Today Was a Bad Day Like TB

It is important to understand that the poem “Today Was a Bad Day Like TB” was written from a Native American perspective. The author, Chrystos, had a Lithuanian/Alsace-Lorraine mother, and a Native American father of the Menominee tribe. The authors roots account for the bitter tone of the poem, which we pick up on through not only the wording, but also through the grammar; or rather, lack thereof.  

                For a small poem, “Today Was a Bad Day…” is packed with meaning. Chrystos tells a story about seeing white people clap during one of their sacred dances, and mentions a white boy with a red stone pipe, and how this angered her. She also mentions a bookstore that has taken the sacred design of an Indian tribe and is selling merchandise with the symbol on it for profit, and a medicine bundle with a card next to it that says the name of a white family claiming to “own it”. “Own it” she does put in quotation marks to signify that the white people do not really own it; that it is a piece of a history that is not theirs.

All of these situations give way to Chrystos’s angry and bitter tone in the poem. She is angry that white people are clapping to a sacred Indian dance, and infuriated with the boy with the red stone pipe, and the store, and the white family with the medicine bag, because they are invading in a culture that doesn’t belong to them. The white people that she mentions don’t give much consideration to the fact that their ancestors are the ones who took land that wasn’t theirs and forced the Indians to assimilate into the American culture, and that the Indians have kept these traditions alive despite much hatred and prejudice towards them. So, according to Chrystos, who are these people to be enjoying a tradition and a culture they have only sought to destroy? And how do they have the nerve to take something Native American and call it their own, when they did not share in the struggle to preserve it? She makes a comment about the “hippie boy” with the red stone pipe, and how he was “…friendly & liberal as only/those with no pain can be” (Chrystos, lines 7-8), to show that he did not share her pain, and should not be sharing her culture.

We can see that Chrystos is angry with white people not only from her words, but also from the fact that she ignores the rules of English grammar. The explanation is not that she is too ignorant to know these rules. In truth, she chooses to ignore them in order to further distance herself from the American culture and distinguish the fact that she is different. She does this by using indentations, italics, and symbols, in place of words and punctuation. For example, instead of the word “and”, she uses the symbol “&”, and instead of using quotes, she italicizes.

The wording of the poem, which states her opinions about white people, and her defiance against using proper English grammar, display Chrystos’s bitterness, or even hatred, toward white people who try to participate in Indian culture. After studying the poem, her title seams very fitting; comparing that day, for her, to tuberculosis, the number one killer of Native Americans. “Today was a day like TB/you cough & cough trying to get it out/all that comes/is blood & spit” (Chrystos, lines 23-26).