Recently, Bhanu Kapil (Humanimal, a Project for Future Children. Kelsey St. 2009) read to a packed auditorium at Eastern Michigan University as part of the EMU Creative Writing Department, Bathhouse Reading Series. She also did a Q&A session for students who had been reading Humanimal as part of the EMU curriculum.

Dozens of students have since written about the book and the BathHouse event on the EMU Creative Writing blog. If you think you know Bhanu’s work or Bhanu herself, check out these student perspectives. Witty, surprising, smart! One thing is for certain, EMU students are smitten with Bhanu’s voice and I am enchanted with student bloggers!

Below are some highlights from their entries. Check them out here. Each and every one is worth reading.

Dan Hall
When I first encountered Bhanu Kapil in the Carillon Room of Halle Library, she was light and soft.  She spoke with a flowing and eloquent voice like that of Mary Poppins.  She laughed and made jokes about the weather.  When I next saw Kapil, at her reading in the Sponberg Theater, I was expecting much of the same.  And at the beginning, when she first stepped on stage, she was very much the same, confident yet unassuming, witty and jovial.  However after a few minutes, past the water break, an entirely new animal emerged.

Once Kapil hit her stride, she became completely immersed in her own writing, utterly possessed.  She became the Humanimal.  Her tone turned very dark as she barked out a single, consistent tone comprised of anger, frustration, fear, loss and sexuality.  Her reading was so monotonous; it was almost mechanical.  But that one tone was so fluid and complex that I spent the whole hour exploring it, feeling out its every shape and curve in my head.

Lindsay Anderson
The legs, the bones, the arms, all the scars – by the end of the document these bodies and their parts become indistinguishable, blurring into a physical mosaic of parts forming a larger body that can only be called Humanimal.  The colors seem to bleed through as well – the blues, the browns, the reds, even the ghostly whiteness in which wolfgirls are first represented.  There is both a natural and unnatural element to all this blurring, as though Kapil began to mix the elements herself, yet at some point this process took on its own  life and will to create this thing, this humanimal, that virtually pulsates on the page.

Renee Casey
At first, Kapil’s document allowed me a new way of looking at writing, at fragments and combining historical events with the aftermath of those events. Yet it was hearing her read that really touched me and got me thinking. Humanimal has a large focus on the body and after seeing Kapil read, the message was only amplified. Her small frame surrounded by the dimly lit stage and large blank screen and brick wall as back drop only encouraged the listener to be more presently aware of the body. Kapil’s voice while reading is breathtaking.
She has a strong presence and hearing her read makes me think of the idea of voice and ownership. Immersed in the words that she wrote, it was as if watching the words capture her, owner returning to creation to form the work itself, transforming her. The woman I had listened to earlier in the day at the library had all but disappeared.  The text became her and she became the text. Though, after thinking about it for a while, it is not surprising how familial she is with Humanimal. After all, it is she who encompasses the girls. It is she who writes, “I slip my arms into the sleeves of your shirt. I slip my arms into yours, to become four-limbed.”

Aaron Diehl
Something interesting that she kept doing while reading her book was that she would take her bookmarks and toss them all around and in front of her when she would remove them from the pages. I could not even begin to think of what importance this would have within the literature; as I found out the following day in class, the first time she did it was merely an accident, and she continued simply because she felt like it. I loved hearing  this, because it made the whole situation funnier in retrospect.

Bhanu went on to read a large portion of her book before epically throwing it in the audience, much like a drummer tossing his sticks into the crowd after a rock concert. This was very cool to me. I found Bhanu’s reading to be one of the more satisfying BathHouse events that I have attended. It lacked a lot of the artistic pretensions that other readings have gotten me held up on. Bhanu seemed interested in portraying her work in a manner that made it accessible to the listener instead of just quirky or shocking, which is refreshing.

Alex Haber
Speaking on the Humanimal experience, Kapil explained how vastly the book had changed throughout its conception. Originally almost 300 pages long (Kapil described the original manuscript as containing more complex elaborations on the fictional thoughts and futures of the feral children – a version that was originally rejected), a lengthy amount of editing was done before the text arrived at its concise, finished form. And of the experience of writing the book on location after initial planning, Kapil admitted, “Once I was
in India, it became a whole other book.”

Leto Rankine
Immigrant narrative. What it means to get up and go. Thresholds we cannot see speak again. Life is not going to be like this. You have to have a different life. The disapperance of memory. Where are those seeds where are those places.

Her father’s story. The picture in the middle of the book: his scarred leg laid under a map of the place of his origin in England. She speaks of the body and writing, of a new project, of schizophrenia.

India blood violence refugee. Trigger. Moves up in the world. More white than black faces. Low level subtle forms of racism. Cultural schizophrenia. Return to the real.

Not from the reading. From where she sits in a big window room, talking about our posh library and a robot arm.
Perched on the back of chair, talking about a 300 euro coat, her face looking happy but also like there is an intention, a thought that she’s holding with a concentration. Her accent is nice.

At the reading she says to always say yes. Does some things while she reads. Pulls hair. Drops paper. I just liked having the story read to me.