green spindles of plants unfurl against dark soil fills my joy. They become children as they grow older: are they getting enough light? Enough water? Enough warmth? Too much? The worry increases as I transplant them outside: will they freeze, get eaten by insects? Will they die from shock, from hail? Of course, all of this brings back memories of my worries as I watched my sons enter the world in their different life stages. That worry doesn’t really ever go away, I realize now.
What do you worry about?
When I’m not worrying about my plants, or my sons and their families, I worry about the environment. A work visit to Burlington, Colorado introduced me to the fact that an entire aquifer can be poisoned by run-off of fertilizers. Everywhere we went signs warned us not to drink the water; bottled water would be provided. That was something, in my mind, that occurred in the Midwest, in Illinois, Indiana, not in Colorado. I’ve become quite interested in agriculture now, where our food comes from, how it’s brought to life, to market, to my table. How it may affect my health, or the health of my granddaughter. As a result, agricultural ecology takes up much of my world as questions arise with every farm I pass. Worry, I realize, is not a bad thing; it reminds us what is important, and ways to think about protecting those important things or beings in our lives. It requires us to push beyond our comfortable boundaries.
