ANA SISNETT: 1952-2009

(Ana Sisnett, photo from Austin American-Statesman 14 January 2009 obituary, photographer not named)

Oh my gentle friends, we've lost Ana Sisnett.

Way too early. And cruelly before she could see Barack Obama assume the office of the Presidency.

She's been fighting ovarian cancer for three years. She died at home, in loving care, on Tuesday afternoon, at 56 years of age. She is survived by her partner, Priscilla Hale; her daughter Meredith Sisnett, age 36; her son Ghamal Webb, age 31; and two adored grandchildren. She is also survived by a vast community who knew her as an artist, writer, poet, community activist, builder of bridges, and friend.


(Ana Sisnett featured at Hello, Austin)

I first met Ana in 1995 when I began volunteering at WATER House (Women's Access To Electronic Resources). Ana was part of the Foundation for a Compassionate Society, which funded WATER, and she had set up WATER's training program in computer technology for underserved women and girls. At around that same time, she began working with Sue Beckwith at Austin Free-Net, a non-profit organization that offers free Internet access and classes in over forty sites in Austin, many in neighborhoods with large African American and Latino populations. It is because of my training at WATER, mostly done by the very patient Amanda Johnston, that I came to the online world and eventually to blogging.

Ana eventually became Executive Director of Austin Free-Net. Her obituary at that organization's website states:

'Ana and Austin Free-Net were featured on the cover of the Austin Chronicle’s 2003 Best of Austin issue, when AFN was voted "Best Internet Safety Net and Digital Divide Bridge." She was also among community technology leaders in the U.S. given the Education Technology Think Tank (ET3) 2003 Technology to Empower Communities (TEC) Champion Award. In 2000, Texas Monthly Biz cited her as one “The 25 Most Powerful Texans in High Tech,” and she was the recipient of the City of Austin’s 2001 Susan G. Hadden Telecommunity Award.

(Ana Sisnett from 2003 Austin Chronicle's Best of Austin edition)

'Ana was often called upon by media, researchers, and policymakers to provide expert testimony for Austin and Texas e-government initiatives, and to participate in conferences, town halls, and other gatherings focused on equitable access to the technology and training. She was an invited panelist at the Barbara Jordan National Forum on Public Policy, Goodwill International Industries annual conference, keynote speaker at the St. Louis Brown Bag Technology Collaborative, and mentor during the 2002 Community Technology Centers Network Leadership Institute. She served on the KLRU Public Square and Digital Divide brain trusts, and was a member of the River City Youth Foundation's Community Advisory Board.

"Her local, national and international volunteer and paid activism included community media and cultural productions, anti-oppression workshops, AIDS/HIV awareness initiatives, and community technology training, access, policies and issues. As a co-"Technomama" during the '90s, Ana provided Internet trainings in English, Spanish and Portuguese in Europe, Latin America, and throughout the US for non-governmental organizations working on the UN Human Rights and Women's conferences in the mid-90s."

[An interview with Ana concerning her work with Austin Free-Net can be found here.]

Despite this geeky resume, Ana in person was passionate, funny, and projected more of an artistic persona. I saw her most often at poetry readings, where her work was enormously popular, both because of its accessible, eloquent content and her sizzling delivery. Her voice was deep, full of humor, and carried delicious flavor from her birthplace of Panama plus childhood years in Barbados and Jamaica. The poem that everyone always wanted to hear, no matter what else was on the bill, was the one she'd written about mangoes. A paean to her upbringing, to sensuality, and to the unique beauty of mangoes themselves, her reading of it filled us with ache and joy simultaneously. I particularly remember a reading at the Tillery Street Theater where Carole Metellus, another island woman poet and good friend of Ana's, stood up and devoured a mango while Ana read the poem, ripping open the rind with her teeth and reducing us all to goo by the time she was done.

In 2005, when several thousand New Orleaneans stranded first by Hurricane Katrina and then by our government arrived at the Austin Convention Center, Ana was instrumental in getting computer access set up for these folks, and later helped with the oral history project collecting their stories.

I have a strong memory of the reading at BookWoman in early 2002 launching the publication of Affirming Flame: Writings by Progressive Texas Poets in the Aftermath of September 11th by Evelyn Street Press. I had two pieces in that anthology, and performed them both. But Ana's poem is what I remember as the room-shifter, giving us all permission to feel more than a single emotion, insisting we make connections between ourselves and other parts of the world. That poem is here (I have tears in my eyes that we/you will never get to hear how it lived in her voice):

Illegal Haikus: Not for Purists

I.
Homeland security
Insecurity lands home
Leaves me to wonder
Where is home?

II.
Multinational mass control
Consolidated ownership:
self-righteousness
breeds
vengeance

III.
Cantor Fitzgerald
700 dead under the
rubble of "trillions of dollars
handled each day"

IV.
Tomorrow:
back to work with teary eyes--
Such is the arithmetic of grief
Rising sums of human capital,
Fodder for the New World Order.

V.
Declare a state of high alert
Each time a black man's body
Sweeps a country road
or stops bullets on city streets.

VI.
"Suck me
Lick me
Quickly..."
illegal haikus
Spoken in
Urgent whispers
During times of endless wars.

© Ana Sisnett, 2001


(Granny Jus' Come by Ana Sisnett)

In contrast to her razor-keen political poetry and her heart-skipping erotic verse, Ana was also nationally known as a children's book author for Granny Jus' Come and Two Mrs. Gibsons. I gave away copies of Granny Jus' Come to every family I knew with small children. Written in the dialect of Ana's childhood, it's the joyful story of a little girl's love for her grandmother who is coming for a visit. When I got to hear her read this aloud, I thought about her being a grandmother, how she stood with those strong legs and powerful posture at the center of five generations, immortalizing the love she had for her granny and certain of a matching love from her lucky grandchildren.

I also have a strong memory of how angry I was when I heard that during routine oral surgery, a mishap had cut a nerve and damaged both facial control and speech. This, in such a stunningly beautiful woman whose voice was essential to so many -- I found it an injustice hard to bear. But Ana faced it head-on, calm, smart, and fearless. She worked through the damage and returned to her public readings in due time.

(Visual art by Ana Sisnett, title not known)

Ana had moved into visual arts, where of course she quickly displayed expertise and profound connection. It really seemed there wasn't anything she could not do. Her Austin American-Statesman obituary reminds me that she was a volunteer and organizer for ALLGO (Austin Latino/a Lesbian Gay Organization) and for Alma de Mujer, an indigenous women's retreat and arts center. It also stated she moved to Los Angeles at age 13, and obtained her degree in Spanish and Communications from the University of California at San Diego.

But what come into my mind, when I think of her, is how gold flashed in her mouth when she laughed -- I remember her as laughing and grinning, not serious as she is in online photos. I remember her stunning hair, with veins of pure white among the black. I remember her dancing. I remember how, when she was about to speak, everybody around her shut up with anticipation. I remember her unshakable kindness, her self-confidence, how you could absolutely rely on her to not dampen her own intelligence or skirt the holy need for making connections where none were immediately evident. Mostly, in a tight community where small-town values (and gossip) do exist, I remember that I never once heard anyone speak of her except with gladness and respect. She was a passionate artist and activist who did intensely important work but made no enemies along the way, whose name when uttered instantly lit up the face of anybody who'd ever met her. She was a Big Woman. Her passage leaves a gaping hole in our fabric.

(Texas Lesbian Conference 2000, Houston Texas; L-R: Standing -- Priscilla Hale, Carole Metellus, unknown; Sitting -- Dawn Surratt, Ana Sisnett, Maggie Jochild, Harper)

Ana's friend Carole Metellus had organized a daily meditative reflection for Ana during her recent life transformation. Her request states: "I am asking, that wherever we may be at 3 p.m. CST daily, that we cease our activities for 5-10 minutes to hold Ana on her journey and support Priscilla in hers. If you are able, it would be valuable to light a WHITE candle to initiate the moment as we collectively offer them our good energies." Carole has asked that we continue this practice until we can partake in a more formal farewell.

ALLGO now has this notice up:

"Celebrating Ana
Join us Saturday, January 24, at 1:00 PM
as we honor Ana Sisnett’s life and spirit
Trinity United Methodist Church
600 E 50th St, Austin, TX"

[Excerpts of a KUT Radio (90.5 FM) interview with Ana's friend Kate X Messer on her passing can be listened to here.]

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMANDA!!!

(Amanda as she looked when we were newly friends, in Austin, TX 1998)

It's the birthday of my dear, great friend, Amanda. We've known each other since 1995, when Amanda was working at WATER House (Women's Access To Electronic Resources) here in Austin. The very first time I got on the internet, it was Amanda who sat at my elbow, teaching me how to join the cyberworld. Yep, she's the one who started me on this path. What Amanda hath wrought.

Amanda has seen me through several incarnations, with unfailing support, honesty, and humor. I love her unconditionally.

(Amanda 2007)

She now lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts with her wife Allison. Two years ago, Amanda called to tell me they had decided to get married and to ask me if I would not only attend, but also write something for their wedding ceremony. She was a little nervous about asking me. She's a Generation X dyke, and she was afraid I'd tell her all the reasons why marriage sucked, even (or especially) for lesbians. Instead, I was deeply honored, genuinely thrilled for her and Allison, and it started me thinking...

(Allison and Amanda, 2006)
This was early June 2006. I was trying to imagine myself as a young dyke who was able to overcome my sexual abuse history far earlier than I did, able to choose the right partner for myself and make a lifelong commitment. There were other influences at the time -- particularly my brother Bill's yartzeit and a haunting video of this guy named Matt dancing at various places around the world. But the three came together in my unconscious and I began dreaming a series of magic dreams which, on June 20th, came down on paper as the beginning of my novel Ginny Bates: About two women who were able to do what Amanda and Allison are doing. (With all the details drawn from my life, not theirs, let me add for the sake of privacy and ending groundless rumors.)

The best parts of the characters Sima and Edwina in Ginny Bates are from Amanda. Likewise, Allison is found here and there in various characters, although, paradoxically, not in Allie who is named in her honor. Other tie-ins are that in GB: Myra writes a series of science-fiction novels (which become best-sellers) based on future life on a planet named Skene. Skene is located in the Alhena solar system -- and Alhena just happens to be Amanda's stage name as a belly dancer. Also, on Skene there is a personage named the Sigrist who is central to life there. Turns out, Sigrist is an ancient Scandinavian word that means sexton or watchkeeper. It is also a family name from Allison's lineage. Thus, Myra pays them homage with Skene.

Well, okay, it was me who wrote Skene. (All of which appears online at this blog, by the way, Chapters One through Fifty-Five. If you want to explore gender from a non-binary view, if you want to think about social organization when environmental limits are extreme, if you'd like to see a culture that has moved beyond class and race as constructs, and if you want to read some extremely hot woman-on-woman sex -- well, kinda woman-on-woman -- you'll like Skene.)

(Allison and Amanda leaving their wedding, 8 July 2006, Belmont, MA)

Amanda also appears as one of the major characters in my short story, "The Muffdivers of American Literature Tour", which can be read at this blog in my Emily Dickinson post.

Amanda and Allison are both the children of divorce, lost their mothers far too early, and not only accept feminism as their due but understand it as well as those of us who invented it. They are living proof that childhood pain and misinformation can be worked through to find happiness and a healthy relationship.

She cuts a huge swath in this world. In addition to running WATER, she worked at Austin's only women's bookstore, BookWoman, and was the website designer for Feminist Bookstore News. When we lost her to Massachusetts, she was for several years a high administrator in the Boston Jewish Film Festival. Now she is web and publications manager for a large New England gay and lesbian advocacy organization.
(Amanda at PSAW in Burlington, VT, November 2006)

I always think of Amanda when I watch that great Hepburn/Tracy film, Adam's Rib, because of the comedic dirge in it, "Farewell, Amanda" (written by Cole Porter but not credited at the time). However, instead of leaving you with those sad lines, I'll invoke another Porter song, one which completely expresses my feelings for Amanda: You're The Top.


(Bing Crosby, Donald O'Connor, Mitzi Gaynor, and Zizi Jeanmaire in "Anything Goes")

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