One of the aspects of this ethnography that stood out to me the most was how ofter the word “we” was used in the chapters we read this week. In the chapter about war, when Lara is discussing how she feels about the war that is being waged against queerness and Blackness her use of we to describe her feelings and who is being harmed allowed me to see the personal connection that she had to the topic and drew me into the ethnography a bit more. By using we the issues being discussed become issues for all of her readers and not just issues that are isolated to the worlds of other people. But, because of how personally connected she seemed to be to this topic, I wonder how she was able to navigate both worlds of being an anthropologist conducting ethnographic research, while also feeling personally involved with the topic? For me, it seems harder to study topics that you are close to so I wonder how she juggled both sides of this work.
Another thing that stuck out to me from this reading was the discussion about what joy is at the end of the chapter named War. This reminded me of conversations about radical acceptance and the responses of the other people in the circle helped me to understand why accepting ourselves as we are is truly a radical choice. Since before we’re born we are consistently fed subconscious ideas about what’s normal, what’s not normal, what’s good, and what’s bad. When we decide to say that we find joy in accepting ourselves as we are, whether that be queer, straight, Black, white, immigrant, or native, we decide to go against all of the norms we are taught. Lara’s description of what she finds joy in is a radical acceptance and celebration of these nuances within ourselves and that is what makes it seem scary or like it’s too much.