cripchick's blog

you do know that everything i write, i dream, i breathe is nothing but an ode to your being, your beauty? the way you move, the way you ask me what audre would say, the way you can be so brilliant all the time, the way you speak to my experiences when we’ve just met, the way you bring warmth and openness into a room, the way you were there for me when i was embarrassed and felt like a burden, the way you connect things together, the way you make people feel like there is no other option but to be real, the way you dream, the way you have changed worlds without even realizing it 

you do know that i do nothing but paste your poems, your pictures, your postcards on my wall right? that i save your words in away messages, dream jars, tweets and more journals than i can count? that every time you publish something, i scramble to find a copy for myself? or that i jump at any invitation you send because it means spending time with you? even those of you i haven’t met in person, you do know this, right? 

after much deliberation, my sister has been adopted by a group of desi friends at her schools. maybe this is messed up—you can tell me— but i ask if calling herself brown (they gave her a dogtag that says “brown team”) is true to her experience. i say this doesn’t mean they can’t be your family, but normally the word brown is used by our native, south east asian, arab, and latino brothers and sisters. she screams “you said biracial people can be whatever they want! how do you know i’m not white? why do you assume i am corean? do you think if you go to visit emo in seoul that people will see you as corean?”  

i say “yeah you can be white if you want. but back to brown— i don’t know that saying you’re brown is good for coalition or community building. you don’t know what it means to be brown do you? you and i, we don’t have that experience.” she gives me a look and asks me how that is any different from calling myself a woman of color. she tells me that people laugh when they heard i told her that she was a “woman of color,” that’s she’s not black.. 

and i am confused because i don’t even know why they would think that or why a gay API friend asked me the same thing last week. yes we have june jordan, audre lorde, barbara smith and so many beautiful black foremothers but when i hear radical women of color i also think of you, cherrie moraga, gloria anzaldua, mari matsuda, nadine naber, andy smith, so many others. i do not mean to idealize our community but when i think of radical women of color, i think of poetry circles and organizing spaces where the room is so diverse with bodies, skin tones, languages, fragrances, hair styles, niqaabs, keffiyehs, piercings and hijabs. spaces where people tell stories that are different but made of the same threads. 

i run to my shelf and pull out make/shift magazine. i read her lex’s piece about radical women of color not being an structured identity, but a group of diverse people coming together on a promise, a commitment to each other. i flip to an earlier issue and read her mia’s piece about being a disabled queer corean transracial adoptee. i tell her, no i don’t believe our experiences are all the same but i understand how the colonization of asian bodies is connected to latina immigrants being raped on the border, to black women being sterilized in the united states, to arab sisters being silenced by western lies, to all mothers of color being told they are not good enough, to the hate we are all supposed to feel for ourselves. i say that the connection i feel with these folks is so more than solidarity, it is my body, my heart.  she laughs and tells me make/shift is my bible 

my love for you is so big it doesn’t even fit into a poem. my love for you is so deep i can’t even explain it rationally to my sister. you do a good job of it though.