In the Name of Love

Queering Relationships in Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots (1991)

Abstract

Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots (1991), written by the Kuna-Rappahannock author Monique Mojica, constitutes a palimpsestic performance wherein the playwright recuperates the voices of well-known figures like Pocahontas or La Malinche, questioning the European imaginations and decolonizing their stories. The transnational polyphonic space created by Mojica allows not only exposes the long-lasting and broad impact that these European narratives have on Indigenous Women; but it also enables the configuration of a genealogical anthology of Indigenous Feminist, Queer and Two-Spirit knowledge by sewing into her comedic yet utterly angry tapestry the works of other Indigenous -mainly Queer- authors, like Gloria Anzaldúa, Chrystos and Beth Brant, among others.

This paper aims to explore the queer potential of Mojica’s play by reading it as in conversation with Beth Brant’s work, whose discourse provides new and unexplored insights into the performance. On the one hand, such a frame uncovers the mechanisms on display of the European romances, which have instrumentalized the name/idea of ‘love’ as a colonial apparatus to articulate and impose Western heteronormative models upon Indigenous communities, justifying withal European sexual relations with Indigenous women, especially rapes, by creating the stereotype of them as willing for their colonial desire. Whereas, on the other hand, by applying Brant’s A Gathering of Spirit, Mojica’s text reveals a turning towards queer kinship as an alternative to heteronormative relationships, by retrieving the erotic potential of appointed female elements, such as the moon, the water, or even oranges; as well as by gathering the multiplicity of female voices that create this Third Space for the healing of Indigenous women in the name of love.