if you were tasked to fill a blank page with drawings and sketches, you’d start near the middle. You’d take up space freely; without caution. As you creep toward the edges, your drawings would get smaller and smaller until you’d realize your drawings are being created to fill the space that’s left. There is less and less freedom for every drop of ink added. Each doodle is crammed into small spaces left by the others that had
MARGINALIZATION
WORDS & PHOTOS : HECTOR SALAS
SPRING 2020
HOW WE EXPRESS OURSELVES IN LIMITED SPACES
HORIZON MAGAZINE
MAR GIN ALI ZAT ION
the luxury of having a blank page. This is living on the margins. To be damned to the spaces where no one would go looking for them. Existing fully within space someone else made for you is the most unapologetic and inspiring thing a person can do. The margins have been relegated to people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, senior citizens, women, people living with a disability, those of lower socioeconomic status, immigrants, refugees and sadly, so many more people we just don’t have all the room to name. If our voice doesn’t echo the status quo, then very discriminately we are told not to raise it. Instead, we are regulated to tokenism and agenda-setting puppetry. And when we do get the spotlight, we get it briefly. We get it just long enough for those looking to know what group we belong to. Yet, those watching might be like us. They might be wide-eyed and hopeful. It might be disheartening to see disingenuous representation, but hey, it’s a voice like theirs. Being heard. Being listened to. With this in mind, we have to make the most of the time we are given. Nothing in this world is more symbolic of the proverbial middle finger than existing as loud and as careless and as bright and as odd and as big and as fulfilling and as
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