i've been mia, reflecting on my time and work in brasil
and preparing for the upcoming interSEXtions conference happening this weekend
(organizingintersextions.blogspot.org)
but i came across this piece in my archives and thought i'd post it in a blog. it's an excerpt from my memoir...
...more on brasil is coming shortly.
--------------------------------
♫♪ Desde el cielo una hermosa mañana, desde el cielo una hermosa mañana, La Guadalupana, La Guadalupana, La Guadalupana bajo al Tepeyac…era Mexicana, era Mexicana, era Mexicana su porte y faz ♪♫. Every 12th of December was the only day of the year Papá would wake up early to go to church. We arrived at the church before 5:00 am to hundreds of believers who filled the church and crowded the street in front of the church, joyous and holding each other closely for warmth. They wore heavy layers of clothing to defend themselves from the violent Chicago winters. Winters whose skies are filled with snow, rain, and crushing wind; these conditions often provoked the Chicago Mexican to decipher whether leaving the motherland, where the summers were long and the winters were festive and full of familia, posadas, pozole y tequila to keep you warm, was the best choice.
We would find a place to sit or stand in the nave of the church or paint ourselves against a wall. The high pitch of my voice, my insistence on having hair that was longer than your typical boy, and my ways of seeing the world more from the eyes of my mother than from the eyes of my father made me feel like an art installation at a museum, rather than a painting resting against a church wall. The procession would begin with a nine-member mariachi leading the fellowship in singing Las Mañanitas: “This is the song of the sweet mornings King David would sing, since today is the day of your saint, we now sing this song to you, awaken my dear, awaken, look the morning has come, and the little birds are singing, and the moon has gone to sleep.” On those mornings, I stared in awe of the church filled with deeply reverent believers to the Virgen. I asked myself why did this event take place at 5am? Why were the only people who celebrated this holiday Mexican? And who is this saintly figure depicted in a framed painting we have come to put a crown on and praise? The image de nuestra virgen, like many other Catholic churches attended by Mexicans in this country, had made its way to a permanent corner in the church, separate from the chancel of the church, and would become the focal point of prayer for that morning in December. “Who is this woman my father and I have woken up so early in the morning to praise and call mother?”
(papí, did you miss your mother, mi abuelita? Is that why you beat mamí? Was mamí for you an image of a woman who was no longer a part of your life and beating her would bring your own mother out of her, back to life?)(Is this who the virgen has become for Mexicans who have migrated to the north -a surrogate mother?). (papí, why did you beat me when you found out I was gay? As a Queer man did you fear I wouldn’t represent your legacy? Did the continuation of the man you are/were die with my Queerness, and by beating me, were you trying to bring yourself back to life? Did you fear I was ending our Mexicanidad by adopting this “western” tradition? Tengo tu nombre pero no tu manera de ser.)
The Virgen appeared to Juan Diego on a morning in December more than 400 years ago, after Malinche had led the Spanish Conquistadores to the central basin of México to conquer Tenochtitlan. Malinche was a “prostitute” and “slave” to the Conquistadores. She spoke Nahuatl and Maya, learned Spanish and used language and sex to spin cultures together. Oh, how I worship her art. She gave birth to one of the first mestizos; Hernán Cortés was the father. From her birth canal was born a new breed of people made-up of equal parts of Spanish domination and indigenous subjugation, to form a species called resistance. Mexicans today are umbilically connected to La Malinche; our indigenous roots hang from her vagina and are embedded in her uterine imagination.
The oxymoronic Mexican accepts the Holy Trinity as a post-colonial treaty and La Virgen de Guadalupe is the condition under which Christianity is valued. Some say La Virgen is a mestiza version of the Virgin Mary. And this is a partial truth to México’s treaty to self. In an effort to save herself from colonization and European domination, Tonantzin, Coatlicue, the lunar mother goddess, the goddess of the lost and the abandoned, an indigenous goddess, appeared before Juan Diego. She asked him to gather flowers in his tilma on the hill of Tepeyac and to present the flowers to the Bishop Fray Juan de Zumárraga. In her ability to transform to the needs of those who needed her most, when Juan Diego presented the flowers he had gathered at the request of Tonantzin, before the Bishop was the image of a woman who was later named La Virgen de Guadalupe by the Church ♫♪ Era Méxicana, era Méxicana, era Méxicana su porte y su faz. ♪♫. She was Mexican, she was Mexican, she was Mexican, her demeanor and her face. ♪♫.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
again, responding to the epidemic of college "journalism"
college "journalism" seems to be infecting campuses throughout the united states. my brother Jaison Gardner, scholar at the University of Louisville sent me his diagnosis of this and you can read it here:
http://www.louisvillecardinal.com (search Gay agenda, U of L promoting societal problems)
here was my response to this article written about PINK, an annual LGBTQ awareness-raising, pride event at UofL.
so many angles of criticism one can take to expose this delusional portrayal of "journalism". however, one only needs to read a few sentences to understand the limitations of this writer's understanding about diversity or humans as socially evolving, complex beings. on a personal note, it reads like a diary entry, a confessional, articulating his own frustrations, perhaps with not being able to find a long-term girlfriend because of the "breakdown of the family structure" by "gays" and "feminists".
On a professional level, well, there isn't one. His use of pop-knowledge about the movements and the issues add no new knowledge and simply reproduce/represent an ideology that Queer people, feminists, womynists, anti-racist workers, activists etc., are aware of and resist daily. His "article" is to be used as a case-study of the primitive, patriarchal, white man in America, mourning the loss of his "power", left to build his identity from the outside in, from the ground up, in a world of fluidity and difference. If one day he happens to wake up, he'll realize that it will work to his advantage to align himself with consciousness-raising groups, as opposed to running into the intellectual fire where he is now burning.
"next white person in line, please?" says the gate keeper to cognitive freedom.
http://www.louisvillecardinal.com (search Gay agenda, U of L promoting societal problems)
here was my response to this article written about PINK, an annual LGBTQ awareness-raising, pride event at UofL.
so many angles of criticism one can take to expose this delusional portrayal of "journalism". however, one only needs to read a few sentences to understand the limitations of this writer's understanding about diversity or humans as socially evolving, complex beings. on a personal note, it reads like a diary entry, a confessional, articulating his own frustrations, perhaps with not being able to find a long-term girlfriend because of the "breakdown of the family structure" by "gays" and "feminists".
On a professional level, well, there isn't one. His use of pop-knowledge about the movements and the issues add no new knowledge and simply reproduce/represent an ideology that Queer people, feminists, womynists, anti-racist workers, activists etc., are aware of and resist daily. His "article" is to be used as a case-study of the primitive, patriarchal, white man in America, mourning the loss of his "power", left to build his identity from the outside in, from the ground up, in a world of fluidity and difference. If one day he happens to wake up, he'll realize that it will work to his advantage to align himself with consciousness-raising groups, as opposed to running into the intellectual fire where he is now burning.
"next white person in line, please?" says the gate keeper to cognitive freedom.
Monday, March 17, 2008
17 Março 2008: notes from brasil
Caminando yo, por las calles de Salvador. Un poco confundido con mi propósito en esta tierra. Porque he venido tan lejos de donde yo he nacido? I woke up this morning, terrified of my existence in this country, Brasil.
Last night, I had sex with a man from São Paulo. I returned to the hostel late last night after having a few caipirhas and cervejas com Jaiza e Regina, umas bahianas muito amables, y Ben, el arquitecto aleman que ahora vive em suisa whom I met at the hostel. Before I went into the dorm where I am staying, I opened up the locker where I keep my valuables to put away my wallet. He walked out of the dorm in the direction of the bathroom. He wore only his underwear; they were white boxer briefs with a red waistband. They fit his body nicely. He stood by the door to the bathroom and looked over to me and gestured for me to follow. I did.
“What’s your name?” he asked in Portuguese.
“Joaquim” I responded with the Portuguese translation of my name and told him
“Não falo português.”
“De donde eres?” falo ele.
“México” in my best Brazilian accent. “Y tu?” “Você?”
“São Paulo” he responded as he unbuttoned and unzipped my pants and reached into my underwear. I reached into his provocative briefs and stroked his piece. He squatted down and hungrily took my cock into his mouth and with his tongue soothed my anxieties about being in a country so foreign to me. He wanted more, he wanted me to enter him, to penetrate him, he wanted me to take his cock into my mouth. I did not. My mind became preoccupied with my lover back home. He rose from his position, turned around and bent over, rested one hand on the wall, pulled me in with his other hand and rubbed himself against my member. He came. Perhaps it was the excitement of our public display. I did not. He asked me if I wanted to cum and I told him I did not and that I was tired. I pulled up my underwear, washed my hands and face and retired to my bunk. He remained to take a shower.
In my bunk, I stared at the ceiling and evaluated what had just occurred. He re-entered the dorm, in his underwear that I idolized, and looked over to me. He turned away and climbed in his bunk, looked over to me again and smiled. He gestured for me to join him again. I did. And we continued our play as the three other men in the dorm slept through the humid Bahian night.
Sex is a form of validation, a way to access a location, to acclimate myself to a foreign environment. When I was fifteen, the foreign environment was called my sexuality. When it was with middle-class Ryan, un Filipino, working class Jason, un Afro-Americano, o el fresa de Steven, un gringo, the environment was called social, racial and ethnic difference. Sex is an emulation of a power I do not possess biologically, a literal entering of and being entered by another’s life. I fuck so that I might be impregnated by an element of the land, to impregnate the state where I am on the outside. Through sex, I integrate myself into my surroundings; I become aware of myself in my surroundings. It’s a form of conscientização.
“Não falo português” and the sex I had are linked. I use my body to act on, to be enacted upon. To learn. To inscribe upon. In Brasil, I am starving for fluidity in my expressions and interactions with the people here and sex is the language that gives me access, at this moment.
As I write this, I continue to think about my lover in nyc. He, a southern Black man, a southern gentlebelle. Educated. Trained. For what? We toss ideas back and forth about that often. An introvert. Obsessively brilliant. He and I traveled to Montreal together. We traveled with our friend Mariela, an activist, a Mexicana lesbian from the Midwest, my hometown Chicago. She had recently moved to nyc to grow, shed the layers of conservatism and constraints that shaped her work in Chicago. Her migration to the east coast was her own search for language, for freedom, for work towards freedom, in a country, in a moment, during a war for resources that didn’t empower us, in a moment when freedom felt tenuous. He and I were helping her transition. We invited her, and ourselves, to push more and challenge her newly adopted, our previously adopted and current home, the borders/borderland of nyc, and to embark on a migration to the north, in an impulsive act encouraged by Ogum and Elegua.
“Vamonos, cabron! Andale, vamonos!” said Mariela. “No te apures, me encanta manejar. It’s only six hours; I can kill them.” We traveled. He and I with a passport, Mariela without one.
El y yo, hand and hand. Juntos. Con cariño, sin dudas, assured by our citizenship validated by the little blue booklet with date stamps from the various places we had traveled. Ella, no tanto. She seemed stressed. Maybe it was the long drive. Maybe it was because she was traveling with a tattered copy of her birth certificate and her Illinois State ID. As we approached the Canadian border, he said to me, “you know we can get married in Montreal.”
My heart and my mind missed a few pulses.
What was he saying? What was he reaching for? Was this a proposal? What type of proposal? One resting on the liberty to do something that our own country did not allow us to do? One resting on his love for me? In what other ways does the state determine what we can and can not do, how we can and can not feel?
“Then let’s get married.” A challenge I posed (who was I challenging?).
Silence.
“I want my mother present when I get married” he responded moments later. “She would want to be at my wedding.”
“Your mother’s heart is socially constructed,” a thought that occurred in response to him, a language I constructed in a moment during my first year of college, during a conversation with Maygin Kinney and Jacqueline Lewis, others in my cohort, about the institution of marriage and its relation to our personal values, inspired by an Introduction to Feminist Thought and Action course we were taking with Ann Snitow at the New School. I should have said it out loud to him. Instead, I swallowed my words and began digesting a divergence entering our relationship as we were crossing the border.
It became evident to me then that the state had the capacity to enter our personal lives in violent and intrusive ways. It became evident to me how we experience border crossing and the effects of migration are unique to the individual. The individualization imposed upon us by the state sometimes, as in our case, leads to chaos beyond the immediate grasps of the individuals involved.
“Where are you from?” asked the border patrol officer, a reddish-pink faced woman with short orange hair.
“From Chicago, but I just moved to New York” said Mariela, still negotiating the fact that she was now living in nyc.
“So where are you coming from and where are they from?” pointing to us.
“Chicago, well, New York, we’re coming from New York, they’re from New York.” Responded Mariela. I noticed she had become nervous and started sweating.
“Where are you going and what is the purpose of your trip.”
“We’re going to Montreal. We are going to a conference at McGill University” (our boarding pass to freely enter the country).
The border patrol officer’s shoulders relaxed and she casually asked, “How long will you be in Canada?”
“A couple of days.”
“Are you carrying more than $10,000 with you?”
“I wish!” I shouted. I couldn’t help myself. The earlier moment was too thick and I felt she was lightening up; I wanted to keep on that path. And I did wish I had $10,000. “But we’re not carrying more than $10,000.”
“Enjoy your time in Canada.”
Driving away from the border, into Canada, we were individually exhausted, frustrated and upset. When we arrived to Montreal, we had ceased from communicating with each other. Frustrated with the signs on the expressway in French, we drove around in circles until we found the campus, drove around in circles, trying to get a sense of the culture, how the city and people operate, drove around in circles, in silence, questioning our migration, our relationship to the state, our previous state, and each other.
What did solidarity look like for the three of us in that moment? Would sex rectify the crisis between me and my lover? Where was the space to be real, in the flesh, with him and with Mariela? Our minds and bodies contracted because of the unsurity of the place where we had arrived. This unsurity is the same one that accompanied me in my trip alone to Brasil, and I argued with the discomfort of this unsurity without him, and with another.
After wrestling sexually with the Brasileiro, I wrestled all morning with myself about whether or not and how to share this with him. Nos encontramos por el hecho de los santos. But our connection wass still new, still fresh. What is “new” or “fresh” in relation to an ideology that operates beyond the confines of manmade time?
(my connection with the “him” of Montreal materially, did, and, did not yet, exist during my connection with the “him” of Brasil. What is common is my ability to engage in a form of spiritual linking that I was incapable of in a previous state; the “him” for me is non-linear.)
What shapes my relationship to him as his lover in a context where that naming is not encouraged?
While thinking about this, an image entered me of my body trajected into the sky, across continents, far from where I began. Dis and re-locations lead me to hold the memory of my previous state close to me. Is meu enamorado now a part of that previous state? Am I reborn in this place, in this moment called Brasil? When meu enamorado was in my presence, was he filling the role of the present tense of a previous state?
(what are the elements of that entity that I am naming “previous state”? I speak of a “previous state” as the state of domination, the state of incarceration, the state of criminalization, the state of dehumanization, the state of inferiority and as a consciousness that moves beyond the lived experience of disempowerment.)
I am reminded of my mother and think about how far I’ve grown away from her. My father and his imprisonment. He wrote me recently. I received his letter the day before I came to Brasil. I have never received a letter from my father. I didn’t know what to expect. He said the imprisonment of his body has led to the liberation of his mind. Was my father, too, encountering his previous state? Might it be “joint-talk,” maybe. It all depends on him. Reading his “cuantas letras” was an agridulce moment I hope I will always have the memory of. Since I’ve been in Brasil, I have carried the letter, like the memory of my sweetheart back home, with me everywhere, to keep me company, to protect me, to encourage me. My personal Iyewà. A blessing to push me forward through my ignorance of the “Portuguese” language and my mission to learn about and become Brasil.
Last night, I had sex with a man from São Paulo. I returned to the hostel late last night after having a few caipirhas and cervejas com Jaiza e Regina, umas bahianas muito amables, y Ben, el arquitecto aleman que ahora vive em suisa whom I met at the hostel. Before I went into the dorm where I am staying, I opened up the locker where I keep my valuables to put away my wallet. He walked out of the dorm in the direction of the bathroom. He wore only his underwear; they were white boxer briefs with a red waistband. They fit his body nicely. He stood by the door to the bathroom and looked over to me and gestured for me to follow. I did.
“What’s your name?” he asked in Portuguese.
“Joaquim” I responded with the Portuguese translation of my name and told him
“Não falo português.”
“De donde eres?” falo ele.
“México” in my best Brazilian accent. “Y tu?” “Você?”
“São Paulo” he responded as he unbuttoned and unzipped my pants and reached into my underwear. I reached into his provocative briefs and stroked his piece. He squatted down and hungrily took my cock into his mouth and with his tongue soothed my anxieties about being in a country so foreign to me. He wanted more, he wanted me to enter him, to penetrate him, he wanted me to take his cock into my mouth. I did not. My mind became preoccupied with my lover back home. He rose from his position, turned around and bent over, rested one hand on the wall, pulled me in with his other hand and rubbed himself against my member. He came. Perhaps it was the excitement of our public display. I did not. He asked me if I wanted to cum and I told him I did not and that I was tired. I pulled up my underwear, washed my hands and face and retired to my bunk. He remained to take a shower.
In my bunk, I stared at the ceiling and evaluated what had just occurred. He re-entered the dorm, in his underwear that I idolized, and looked over to me. He turned away and climbed in his bunk, looked over to me again and smiled. He gestured for me to join him again. I did. And we continued our play as the three other men in the dorm slept through the humid Bahian night.
Sex is a form of validation, a way to access a location, to acclimate myself to a foreign environment. When I was fifteen, the foreign environment was called my sexuality. When it was with middle-class Ryan, un Filipino, working class Jason, un Afro-Americano, o el fresa de Steven, un gringo, the environment was called social, racial and ethnic difference. Sex is an emulation of a power I do not possess biologically, a literal entering of and being entered by another’s life. I fuck so that I might be impregnated by an element of the land, to impregnate the state where I am on the outside. Through sex, I integrate myself into my surroundings; I become aware of myself in my surroundings. It’s a form of conscientização.
“Não falo português” and the sex I had are linked. I use my body to act on, to be enacted upon. To learn. To inscribe upon. In Brasil, I am starving for fluidity in my expressions and interactions with the people here and sex is the language that gives me access, at this moment.
As I write this, I continue to think about my lover in nyc. He, a southern Black man, a southern gentlebelle. Educated. Trained. For what? We toss ideas back and forth about that often. An introvert. Obsessively brilliant. He and I traveled to Montreal together. We traveled with our friend Mariela, an activist, a Mexicana lesbian from the Midwest, my hometown Chicago. She had recently moved to nyc to grow, shed the layers of conservatism and constraints that shaped her work in Chicago. Her migration to the east coast was her own search for language, for freedom, for work towards freedom, in a country, in a moment, during a war for resources that didn’t empower us, in a moment when freedom felt tenuous. He and I were helping her transition. We invited her, and ourselves, to push more and challenge her newly adopted, our previously adopted and current home, the borders/borderland of nyc, and to embark on a migration to the north, in an impulsive act encouraged by Ogum and Elegua.
“Vamonos, cabron! Andale, vamonos!” said Mariela. “No te apures, me encanta manejar. It’s only six hours; I can kill them.” We traveled. He and I with a passport, Mariela without one.
El y yo, hand and hand. Juntos. Con cariño, sin dudas, assured by our citizenship validated by the little blue booklet with date stamps from the various places we had traveled. Ella, no tanto. She seemed stressed. Maybe it was the long drive. Maybe it was because she was traveling with a tattered copy of her birth certificate and her Illinois State ID. As we approached the Canadian border, he said to me, “you know we can get married in Montreal.”
My heart and my mind missed a few pulses.
What was he saying? What was he reaching for? Was this a proposal? What type of proposal? One resting on the liberty to do something that our own country did not allow us to do? One resting on his love for me? In what other ways does the state determine what we can and can not do, how we can and can not feel?
“Then let’s get married.” A challenge I posed (who was I challenging?).
Silence.
“I want my mother present when I get married” he responded moments later. “She would want to be at my wedding.”
“Your mother’s heart is socially constructed,” a thought that occurred in response to him, a language I constructed in a moment during my first year of college, during a conversation with Maygin Kinney and Jacqueline Lewis, others in my cohort, about the institution of marriage and its relation to our personal values, inspired by an Introduction to Feminist Thought and Action course we were taking with Ann Snitow at the New School. I should have said it out loud to him. Instead, I swallowed my words and began digesting a divergence entering our relationship as we were crossing the border.
It became evident to me then that the state had the capacity to enter our personal lives in violent and intrusive ways. It became evident to me how we experience border crossing and the effects of migration are unique to the individual. The individualization imposed upon us by the state sometimes, as in our case, leads to chaos beyond the immediate grasps of the individuals involved.
“Where are you from?” asked the border patrol officer, a reddish-pink faced woman with short orange hair.
“From Chicago, but I just moved to New York” said Mariela, still negotiating the fact that she was now living in nyc.
“So where are you coming from and where are they from?” pointing to us.
“Chicago, well, New York, we’re coming from New York, they’re from New York.” Responded Mariela. I noticed she had become nervous and started sweating.
“Where are you going and what is the purpose of your trip.”
“We’re going to Montreal. We are going to a conference at McGill University” (our boarding pass to freely enter the country).
The border patrol officer’s shoulders relaxed and she casually asked, “How long will you be in Canada?”
“A couple of days.”
“Are you carrying more than $10,000 with you?”
“I wish!” I shouted. I couldn’t help myself. The earlier moment was too thick and I felt she was lightening up; I wanted to keep on that path. And I did wish I had $10,000. “But we’re not carrying more than $10,000.”
“Enjoy your time in Canada.”
Driving away from the border, into Canada, we were individually exhausted, frustrated and upset. When we arrived to Montreal, we had ceased from communicating with each other. Frustrated with the signs on the expressway in French, we drove around in circles until we found the campus, drove around in circles, trying to get a sense of the culture, how the city and people operate, drove around in circles, in silence, questioning our migration, our relationship to the state, our previous state, and each other.
What did solidarity look like for the three of us in that moment? Would sex rectify the crisis between me and my lover? Where was the space to be real, in the flesh, with him and with Mariela? Our minds and bodies contracted because of the unsurity of the place where we had arrived. This unsurity is the same one that accompanied me in my trip alone to Brasil, and I argued with the discomfort of this unsurity without him, and with another.
After wrestling sexually with the Brasileiro, I wrestled all morning with myself about whether or not and how to share this with him. Nos encontramos por el hecho de los santos. But our connection wass still new, still fresh. What is “new” or “fresh” in relation to an ideology that operates beyond the confines of manmade time?
(my connection with the “him” of Montreal materially, did, and, did not yet, exist during my connection with the “him” of Brasil. What is common is my ability to engage in a form of spiritual linking that I was incapable of in a previous state; the “him” for me is non-linear.)
What shapes my relationship to him as his lover in a context where that naming is not encouraged?
While thinking about this, an image entered me of my body trajected into the sky, across continents, far from where I began. Dis and re-locations lead me to hold the memory of my previous state close to me. Is meu enamorado now a part of that previous state? Am I reborn in this place, in this moment called Brasil? When meu enamorado was in my presence, was he filling the role of the present tense of a previous state?
(what are the elements of that entity that I am naming “previous state”? I speak of a “previous state” as the state of domination, the state of incarceration, the state of criminalization, the state of dehumanization, the state of inferiority and as a consciousness that moves beyond the lived experience of disempowerment.)
I am reminded of my mother and think about how far I’ve grown away from her. My father and his imprisonment. He wrote me recently. I received his letter the day before I came to Brasil. I have never received a letter from my father. I didn’t know what to expect. He said the imprisonment of his body has led to the liberation of his mind. Was my father, too, encountering his previous state? Might it be “joint-talk,” maybe. It all depends on him. Reading his “cuantas letras” was an agridulce moment I hope I will always have the memory of. Since I’ve been in Brasil, I have carried the letter, like the memory of my sweetheart back home, with me everywhere, to keep me company, to protect me, to encourage me. My personal Iyewà. A blessing to push me forward through my ignorance of the “Portuguese” language and my mission to learn about and become Brasil.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
exit song
Departure: Delayed
querida patria,
hoy sali a brasil para conocer a tierra extraña.
querido mexico,
perdoname por haberte abandonado para la mujer morena del sur.
querido, siempre si o siempre no, tierra estados "unidenses",
divididos y conquistados,
me voy porque me quedo disilusionado por ti.
queridos sueños,
contigo viajo,
contigo me ubico,
contigo amanezco,
contigo nacaré.
i find myself in the borderlands place called JFK.
rubbing against varied purposes of travel.
rubbing against reasons,
bodies,
that have been pursuaded to unroot themselves
and traject their bodies
into another land,
land,
that one hopes to be fertile.
The body a seed,
to pollinate
Brasil.
Me,
a strange cactus,
surviving tierra familiar,
no a mí.
---
Arrival: On-time
They look at me and they gag.
They know that their ancestors
set it up so that my kind
wouldn't be here with them.
They have erased
an acknowledgment
of our humanity
of our existence,
but I've learned how to manipulate
the shadow you've casted over me
to manipulate my invisibility
to you,
to walk through walls,
and expose my presence
around the conference room table,
the lecture halls,
front and center,
counting your money,
we/i and Here.
I have always been here.
I have come to Brasil to understand better
how the world
intersects.
Sangue Africana
Raizes Indígenas,
Sujeira européia, Suciedad europea, european dirt.
querida patria,
hoy sali a brasil para conocer a tierra extraña.
querido mexico,
perdoname por haberte abandonado para la mujer morena del sur.
querido, siempre si o siempre no, tierra estados "unidenses",
divididos y conquistados,
me voy porque me quedo disilusionado por ti.
queridos sueños,
contigo viajo,
contigo me ubico,
contigo amanezco,
contigo nacaré.
i find myself in the borderlands place called JFK.
rubbing against varied purposes of travel.
rubbing against reasons,
bodies,
that have been pursuaded to unroot themselves
and traject their bodies
into another land,
land,
that one hopes to be fertile.
The body a seed,
to pollinate
Brasil.
Me,
a strange cactus,
surviving tierra familiar,
no a mí.
---
Arrival: On-time
They look at me and they gag.
They know that their ancestors
set it up so that my kind
wouldn't be here with them.
They have erased
an acknowledgment
of our humanity
of our existence,
but I've learned how to manipulate
the shadow you've casted over me
to manipulate my invisibility
to you,
to walk through walls,
and expose my presence
around the conference room table,
the lecture halls,
front and center,
counting your money,
we/i and Here.
I have always been here.
I have come to Brasil to understand better
how the world
intersects.
Sangue Africana
Raizes Indígenas,
Sujeira européia, Suciedad europea, european dirt.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
on that note
I remember
Our car rides down the BQE
Back and forth
Between the B and the Q,
Windows down
Taking in the breeze
Taking in new glimpses
Of this city
Building a new image
Of this place
We call
Home
Walks along the Brooklyn promenade
Late
On summer nights
Our dreams,
Bait,
Fastened to a hook
And thrown over the harbor
Into the east river
Searching for the right catch.
We stared into the distance
Of our futures
And found
Hope
With each other.
I remember
Yesterday.
And it is
Not today.
Our car rides down the BQE
Back and forth
Between the B and the Q,
Windows down
Taking in the breeze
Taking in new glimpses
Of this city
Building a new image
Of this place
We call
Home
Walks along the Brooklyn promenade
Late
On summer nights
Our dreams,
Bait,
Fastened to a hook
And thrown over the harbor
Into the east river
Searching for the right catch.
We stared into the distance
Of our futures
And found
Hope
With each other.
I remember
Yesterday.
And it is
Not today.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
neo apartheid: "higher" education
the word "higher" that precedes "education" in the phrase "higher education" in itself implies an institutional & capitalist "higher"archy whereby one faction within the system is elevated, enlightened and liberated at the expense of the enlightenment and freedom of others. these others, in this "post" slavery country as well as in "post" apartheid s. africa, are dominantly brown and black, while the majority of the people that benefit from the "higher"archy are anglo/white, of european descendants. what happened in the s. african university recently is a hideous act of hate, xenophobia, sexism, racism and classism (see video below). however, if we examine the social infrastructure of these institutions, we see that the maintaining of these institutions is contingent upon and only possible through the oppression of others. we can land at the place of holding the s. african students accountable, but a scenario like this is inevitable in any caste'd system of education.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
white girl slayer
family portrait of the new school free press editorial staff
"joa the white girl slayer" txt message i received from my sister in the School of Labor and Liberation (working title of a school of thought formed by some of the very brilliant people i have been blessed to think and work with over the last few years).
because white girl invented a superior position in relationship to me and i said back the fuck off, trick. because white girl's thoughtless interaction tampered with this deeply thoughtful apparatus called my body and i raised a mirror to make her reflect and this reflection brought her to tears and discomfort.
i recently was caught in the crossfire of the archaic battle between white consciousness with white consciousness. white person wants to understand diversity. white girl wants to set the parameters of what this process towards understanding looks like. white girl summons brown person to tap dance, release brown person's "diversity secrets" and receive a black and brown 101, for free. brown person is brilliant. brown person is very busy revolutionizing pedagogy, busy smuggling resources out of white houses (pick one, universities, foundations, libraries, congress) into our indigenous houses. brown person has no problem multiloguing with white girl because brown person values allies in the movement. but white girl needs to understand, I AM NOT HER MAMMY. white girl needs to figure out some shit about herself first before she can approach me to learn about nos/otras.
i don't mind being called joa the white girl slayer. if it's a metaphor for resisting oppressive well-intentioned white folks, then i gotta keep on slaying. i know i'll never be offered a contract for a tv show, despite how socially conscious my shit is.
now that i think about it, white girl's very much buffy the "vampire" slayer. after all, isn't buffy a metaphor for white middle class women in the u.s. who dominate social services and the non-profit sector that work to eradicate poverty and dispel racism? i ain't a fuckin vampire, trick, back the fuck off.
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