Remembering Dolly Parton (and Tim Curry), interrogating Thomas King, and releasing the full bush.  

Emily Gould

But as remembrances and surprising anecdotes pour out or recirculate — like Eminem and Three 6 Mafia both getting sweet notes of encouragement from the country superstar at one point or another — the vastness of Dolly Parton’s impact grows hard to keep track of. She helped get a COVID vaccine out faster by backing key medical research; she assisted families who lost homes in the 2016 Gatlinburg wildfires with getting back on their feet. We’ll spend the rest of the month unpacking all that was managed in her career but what has long been clear is that Parton represented the lasting good that’s possible in America.

So now I’m thinking, If the story we’re talking about is one his mother told him that happens to be untrue, but he built his life and identity and career on it, what is it then? Might there be writers who are actually Indigenous who could have told their stories in place of his, stories that would have meant more to their respective communities and to the wider community? His not being Native makes non-Native people question our authenticity, which is already an issue: outsiders deciding for us who the real Natives are, on a governmental, institutional level as well as on a basic social level. Non-Natives always seem overconfident of their qualifications for asking questions about our authenticity. Which ones are the real ones? everyone seems to be wondering in the back of their mind when the subject of Native people comes up. And it’s been happening since the myth of our vanishing — as if on our own or by natural, mysterious forces — took the place of the history of the genocide committed against us by the U.S. government as well as by its civilians

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I didn’t expect anyone in Cape Cod to point and shout at me like my aunt did, but I was sort of hoping to at least hear whispers from scandalized passersby. I wanted to report back that I looked in the face of grooming patriarchy and held my ground. But even my bikini-bush-fearing friends admitted that they’d never noticed anyone else’s bush at the beach or a pool. Maybe, like those other invisible shackles of a patriarchal society, pubic-hair maintenance is a form of false modesty that we absorb in childhood and then self-enforce for the rest of our lives.

Use this tutorial to learn Dolly Parton’s vocal harmony so you can karaoke “Islands in the Stream” more accurately.