{"id":9338,"date":"2024-11-13T19:34:03","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T23:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/louise-erdrich-on-the-deepest-meaning-of-resistance-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2024-11-13T19:34:03","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T23:34:03","slug":"louise-erdrich-on-the-deepest-meaning-of-resistance-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/louise-erdrich-on-the-deepest-meaning-of-resistance-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Louise Erdrich on the Deepest Meaning of Resistance \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The best advice we have for anyone else is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2024\/10\/22\/marginalian-18\/\">always advice to ourselves<\/a>, honed on the sincerity of living, learned through life\u2019s best teaching tool: suffering. Otherwise it becomes that most untrustworthy of transmissions: preaching. It is in speaking to ourselves that we practice speaking the truth \u2014 the unflattering truth, the incongruous truth, the truth trembling with all the terror and tenderness of knowing ourselves in order to know the world, of loving ourselves in order to love the world. <\/p>\n<p>That is what Native American novelist, poet, and children\u2019s book author Louise Erdrich offers in \u201cAdvice to Myself #2: Resistance,\u201d originally published in a special edition of <a href=\"https:\/\/orionmagazine.org\/article\/women-standing-rock\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Orion Magazine<\/em><\/a> \u2014 a poem evocative of Derek Walcott\u2019s classic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2015\/04\/21\/love-after-love-derek-walcott\/\">\u201cLove After Love,\u201d<\/a> of Leonard Cohen\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2024\/07\/18\/leonard-cohen-anger-resistance\/\">lyric reckoning with resistance<\/a>, and yet entirely original for the simple reason of drawing from the freshest spring of the universal: the most deeply personal. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;Advice to Myself #2: Resistance&quot; by Louise Erdrich (read by Maria Popova)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JJb0sYmRqxI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>ADVICE TO MYSELF #2: RESISTANCE<\/strong><br \/><em>by Louise Erdrich<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Resist the thought that you may need a savior,<br \/>or another special being to walk beside you.<br \/>Resist the thought that you are alone.<br \/>Resist turning your back on the knife<br \/>of the world\u2019s sorrow,<br \/>resist turning that knife upon yourself.<br \/>Resist your disappearance<br \/>into sentimental monikers,<br \/>into the violent pattern of corporate logos,<br \/>into the mouth of the unholy flower of consumerism.<br \/>Resist being consumed.<br \/>Resist your disappearance<br \/>into anything except<br \/>the face you had before you walked up to the podium.<br \/>Resist all funding sources but accept all money.<br \/>Cut the strings and dismantle the web<br \/>that needing money throws over you.<br \/>Resist the distractions of excess.<br \/>Wear old clothes and avoid chain restaurants.<br \/>Resist your genius and your own significance<br \/>as declared by others.<br \/>Resist all hint of glory but accept the accolade<br \/>as tributes to your double.<br \/>Walk away in your unpurchased skin.<br \/>Resist the millionth purchase and go backward.<br \/>Get rid of everything.<br \/>If you exist, then you are loved<br \/>by existence. What do you need?<br \/>A spoon, a blanket, a bowl, a book \u2014<br \/>maybe the book you give away.<br \/>Resist the need to worry, robbing everything<br \/>of immediacy and peace.<br \/>Resist traveling except where you want to go.<br \/>Resist seeing yourself in others or them in you.<br \/>Nothing, everything, is personal.<br \/>Resist all pressure to have children<br \/>unless you crave the torment of joy.<br \/>If you give in to irrationality, then<br \/>resist cleaning up the messes your children make.<br \/>You are robbing them of small despairs they can fix.<br \/>Resist cleaning up after your husband.<br \/>It will soon replace having sex with him.<br \/>Resist outrageous charts spelling doom.<br \/>However you can, rely on sun and wind.<br \/>Resist loss of the miraculous<br \/>by lowering your standards<br \/>for what constitutes a miracle.<br \/>It is all a fucking miracle.<br \/>Resist your own gift\u2019s power<br \/>to tear you away from the simplicity of tears.<br \/>Your gift will begin to watch you having your emotions,<br \/>so that it can use them in an interesting paragraph,<br \/>or to get a laugh.<br \/>Resist the blue chair of dreams, the red chair of science, the black chair of the humanities, and just be human.<br \/>Resist all chairs.<br \/>Be the one sitting on the ground<br \/>or perching on the beam overhead<br \/>or sleeping beneath the podium.<br \/>Resist disappearing from the stage,<br \/>unless you can walk straight into the bathroom and resume the face,<br \/>the desolate face, the radiant face, the weary face, the face<br \/>that has become your own, though all your life<br \/>you have resisted it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Couple with e.e. cummings on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2017\/09\/25\/e-e-cummings-advice\/\">the courage to be yourself<\/a> \u2014 the ultimate act of resistance \u201cin a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else\u201d \u2014 then revisit Grace Paley on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2015\/09\/03\/grace-paley-aging\/\">the art of growing older<\/a>, predicated on how you hold your face.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best advice we have for anyone else is always advice to ourselves, honed on the sincerity of living, learned through life\u2019s best teaching tool: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}