While Luci Tapahonso is a beautiful woman, commanding attention with her long, black hair ("wild and untamed") and her ready laughter, two other things about her during her visit commanded my attention. As I listened to her throughout the day, I became aware of here serene, unshakeable sense of self, and springing out of that, her great ability as a storyteller.

During her visit, and from reading her poems, interviews, and essays, it dawned on me that her strong sense of identity arises from her understanding of her role and situation within a vastly connected whole world. This makes it necessary for her as a poet and person to represent all people and stories in proper context, in a "unified picture." In this way there seems little difference between who she is as a poet and as a human being who is Navajo. In her essay, "A Sense of Myself," she reflects upon how her poetics come from traditional Navajo ideas about language. She says, "I do not write alone and I am responsible and held accountable for what I write.... It has been that way my whole life, and my sense of language, my awareness of words becomes entangled with songs, memories, history and the land."

One can see why at all poetry readings, she introduces herself by describing her kinships and her birthplace in Navajo. Here is a poetics grounded in the acknowledgement of one's responsibility and connectedness to homeland, family, and culture. This is a poetics of wholeness. What seems inherent within this poetics is its politics, by which I mean that it powerfully counters western mainstream values, particularly those which seek to compartmentalize and keep separate people, nature, art, politics, spirituality, etc., in the unspoken ideology of fragmentation.

I think that this solid understanding of who she is within an inseparable community of people, poetics and politics partially explains why Luci Tapahonso is such a good storyteller. Another more obvious reason is because she is a fine performer, as was made evident at the reading Monday night (February 17, 1992), where she demonstrated her ease and skill working within the oral tradition by speaking in a variety of languages and dramatic styles. The reading itself carried the audience from sweet childhood memories, to family stories, to different forms of love in the face of loss, destruction, and death, to finally, a Yeibechai dance, and healing: so "We are restored. We are restored" powerfully and in beauty.

But I think I will always remember her best driving around with me sightseeing in Tucson, sharing stories and beauty secrets. Laughing, she told me the beauty secret of all the Tapahonso women: "lots of caffeine, coffee and diet colas, and dancing, lots of dancing." Her ability to tell stories that reached out to me and others to share our stories and laughter made me see Luci as a truly remarkable, a truly "saah" person.