Muske asks, “The question of self, for a woman poet…is continually vexing…what is a woman’s self?” (Muske 3). Women have historically had their self created for them by the patriarchal society in which they live, which leaves contemporary women wondering how to define a woman’s self at all. Even if they, as women, can create a self, how accurate is it? Muske muses on what is a truth telling self since a woman’s perception of truth is colored always by what the patriarchal society is telling her is truth. Muske says in her poem “A Private Matter”, “…there are the words, dialogue of people you once became or not…”. It is in these words that a woman finds herself, a poem of all the selves in a self, but not without a cost. In “Epith”, Muske muses:

You forget yourself
with each glittering pin,
each chip off the old rock,
each sip of the long toast

to your famous independence,
negotiated at such cost—
and still refusing to fit.

 “The inclination to bear witness seems aligned with the missing self” (Muske 4). Women create the ‘missing’ self by telling their stories, not the stories that have been told to them by a male dominated society, but those stories that define that missing self. In so doing, Muske reiterates the statement James Olney makes when he says, “... even as the autobiographer fixes limits in the past, a new experiment in living, a new experience in consciousness ... and a new projection or metaphor of a new self is under way” (Olney). Muske encourages contemporary women writers to produce a text that is “a model, a shape of poetic discourse based roughly on the act of testimony” (Muske 11). Harjo notes the many selves of a self who are fighting to be heard in her poem, “She Had Some Horses”:

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.
She had some horses.

Harjo breaks the silence of the “missing” self by recording each self in this poem. She continues:

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed as they raped her.
She had some horses.
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.

The missing self is aligned with the self and made whole. . The poem concludes, “They were the same horses”. Harjo integrates through her poem all the selves into a whole.

Inherent in discovering the missing self is the act of testimony. Muske talks of Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath as women poets who have changed the face of female poetics with their own truth-telling testimonies. She quotes Rich as saying, “…testimony exists to confront a world beyond the self” (Muske 16). Telling the truth, for a woman, is a breaking of imposed silence. The world beyond the self is constantly reminding women of their ‘place’ and women poets need to move beyond the male gaze, they need to move outside and beyond the silence. Muske admonishes the woman poet to break the silence, to speak the forbidden. Muske notes that even this truth-telling testimony can have its problems. “…there is in the writerly imagination a deep ungovernable impulse to invent, fictionalize, to tell the truth, but (tell it) slant” (Muske 25). There are instances when perception of the truth can color the testimony, however, the larger truth is that each perception can carry the seeds of accuracy. As the self encounters changes, so do the truths of that self. A perception of one event can be perceived quite differently at a later time. In Notes from the Underground, Fydor Dostoyevsky says that “…a true autobiography is almost an impossibility, and that man is bound to lie about himself” (Dostoyevsky).

I considered
how we twisted into ourselves to live.
When the storm stopped, I sat still,
listening.

Here were the words of the Blind Poet--
crumpled like wash for the line, to be
dried, pressed flat. Upstairs, someone called
my name. What sense would it ever

make to them, the unread world, the getters and spenders,
if they could not hear what I heard,
not feel what I felt
nothing ruined poetry, a voice revived it,
extremity.

“If they could not hear what I heard…” is a powerful testament to the interpretation of the self and to the poem itself. For Muske, the power of poetry lies in reviving the truth over and over again. The fact that the reader will ‘hear’ or not ‘hear’ the truth is irrelevant, it is the act of testifying that bears the power of “a new language”.

For Harjo, the act of truth-telling testimony is important for a different reason. “The poet is charged with the role of being the truth teller of the culture, of the times” (Harjo 141). Harjo’s poems tell the truth of the Indian Nations loss and their struggle to regain a sense of identity. For Harjo, truth-telling is a way of remembering and she believes that ‘remembering’ is alive and affects the future. “The sheer weight of memory coupled with imagery constructs poems” (Harjo 55), Harjo says. Her poetry certainly accomplishes this as she ‘remembers’ the lives of her ancestors and those who have fallen in their quest for identity. Harjo says, “…there is something about poetry that demands the truth…” (Harjo 141). Through the poetic discourse of testimony, Harjo presents the truth of her people.

Both poets feel that through this act of testimony, this breaking of silence, that a new language is emerging – a language of truth. Harjo says, “I truly feel there is a new language coming about…” (Harjo 63). By reconnecting with the past and having the courage to ‘speak’ the truth of that past, poets achieve a level of understanding of lost cultures – the culture of silenced women and the culture of silenced Native Americans.

Muske notes in her review of Talking to Strangers by Patricia Dobler that “In most assimilation stories, to succeed at being American is to fail to be one’s true (traditional) self” (Muske 119). This is certainly true of the Native Americans who were forcibly assimilated. Harjo offers her people a new voice to speak with, a voice that is allowed to speak of “one’s true self”.

Joy Harjo deeply feels the presence of those forgotten in her poetry. Harjo feels that it is very important for writers of all genders, races, and nationalities to have an understanding of their cultural and personal histories. “Sometimes I feel like specters of forgotten ones roam the literature of some of these American writers who don’t understand where they come from, who they are, where they are going…” (Harjo 70). Harjo discusses the importance of recording one’s roots and remembering, both of which are central to Native Americans. Harjo believes that memory is alive and affects the future. “I believe myth is an alive, interactive event that is present in the everyday” (Harjo 130).

The act of creating one’s own personal myth is rewarding and not only connects one with their heritage but serves to provide future generations with an accurate description of a life lived within time. “I feel that any writer serves many aspects of culture, including language, but you also serve history, you serve the mythic structure that you’re part of, the people, the earth, and so on—and none of these are separate” (Harjo 111). The recording of a life within history also creates us. It is through the telling of stories that we justify our emotions at any given time. “…the poem of witness must exist—because it is necessary to refresh moral life” (Muske 24). It is through the act of truth-telling testimony that we find our self, that we find our truths.

The book starts at the beginning of his work experience, cleaning up poop as he gently puts it, and then goes all the way to his current job. I enjoyed the part where Tom slips on a piece of feces that was thrown at him by inmates. I am amazed at the things one person can experience.

Tom also gives the readers great advice, I love this one, your just passing through this world, might as well enjoy it, now put this book down and go try something new, or something you always wanted to do but haven't. I liked that for the simple fact, that he is right. We all are just passing through, and like Tom said when it's all said and done and you reflect on your life, are you going to have regrets on things you should have done? Should have seen?

Well, I am going to go and try to live life more, I think I will learn to play the piano, and I think I will take that trip. But before you decide to do things that you have always dreamt of, check out Mr. Instability on Lulu.com and enjoy. I did.

On May 17,1939, Britain published a new White Paper which repudiated all its former commitments to establishing a national Jewish homeland in Palestine. Ten days earlier, a shipload of 937 Jewish refugees had set sail from Hamburg to Havana. The Cuban government, under pressure from Britain, rescinded the visas it had issued, and the ship was refused landing. Many of the passengers threatened suicide. Cuba was not moved.

Trailed by the American Coast Guard, the “St. Louis” drifted in Florida waters. It was only when J.O.I.N.T. guaranteed to sponsor the refugees did France, Britain, Belgium and Holland each agree to temporarily admit a limited number. The refuge they offered was, indeed, temporarily, for within 13 months, the refugees (excluding those lucky enough to have been accepted by Britain) were back in the same “boat.”…Hitler struck the match, and the western democracies locked the exits.

In the spring of 1945, the Allies penetrated into the ruins of what had been the Third Reich and “liberated” those still stumbling among its rubble…Towards the end of the war, Roosevelt had convened another conference. Representatives of forty-four countries laid the groundwork for U.N.R.R.A. (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency) By the end of the war U.N.R.R.A. was established and within little more than a year helped to repatriate and to resettle most of the displaced people who had homes to which they wanted to return. However, there were D.P.s who did not want to go home.

Most of them were Nazi collaborators who dared not return. The rest were Jews. An Allied military directive was issued assigning the D.P.s to camps according to country of origin. This policy threw Jewish survivors together with, among others, unrepentant Ukrainians and anti-Semitic Poles. Initially, the survivors were too ill and exhausted to challenge the new authorities.

When they gained the strength to do so, the military stood on principle. Would not segregation (the segregation practiced in their own country) be an endorsement of Nazi racial policy? So the survivors of death camps were confined behind barbed-wire fences under the surveillance of armed guards. (Ostensibly, to prevent them from “looting.” The Germans were being protected from the Jews.) Just beyond the fences German and Austrian burghers continued to live in their homes, to tend their gardens, to travel without harassment, and to despise the victims they had failed to destroy.

Teams of delegates from Jewish relief agencies raised a ruckus that was heard in the White House. Truman appointed Earl Harrison to conduct an investigation. An excerpt from the Harrison Report read: “…As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentrations camps in large numbers under our own military guards instead of the S. S. troops.

One is led to wonder whether or the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following, or at least condoning Nazi policy.” First and foremost, Harrison urged, the Jews must have their own camps. Truman responded by instructing Eisenhower to give priority to those who had suffered most. He cabled: “We must make clear to the German people that we thoroughly abhor the Nazi policies of hatred and persecution. We have no better opportunity to demonstrate this than by the manner in which we ourselves actually treat the survivors remaining in Germany.”

Another member of the high command reacted to the Harrison Report. In a diary entry dated September 1945 he wrote: One of the chief complaints of (Earl Harrison) is that the D.P.s are kept in camp under guard. Of course, Harrison is ignorant of the fact that if they were not kept under guard they would not stay in the camp, would spread over the country like locusts, and would eventually have to be rounded up after quite a few of them had been shot and quite a few Germans murdered and pillaged…Harrison and his ilk believe that the D.P. is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews who are lower than animals.” This comes from the journal of General George Patton.

Though Patton's reaction was extreme, it was not unique. American officers, bringing their prejudices from home, simply filed and ignored directives that called for humane treatment of the disoriented D.P.s. It was in this atmosphere and under these conditions, that a thirty-four-year-old Jewish lieutenant from Chicago named Albert Hutler was appointed displaced persons' officer for the three-hundred mile region of southwest Germany. Educated as a lawyer and trained as a social worker, Hutler balanced military demands with the exigencies of traumatized people.

Though Jewish survivors were not the only D.P.s in his charge, they were his main concern. In his efforts to restore their health and dignity he and his staff requisitioned, on their behalf, office buildings, apartment complexes, private homes, and at least one castle. Then they confiscated every useful article to be found on the requisitioned premises. They organized medical facilities, soup kitchens, nurseries, and sponsored religious services.

They even supplied a keg of wine as a gift on every railway car transporting French returnees. (When Hutler learn that repatriated Frenchmen were demonstrating in the streets of Paris because the government subsidies being given to help them rebuild their lives were also being granted to their fellow French Jews, the wine stopped flowing.)

Jewish survivors were given work as translators on Hutler's staff. When he discovered that 249 Polish Jewish survivors of a death camp, “liberated” in the French sector, were scheduled to be placed in a Polish D.P. camp, Hutler risked court martial by arranging to have them transferred to his sector in the American zone. He signed passes and identifying papers on American Military Government stationary, enabling survivors to move freely as they searched for relatives and loved ones.

One of the D.P.s equipped with documents from Hutler was an eighteen-year-old girl who, on her motorcycle, roared across three international boundaries, to Poland, and back. Ten years later, that daredevil would become my mother. My mother had survived the second half of the war in southwest Germany on forged documents, as a Polish Catholic slave laborer. The documents restoring her true identity, signed by Hutler, exist, yellowed and frayed, to this day.

As word of the guardian angel-of-a-Jewish-officer-with- the-name-that-sounded-like-“Hitler” spread among the survivors, they descended on his office. On Tuesday nights my mother would sleep on the floor, somewhere in the apartment that had been requisitioned for her and her friends by Hutler's staff, having, yet again, given up her bed to another D.P. who had an audience with him the next day, because Wednesdays, at Hutler's office, was “Jewish Day.” On Wednesdays, displaced Jews gathered at American Military Government headquarters to tell their stories to Lieutenant Hutler and the Jewish chaplain.

Whatever could be done to assist them, was. In his memoir, “Agony of Survival,” Hutler relates his anguish in the face of their tragedy, and his awe at their resilience. In a letter to his wife he writes; …At yesterday's meeting, a man with a record of six years at Buchenwald, with its “standing room,” its “incinerator,” the “small camp,” a man broken in body and yet with hope-hope because he has a sister in England and a cousin in America-came to the office.

He talked of his own daughters who he heard are in a camp in the Russian area. His eyes glow as he speaks, and yet he does not know whether they are alive or dead. He speaks gently of his wife, whom the Nazis murdered. What can we do for him? A pair of shoes, a suit, a few suits of underwear, a shirt-we can give him these. But can the Germans be made to give him back his wife, his girls, or even his healthy body? America just won't believe...

There are still elements in America which don't believe, or pretend not to. The testimony of veterans, whether they be Jewish or not, is vital not only because it augments the documentation of the period, but also because it unmasks the outrage of revisionism.

Albert Hutler was awarded the Bronze Star for his work with French refugees and with D.P.s in Germany, and was decorated by the Dutch government with the Order of Orange-Nassau with Swords-their highest honor - For his help to refugees from Holland. He formed lifelong friendships with several of the survivors who settled in the United States, and last year, when an article about the lieutenant and his memoir appeared in “The Canadian Jewish News” he received a phone call-from my mother. In return, she received a copy of his book.