The Museum of Unnatural Histories

Archiving stories of dissonance and curating connection inside the imagined museum.This extraordinary debut poetry collection by Dena'ina poet Annie Wenstrup delicately parses personal history in the space of an imagined museum. Meticulously refined and delicately crafted, Wenstrup's poems weave together the lived experiences of an Alaskan Native person and the histories of unresolved colonial violence in "an authorial reckoning//with what remains." Outside the Museum of Unnatural Histories Ggugguyni, the Dena'ina Raven, and The Museum Curator collect discarded French fries, earrings, and secrets—or as The Curator explains, together they curate moments of cataclysm. Inside the museum, their collection is displayed in installations that depict the imagined Indigenous body. Every artifact contains competing stories, while some display cases are left empty.Into this "distance between the learning and the telling," Wenstrup inserts The Curator and her sukdu'a, her own interpretive text. There, The Curator questions the space between her familial history and colonial constructs of authenticity. In particular, the poems explore how women experience embodiment when they are seen through filters of race, gender, and class: "Always, I've known I embody that which harms me." At the heart of the sukdu'a is the desire to find a form that allows the speaker's story to be heard.Through love letters, received forms, and found text, the poems reclaim their right to interpret, reinvent, and even disregard artifacts of their own mythos to imagine a future that exists despite the series of disasters and apocalypses documented inside the museum. Eventually it begins to dawn on us that this museum may not be separable from the world, and that there may be no exit from its unnatural histories, composed of beauty and foil wrappers, wilderness and contaminated waters. Here, it is up to each one to "decide/who you must become."[Sample Poem]Ggugguyni in the Museum Parking LotI watch her crow. Not as a crow crowsbut as herself. She's not here for the art.She's here for the minivans that devourdiaper bags, car seats, children. She waitsfor the doors to retract and expel fruit,Goldfish, and fries. Free for the taking.She scavenges in lurching, crab-like steps.Like me, she won't appear human here.While her legs bring her from one deliciousscrap to another, I work my own inventory.Once my parents named me Swift Raven—a real Indian Princess name.I flew unblinded, my hair in a blue-blackbraid down my back. Now, I'm ungainly,more harpy than girl. My mouth, a curvecalling for carrion. I'm not here for the art.I'm here for the mirrors, here to unpairearrings and unclasp foil from gum. My beakready to unbind carapace from quiver.Like Ggugguyni, I'm a scavengerlurching from one disaster to another.See how we curate cataclysms' aftermath.While we work, Ggugguyni tells me a story.Once, my grandfather said, a long time agothere was a raven. He opened a doorand it was day. Then he drew his wing shut.What Ggugguyni didn't say, but what I heard: oncehe closed the door and it was night. TodayI'm telling you this story instead: my mouthis a comma, my mouth is exclamation,my mouth is my body holding open the door.Witness my body create day. See how the lightappraises my collection. See how the sunlightexposes how shadow bleached everything white.

"[D]ebut poet Annie Wenstrup explores her Dena'ina heritage in The Museum of Unnatural Histories."--Library Journal

"Wenstrup's grace, humor, and vulnerability are profoundly touching in light of the cruel role museums have played in the lives of Indigenous peoples globally... Readers will find Wenstrup's breathtaking imagined museum worth visiting and revisiting."--Lori Hall-Araujo, Chicago Review of Books

"Innovative and exacting, The Museum of Unnatural Histories threads women's voices, primarily through the lens of a museum curator and the relayed stories of Ggugguyni. Through dioramas, ekphrasis, theatrical forms, and curations, Annie Wenstrup offers a mode of self-actualization contrary to Western impositions of assimilation and self-erasure. Here, you'll find voice, vision, and breadth. Wenstrup is an architect of language at the height of her craft."--Sarah Ghazal Ali, author of Theophanies

"Sweeping in their consideration of home and location of self/selves, desiring a new encounter between story, history, and present self/selves, and imaginative in its use of the landscape and orientation of the page, Annie Wenstrup's poems reimagine the boundaries of story."--Abigail Chabitnoy, author of In The Current Where Drowning is Beautiful

"Wenstrup's The Museum of Unnatural Histories investigates elusive, interstitial spaces--those that haunt lineages, bodies, aesthetics, and language. These conceptually deft and astonishingly original poems resonate with fierce intelligence, perceptive juxtapositions, and defiant lyricism. An electrifying and unforgettable debut."--Katherine Larson, author of Radial Symmetry

"Wenstrup's poems shine out; their speakers' voices peal with strength. Writing into a sundering time, splicing our futures into her lines: 'I split myself, /and I slept in her den and dreamt disorderly / dreams that were neither nightmare, // nor prophecy []'"--Joan Naviyuk Kane, author of Dark Traffic

"There is grace beyond musicality in these poems, beyond dance, beyond earthly substance. Annie Wenstrup has channeled the spirit(s) of stories, the breath of her ancestors. I don't say this lightly. The Museum of Unnatural Histories is nothing short of a wonder bridge to the other side. Be still. Listen. This collection carries the voice(s) of the ages."--Debra Magpie Earling

ANNIE WENSTRUP held a Museum Sovereignty Fellowship with the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center (Alaska office) supported through a Journey to What Matters grant from The CIRI Foundation, and was an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow in 2022 and 2023. Her poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, New England Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.

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