Spring 2016

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Wesleyan’s Student of Color Publication Spring 2016

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Volume xxii Issue 2 Staff: Hailey Broughton-Jones Kaiyana Cervera Lorena Fernandez Kazumi Fish Aili Francis Arianna Fullard Tedra James Elijah Jimenez Victoria King Emma Lucia Llano Hennings Taylor McClain Kafilah Muhammad Aleyda Robles Eloise Seda Brian Sing Alicia Strong Jordan White Arnelle Williams Catherine Wulff Xinyu Zhu

Contributors: Christian Black Jordan Bonner Ainsley Eakins Julier Escobar Shirley Fang Jennie He Henry Martellier Jr. Malcolm Phillips Katherine Rosario Professor Gina Athena Ulysse Gayon Yang

What is the Ankh?

The Ankh is Wesleyan’s student of color publication.

We ask that all submissions fulfill the following criteria: that they be by, for and about people of color.

What can you do?

Read the Ankh, just like you are now, and submit!

Even if you aren’t currently on the staff, even if you aren’t confident about your writing skills, even if you’ve never done anything like this before, we welcome you to contribute. You can submit any type of writing, such as fiction, non-fiction, expository essays, news articles, or poetry. Art is always welcome, and videos and music can be published on our blog. If you’ve created something and want to share it with others, do it here! The Ankh is your space.

Submit to the Ankh!

The Ankh is looking to expand our digital team!

If you are interested in maintaining the Ankh blog, working with social media platforms, or managing digital content, please consider joining our staff! contact us at: theankh@wesleyan.edu

This edition was sustainbly printed with support from:

Cover art by Shirley Fang Back cover art by Katherine Rosario

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Hair Diaries: Diasporic Blackness from the US to Cuba Arnelle Williams

When I left to study abroad in Cuba spring semester, I did not anticipate that my natural hair worn in beautiful Marley twists would be the subject of desire, beauty, exotification, as well as a fluid identity. Marley twists, a hairstyle which is commonly worn by Black American women, are perceived as a new aesthetic and symbolically a carrier of messages that sparked conversations on the social acceptance and historical understanding of black natural hair among generations of Cubans (of color) who saw me.

This hairstyle, which uses Marley hair, a texture that imitates the kinks and coils of black natural hair, can be used to extend our hair to a desired length without needing to undergo a process of blow drying or ironing it beforehand. Before the creative innovation and popular use of Marley hair, black women who wanted extensions used synthetic hair that was straight and therefore had to go through a straightening process in order for the kinks and coils to not reveal the sharp contrast and nonconformity that our hair symbolically resists once the particular hairstyle was completed. Therefore, I learned pretty quickly, through my first encounters with Cubans, that I am wearing a difference. A difference that is not necessarily registered as deviant, however exotic and greatly desired by black Cuban women who want to learn more about the versatile ways that they can wear their hair.

This desire I saw expressed by black Cubans in the ways in which they touched my hair, proceed to explain to me that it is beautiful because of the thickness, the long length, and the healthiness it embodied. It was a sight they rarely saw in black visual representations. And that in turn made me exotic. I was exotified not just by non-blacks but by black people. The attention that I got from my hair led people to comment on my facial features and skin color as well. I was, and still am, called beautiful because I embodied an unusual, but necessary sight for the people who approached me. How strange that realization was for me! I also noted that this realization largely came about due to the social context I live in— lacking black female, positive representations.

In fact, the lack thereof in the media and other forms of representations I noticed here, speak volumes about a dominant, Eurocentric standard of beauty constructed using the building blocks of race, gender, and aesthetics to dictate who and what is seen as attractive, desirable/marriageable, successful, and part of an identity. I realized, much like I did in the US, that Cuba’s history of slavery, Spanish colonialism, U.S. intervention, and independence, has reiterated long, straight hair as a powerful, monolithic epitome of beauty. A beauty standard that countless black Cuban women internalize and subject their hair to. This continues to be exemplified over and over again in mainstream media, entertainment, and advertisements. I have yet to see a poster or popular music video that showcases black women and black natural hair, for these two entities in the public medium are few and far between.

In addition, as I walk down the streets of Havana, I have noticed that black daughters and women (unless they are older adults) wear their hair straight in such heat, might I add. Although I have seen women wearing box braids and weaves, I do not see a variety of protective styles. I have noticed that there are no black beauty salons. Still naïve from the easy access I have living in East Flatbush, Brooklyn NY, I do not see beauty supply stores that sell black natural hair care products. They articulated

to me that in Cuba there is lack of “elementos o productos para mantener nuestro pelo, son caros.” It was very mind-blowing to hear that. Can you imagine living in a country that does not have the market for your hair? That to truly take care of your hair is not financially sustainable and that to truly wear your natural hair is still a taboo? Can you imagine not having products keep your hair healthy? At that moment, I was grateful for the black natural hair movement in the U.S. and the advances many black women entrepreneurs before me made to make black hair care accessible, economical, educational, and a social aesthetic shared between my sistahs across the nation. As I reflect on the diasporic position I was birthed in, I became keenly aware that Cuba’s history of race and racism has developed differently than the U.S. in that attitudes regarding race have been silenced more and put under surveillance in favor of strong nationalism and unification. Therefore, self-identification by nationality, such as Cuban, rather than by race, such as Black, is seen as more socially acceptable. Yet if blacks do identify by race, the preferred term is person of color or mestizo. In a way that does not surprise me, I have noticed that to call yourself Afro-Cuban, better yet strictly Black is a political and historical statement. More so, to talk about racism existing in Cuba is largely seen as a taboo, since public denouncements of the elimination of racism by Fidel Castro and other dignitaries after the Cuban Revolution. This historical framework enables me to empathize with my diasporic brothers and sisters and most importantly recognize, how much coming into contact with Cubans whom majority has never left the country is crucial to understanding a shared history of internalized inferiority and unified blackness.

Therefore in a few weeks, I became known to my peers by my hair. It became an identifier before my race, gender, and nationality. I have been called, Africana, Jamaican, Rastafarian, Negrita (a reclaimed meek form of endearment that Cubans call each other based on physical appearance), and most surprising to myself Puerto Rican. I am called these names by an array of Cubans who although share the same degree of melanin as me, see me as very different. I am frequently asked where I am from by white North American and European tourists who think that I am Cuban. Perhaps what has been the most eye-opening for me is when I am called everything else but American. The moment I tell someone, soy de los Estados Unidos o estadounidense, they seem to be surprised. From one specific encounter as I translated what he was saying, I was told that he “never would have thought [I] was from America, never, never, never.” From the amount of nuncas that left his mouth I wondered when I would be really seen as an American in Cuba, and I questioned what representations of the U.S. have penetrated and permeated the minds of Cubans to imagine Americans embodying a specific type. After a man complimented my hair and my beauty, que linda, I remain woke in Cuba that this black natural hairstyle continues to transgress and reopen conversations on not only the effects of slavery and colonialism of black people being “disfigured, oppressed, demeaned, humiliated, and despised” (Issoufou Mahamadou), but also a chance to rediscover our identity and love, and impose through strong social networks and resistance, a strong vision and value of ourselves. This aspect on hair has been crucial to my study abroad experience as I continue to write a hair diary about blackness from U.S. to Cuba.

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Image: The Wesleyan Hermes

Pedagogies of Belonging Professor Gina Athena Ulysse

There is a conversation Black faculty often have with Black students that we rarely mention in public, let alone in mixed company. The tone of this exchange differs to some extent if the student are U.S. born or from the diaspora. It follows discussions that open their consciousness as they grapple with accepting an inescapable truth — they are Black.

It’s not that they did not know this. But now there is a new realization that emerges as they are bombarded with intellectual evidence in our classrooms that corroborates their everyday reality. Combined with social interactions in institutions not made in their image, the students confront what the late Martinican postcolonial psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon aptly calls the ‘fact of blackness.’1 Their bodies are historically coded and permanently marked with significations that forces them into categories they cannot choose. Acknowledgement of this fact comes with the recognition that they will be denied the unearned, social luxuries afforded to their white peers.

When these conversations occur behind partially closed doors, I am met with disbelief, anger, tears and sometimes, even resentment. They cannot help but wonder: Why? Feeling like Dr. Doom, I choose to offer support to their youthful spirits as they are further weakened by the realization of the facts of structural racism. I inform them that generations of black folks have had different terms for it: the price of the ticket, or the black tax. They often ask, and I tell them how I navigate it, as I have chosen to be an educator. I admit I rely on, and aspire to, Audre Lorde‘s teachings.

My sanity depends on willingness to “...define myself for myself, [in order to not] be crunched up in other people’s fantasies for me and be eaten alive.”2 Either way, in this world where we have been deemed unequal, negotiations are necessary for survival. Education is liberation and knowledge, I insist — is power.

All the knowledge in the world, however, undermines another fact: we know too well these days that to be young and black is to live in a state of compulsive alertness. Redundant as it may be, it must be reiterated that one cannot drive while black, walk while black, shop while black, travel while black, swim while black, play with toy guns while black, jaywalk while black, protest while black without fear that consequences of being in such interactions at the most could be fatal, and at the least loaded with trauma.3 For, there is a high cost to disrupting the racialized order of power. Black life is a precarious life.4 And it is becoming more exhausting as we are regularly retold some bodies are unmournable.5 In recent years, the volume of such conversations has decreased. As colleges and universities become increasingly corporatized, the relationship between students and faculty has waned and become less personable. Still, as one of a few black female professors at my university, my office at times, resembles Grand Central Station.

This is just one consequence of teaching in what I call the neo Mad Men era— this moment in which white males are still over-represented in the profession in this country’s top colleges despite the demographics of our general population.6 Indeed, over the years, I have lived the effects of this as fed-up faculty of color retired early and were not comparably replaced, junior scholars were denied tenure and/or simply moved on, as we grow

increasingly dependent on adjunct labor, which is also raced, gendered and has become classed. In turn, those dedicated to this vocation succumb to affective labor that is exploited albeit, somewhat differently depending on the type of institution and the person.7 The Feminist Wire‘s Tamura Lomax penned “Black Women’s Lives Don’t Matter in Academia Either, or Why I Quit Academic Spaces that Don’t Value Black Women’s Life and Labor,” earlier this year echoing the sentiments of many of us.8 To be sure, for some black faculty, extreme duress is integral to our working conditions: lacking boundaries, protection and inspiration. Backlash is inevitable, once we proclaim we are not genetically coded for service.

None of this is surprising as our black presence at these institutions is a response to previous student demands for diversity. Our continued status as underrepresented indicates that attempts to appease protesters (who graduate and usually become disengaged alums) were at best, temporary solutions.

Institutions remained the same as faculty and staff of color were simply added and stirred.9 Years later, leadership and organizational structures are still whiter as are faculty rosters and curricula. This is more evidence that unless colleges and universities strategically focus on institutionalizing new and/or old initiatives, get creative and restructure keeping an eye on justice, the historically underrepresented will categorically persist as interlopers because the scaffold upholding racism in the academy and outside of it stands to prevail.

This new generation of student protesters are under no illusion. Far from it, they know that they are confronting versions of the same problems that restricted their parents, grandparents and those who came before them. Moreover, they actually want to belong to the institutions. As they challenge the order, it’s easier to cast them as lacking resilience than to recognize that they simply refuse to accept their oppression as status quo.10 Since most educational institutions claim to be creators of future change agents, in this moment, I am reminded of the words of Black feminist poet Toni Cade Bambara who asserted, “if your house ain’t in order, you ain’t in order.” ‘Diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ have become buzzwords de rigeur at universities. In these times, students are demanding that administrations go beyond rhetoric and, in the process, engage with the structural history of inequity that is foundational to most institutions of higher learning in this country.11 From Mizzou to the latest, each new protest and demands list confirm that change must begin at home.12 Indeed, as educators, we cannot keep asking students to do something that we are unwilling to do ourselves. To sincerely cultivate belonging, institutions must: 1) rethink the value ascribed to the presence of the underrepresented as sufficient tools to address diversity; 2) consciously commit to institutionalized concrete longitudinal and multifaceted approaches that address and redress patterns of inequalities; and 3) support collective practices and experimental spaces that will inspire new communities to flourish.

The question remains whether institutions have the will and are ready to face the inherent challenges to move onto this path of greater belonging?

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“Everything you see is an expression of yourself, and therefore everything you film is going to be an expression of yourself.”

- JossWhedon

Image: The Hollywood Reporter

Hailey Broughton-Jones

Footnotes from “Pedagogies of Belonging”:

1) http://frantzfanonfoundation-fondationfrantzfanon.com 2) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/audre-lorde 3) http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/07/02/419462959/coping-while-black-a-season-of-traumatic-news-takes-a-psychological-toll 4) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-d-g-kelley/nra-stand-your-ground-trayvon-martin_b_3599843.html 5) http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/unmournable-bodies 6) http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/11/university-faculty-diversity-race-gender-charts 7) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-athena-ulysse/teaching-black-feminism-a_b_768897.html 8) http://www.thefeministwire.com/2015/05/black-womens-lives-dont-matter-in-academia-either-or-why-i-quit-academic-spaces-that-dont-value-black-womenslife/ 9) http://philpapers.org/archive/CREDTI.pdf 10) http://chronicle.com/article/When-Free-Speech-Becomes-a/234207 11) http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/17/223420533/how-slavery-shaped-americas-oldest-and-most-elite-colleges 12) http://www.thedemands.org

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Redefining Empowerment Emma Lucia Llano Hennings

The Feminist Movement, in its recent years, has begun to focus on empowerment as a central issue. There have been countless articles analyzing which celebrities, professions, and actions are empowering. Yet, in a deeply masculinist society, power is defined by the ability to dominate. Should the feminist movement continue to value power equality? Can empowerment be redefined, or should it be abandoned?

These questions came to my mind when researching feminist opinions on sex work. Some feminists who are against sex work disregard it as a valid source of income because they view it as degrading, while some more liberal feminists believe that sex work is empowering. The debate around stay at home moms and their place in feminism works in a similar way. Yet, who can afford to think about empowerment when making crucial economic decisions? Simply put: middle to upper class white women. For poor women of color, whose primary concern is economic stability, empowerment is not an option. With limited resources, women who do not have an economic safety net, are not afforded a plethora of career paths that are viewed as traditionally empowering.

What jobs are considered empowering for women? There is no concrete answer.

Some that come to mind are the legal profession, higher education, and careers in STEM. A good way to expose the flaws in empowerment is by looking at important figures in the feminist movement. Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan are the faces of second wave feminism. Why are they considered empowering instead of Angela Davis and Audre Lorde? Because they were not asking for anything particularly radical.

Friedan’s feminism only appealed to a small percentage of women who could afford to be homemakers and Steinem rarely challenged white supremacy (see: Steinem’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in 2008) or capitalism (see: Steinem’s endorsement of Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016). Empowerment is often defined by how well one can work within the existing white capitalist system. When looking at Clinton’s feminism, we begin to see empowerment being equated with domination.

It is a fact that Clinton, as well as countless other female democratic politicians, have supported American colonialism, mass incarceration, anti-environmental legislation, welfare cuts, and more.

So what does gender equality mean in terms of power? Patriarchy has achieved power through violence and domination. Is this the type of power equality that the feminist movement should strive for? Many feminists, such as bell hooks, have opted to change the definition of feminism in a way that prioritizes liberation rather than equality. Achieving equality within a system that is so flawed, revolutionary feminists argue, is ineffective. Liberation from different forms of oppression such as capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and racism should be the primary goal of the feminist movement. Oppression hinders survival through the denial of human rights and protections. Survival encompasses the right to health care, education, housing, and food for low income individuals, protection from violence for queer people, people of color, and women. Only when everyone has the necessary tools to survive, can feminism begin to talk about empowerment.

Volume xxii Issue 2 The World is Our Stage: Black Dancing Bodies Backstage Kaiyana Cervera

The blood, sweat and tears of my regal ancestors flow through my veins.

I am beautifully and wonderfully made.

I am as precious as all that is valuable in this world.

I will not censor or silence myself so that others may speak.

I will never allow another person to speak for me.

I will not dance backstage so that others may be front and center.

I will dance on this stage with pride and with conviction.

Because everything I say is worth listening to.

Everything I do is worth watching.

I will take up space unapologetically.

I am a warrior of peace and love.

I am sitting on the patio at Usdan, and as I look over the campus, all I can see are beautiful dancing bodies. People toss frisbees on Foss. The players glide across the green grass catching the frisbees that fall. One step, another, the flick of the wrist, the cabriole, and repeat. This is their dance. I move my gaze to the men putting up the bleachers for Saturday’s football game. The three men work together in harmony. Zzzzz, the sound of the drill vibrates through my ears.

As this reverberates through the air, I hear the crack of a bat and I see a baseball player catching the ball. His arm reaches up, his feet skip and slide; his knees are bent and he grounds himself as he catches it.

Other sports teams walk by in a pack like the flying bugs that hover overhead. It’s the herd mentality in action versus the individual who walks by in a white dress. She has a unique bounce to her walk and her arms swing without care, without formation. There is no cadence, only free flowing movement unlike the team players who all have duffle bags banging into their bodies as they walk. Six black birds fly around overhead and just as swiftly as they appear, they disappear.

It’s quiet on the patio where I’m sitting, save for the shuffling of shoes, the continuous beeping of the machine and the sound of my pen on the paper. I look through the window, into the dining room and I see one man vacuuming our privileged mess and another man wiping tables. He removes the napkins, salt and pepper, and the brochure; wipes the table down, pushes the chairs in and then replaces the things he removed. It is an act of balance, concentration, repetition and patience. The worker’s dance is no different than the ballerina’s.

Both require precision, strength, control, and grace. We each have our own performance to choreograph on this campus, in this world. The earth is our auditorium; the world is our stage.

If the world is the the stage upon which we all dance, then what roles do race and color play into the production? I would argue that they are integral to understanding what dance is and how it impacts people differently. Race is merely a social construct but it is one that has affected and continues to affect people’s lives. Color is the first thing a person notices when they initially meet someone. The implications of how someone is viewed, based upon their color or their race, is deeply rooted and very apparent. In her novel, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool, Brenda Dixon Gottschild focuses on the ongoing strife that black bodies have experienced. She says, “At its most mundane level it is perceived as the working, field hand body, the muscles that laid the railroad, bore the children, endured physical hardship. In its enslavement history this body experienced extreme forms of torture to which no animal, wild or domesticated, was subjected. Yet it prevailed.” (Gottschild, 15) If the idea that the world is the stage upon which we dance is applied to this account, then slaves were dancers like their masters, the only difference

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William Ernest Henley wrote a poem entitled Invictus, where he talks about a struggle and how he overcame it. This poem is the story of the lives of Black bodies in America and in the world. Nelson Mandela used this poem as inspiration while he was in prison; he recited it to other prisoners. They incarcerated his body but could not imprison his soul.

“Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

If I continue to choreograph my dance, while others choreograph theirs on the same stage, then we should all be viewed as equally important. The issue is that we are not. We do not live in a post-racial, egalitarian society. Black bodies have been suffering a genocide for centuries. Black bodies have been fighting for their lives, but have never given up, and that is what makes them strong.

While race and color do play a large role in the production of the dance performance that we call life, it is important to remember to define oneself by one’s own terms. Doug Elkins paraphrased a quotation by Yvonne Rainer, ‘One of the hardest things to learn to ignore is other people’s explanations of who we are.’ (Gottschild, 19) As a Black dancer, I understand that there is a certain amount of struggle that comes with being of color, but I do not have to dance carefully in order to make others feel more comfortable. I will not censor or silence myself so that others may speak. I will never allow another person to speak for me, as if they would know enough about me and my struggle to explain it in simpler terms. I will not dance backstage so that others can be front and center. I will dance on this stage with pride and with conviction. Even as I write about dance in terms of Black bodies, I am dancing. My words are my movement and they take up space, unapologetically.

Malcolm Phillips

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The Truth Lies in the Middle

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“How Much a Dollar Cost” Kafilah Muhammad

Jordan Bonner & Henry Martellier Jr.

Jordan’s Introduction: “Police officers have killed at least 1,083 Americans since August 9, 2014- Michael Brown’s death.” We are not safe. If it can happen to a black teenager our age walking home from the store, it can happen to you. On the other hand, police officers aren’t safe either.

Many innocent officers have been killed in response to the deaths of African Americans. It’s hard to determine who’s justified in these situations because it depends on the circumstance, and therefore the “truth lies in the middle.” With that said, we are going to allow Officer Marcus Gaines, my sister’s ex-boyfriend who has been on the police force for 4 years, to shine some light on this subject.

Henry’s Introduction: In today’s society many people are unaware of the prejudices held against African-Americans. The black community has suffered through many acts of racism lasting over centuries, being treated as slaves and second-class citizens. In my eyes there is not much to look forward to when you realize death may be the only freedom from these instances that cause nothing more than harm and long-lasting pain. This is my reality, and just because I’m here taking advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime in a college education doesn’t mean that I’m not susceptible to the same fate as my fallen friend. *** OFFICER GAINES: On March 9, 2013, I was on patrol on Snyder Avenue in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. As a newbie, we have to take the shifts that more senior officers may not want, so I was assigned the 11pm-to-7am shift. It worked out fine for me because this way I had more time throughout the day to spend time with my family and kids when they weren’t in school. So anyway, it was a typical night, with a few traffic stops but nothing major. I was simply doing, you know, my normal routine in patrolling the streets and just making sure that everything was smooth and quiet. But sometimes you just know something is getting ready to pop off.

Like a gut feeling. I knew that eventually something would happen. It’s a Saturday night and folks are out clubbing and of course drinking, so the later it got, the more keyed up I got because sooner or later there was going to be a call. And at around 12 a.m., my unit received a call about a disturbance at an apartment complex approximately five minutes from where I was. Listening to the radio, the dispatched described a 632, which is a domestic disturbance. Apparently, there was a group of suspicious teenagers making loud noise outside of an apartment complex.

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BLACK BOY: It’s Saturday night and I’m just chillin’ with bros. B’s up C’s down yuh heard. It’s fucking lit. This damn lady threatening to call the cops on us for no reason. So what if we’re making noise, nobody is gunna tell me what I can’t do. Bring the cops, I don’t care.

OFFICER GAINES: I was first on the scene at the apartment complex. When I stepped out of the car, several people came up to me. They pointed to a group of African American men, ranging from 1518 years old. After radioing for backup, which is standard procedure, I proceeded over to the group of men.

[Officer Gaines approaches group] BLACK BOY to audience: I’m about to fuck with this officer right now.

OFFICER GAINES: What’s the problem here young men?

BLACK BOY: Why the fuck it always got to be a problem for? We just outchea chillin.

OFFICER GAINES: I received a noise complaint regarding a disturbance from a group of young men.

BLACK BOY: Oh you mean that old bitch upstairs!

OFFICER GAINES: Watch your language!

BLACK BOY: Naw man, I’m tired of this shit. Police officers always trying to fuck with us when we outchea trying to chill. We ain’t even doing anything.

OFFICER GAINES: I’m going to need you to calm down.

BLACK BOY: Nah, fuck you, Fuck the car you drove in, fuck your dusty ass uniform, fuck your yuck mouth teeth, fuck your badge, fuck your Entenmann brand donuts, Fuck your busted up shoes, Fat ass can’t even run head ass.

[Black Boy begins to reach into his jacket] OFFICER GAINES: Stop moving your hands!

[Black Boy continues to reach into his jacket] OFFICER GAINES: Freeze!

[Officer Gaines’s thoughts]: “Repeatedly, I requested that he stop, saying that he was making a mistake coming at me in this hostile manner, and as a police officer I would be forced to defend myself if he did not immediately stop in his tracks and drop whatever weapon he may have had! I kept thinking, “This fool is not going to stop and he’s going to make me shoot him.”

[OFFICER GAINES extends arm further but doesn’t pull out actual weapon] [Officer shoots and kills Black Boy] [Officer walks over to Black Boy] BLACK BOY: The repetition of a narrative- Black boy in the hood, no matter what his credentials are, is prone to the same fate…Death. Death, it looms as its intangible presence haunts the community.

Death, it haunts the mother who thinks her child is next. Death, it haunts the friend that is forced to fill the void. Death, it haunts the people that know that it’s a product of the system that was never made for them. Death, something that you won’t understand until that intangible presence takes the tangible away from you.

BLACK BOY: Please don’t let me die.

[Black Boy opens up hand and key drops]

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Am I Korean Enough?

Gayon Yang

After a semester at Wesleyan, one of the most progressive colleges in the United States, I went back to South Korea: my “home country.” To give you an idea, I had never lived abroad before coming to Wesleyan. Being born and raised only in Korea, I felt as if I had no other community to belong to. Even in moments when people—both Americans and Koreans living in the U.S.—questioned my Korean identity, I fiercely defended it. But as soon as I came back to Korea, I realized that Koreans in Korea, as well, tend to use the adjective “Korean” describe just how un-Korean I seem.

whole community is that it presents the community as inherently discriminatory. This gives leverage to the most powerful members in that community to justify discrimination by adhering to a stereotypical definition of the culture, or the religion, being prejudicial. For example, a Korean Christian group protested against the 2015 Korea Queer Festival in Seoul, South Korea. They wore Korean traditional clothing, Hanbok, in the protest, and condemned the negative influence that homosexuality causes to Korean society. They distributed this flyer in front of Seoul City Hall:

Here are some examples of unique usages of the word “Korean:” Example 1) Whenever I hang out with my parents and their friends, somehow the conversation ends up being about my marriage. Everyone asks my father if he could accept a non-Korean guy as my husband. They talk about the race of my potential partner (the gender of my potential partner is always a heterosexual cisgendered man).

Mostly, they tolerate my potential partner being white or Asian. If they are in a good mood, they are tolerant of a light-skinned black man, although they say that they are concerned he might rap or talk in black English to my father. I show disagreement with the aforementioned comments. I tell them that I have the right to choose my own partner. I also remind them that it is hetero-sexist and racist to determine my partner based on their gender and race. My parents’ friends disagree. They tell me that I am not enough aware of the “Korean” sentiment on these issues, and they are even kind enough to remind me that at the end of the day, I am “Korean” after all.

Example 2) I talk with my Korean friends about my thoughts on abortion, birth control, sex education, the rights of sexual minorities, gender equality, and refugee issues in South Korea. I am aware that these are controversial issues in most places, yet my friends specifically point out that I am “too liberal” to be “Korean.”

In fact, they are not the only ones who have questioned my identity. I have also doubted my own identity, because I see the gap between my beliefs on gender, sexuality and race, and the norms in Korean culture. This is ironic, because I’ve never lived anywhere else. The reason why my identity is questioned is not really because I am not Korean enough. It is because I challenge the agenda of the majority in the Korean community—able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgendered Korean men—who have the privilege to dictate what it means to be Korean.

What is so problematic about simplifying and representing a diverse group of people for the most powerful group within the community?

First of all, denying the existence of minorities is a tactic to silence their voices in a larger cultural and religious context. The adjective “Korean” is extremely dichotomous and selective. The adjective “Korean” does not include every member of Korean society. While it is about being “Korean,” it is never about being “Korean queer,” “Korean single mother,” or about “Korean immigrant.” If you don’t support “traditional Korean values”—which are, let’s face it, the values of the Korean ableist heterosexist cis-gender patriarchy—you are not Korean. If you do not support the most powerful people in the community, there is no space for you. Your identity is erased.

Having my identity questioned is not necessarily about denying me of my identity. It is about threatening me to feel that if I do not uphold the power structure of Korea, then I do not belong to its society. This is not just about being “Korean.” Ever since Europeans stepped onto the Korean peninsula, the Korean beauty standard has changed. Our small eyes, cheek bones, and yellow skin are not considered beautiful anymore. Instead, European beauty standards—having pale skin, big eyes, and a small head—are glorified in Korean culture, erasing our racial identity. We stopped wearing our own traditional clothing ever since European and American fashion influenced us, because Korean traditional attires are not as “official.” Instead, most of us Koreans wear European suits and European shoes to work, to weddings, to funerals (well, usually at weddings the couple and their family, or at a funeral, the family of the dead, dresses in Korean traditional attires, but that’s about it). If you do wear Korean traditional clothing to such events as guests, you will receive glares from your fellow Koreans.

A larger problem about having the most powerful representing the

“Korea is a country that prides itself for having great culture and tradition. ... We demand you not to interfere with our ethics problems in Korea. ... More than 1,000 Korean youth are getting infected with AIDS because of it [homosexuality]. We demand you not to interfere with ethics problems of Korean!”

To them, they are the heroes who protect South Korea from evil queer people. They say that they are being “Christian” and “Korean” by protesting against homosexuality. They think that they have the right to do so. They gain the validation and justification for their violence through national and religious identity.

They are staining the image of South Korea with their biased minds, and using the image of South Korea for their benefits. They are being cowards; they cannot find any other way to justify their violence.

Instead of recognizing their violence, they justify it with the authority of the most powerful group among diverse individuals. That is NOT what it means to be Korean.

Moreover, it is important to note that this phenomenon of the most powerful representing a community and silencing all other minority voices, and justifying their action is not endemic to Korean society only. At this moment, Donald Trump is shouting, “Let’s make America great again.” Whose America is he referring to? Is it ever about the land of Native Americans, who lived on this continent before people that look like Donald Trump settled on the land? Certain feminists are excluding women of color from feminist discourses. Aren’t women of color women? When people tell me that I am not Korean, are they saying that women, queer people, and disabled people in the Korean society are not Koreans? Where do we belong? Can we, as minority, ever belong to the community we come from? Where is our home?

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I will say something to those, especially Koreans, who question my identity: shut up. I am not compromising my agencies to secure my identity. I am both a feminist and a Korean. Are you sure I am not Korean enough? I have a better question: are you sure you are Korean enough and that you adore your Korean identity and Korea? If so, don’t you want Korea to become a more inclusive, non-ableist, and gender-equal society? A society free of unreachable European standards? If you love your Korean identity so much, why are you preventing your culture from evolving and destroying the shackles of violence caused by existing inequalities and social hierarchies? Is this how you love your own community?

With in

Kaiyana Cervera There is STILL a small space inside of my sacred temple that longs for something, though it knows not what that something might be “Find your passion, your calling” “Center yourself ” they tell me and I try Passion incinerates everything I advocate for everything I believe in is set aflame When I help others my name is being whispered in the wind the breeze kisses my cheek nodding, an approving appreciation I used to pray to the unknown but like many millennials, when things don’t go our way we poke scientific, pessimistic holes in the faith that might just save us if only we’d let it.

I tried to meditate, chanting “Nam myoho renge kyo” something inside me stirs and settles dust collecting over what once moved me. the hole remains in my heart a longing for love that is most likely an unachievable, imaginary, hyper-romanticized, unrealistic notion created by society but love nevertheless Love that is all consuming one that turns the winter in my temple to spring One that could help fill that still small alcove in my soul but I fear that there will always be a still smaller space that remains empty until the day that I find that love within my temple with in myself. within myself?

Until I realize that the love that I long for is right here within me.

-

Someone who is still searching for what can only be found within

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Student of Color Community Standards Introduction: We, as members of the Student of Color Coalition for the academic year 2015-2016 at Wesleyan, have come together to create this Student of Color Community Standards to acknowledge the pain we are going through, the origins of this suffering and how it is allowed to continue, and the responsibilities that we have for each other, using these to envision a future in which we are able to strive instead of just survive.

We feel that the university lacks consideration and inclusion of our community--both in whole and in part. More specifically, it has failed to provide the resources we have asked for; tolerates and thereby perpetuates the bullying, assault, and disrespect from the larger privileged, explicitly and implicitly bigoted white student body; is reactive instead of proactive in the face of our suffering; physically neglects our spaces; limits our pursuit of educating ourselves in our history by refusing to promote “ethnic studies” as fully funded departments instead of programs; and exploits and tokenizes our bodies for its “Diversity University” image while continuing to neglect those of us that are here.

History: We as a community understand that all that we experience now happens because of our history and predecessors. We recognize that the institution of Wesleyan has a colonial legacy by way of displacing the Wagnuk peoples, participated in chattel slavery with wood-frame houses being built by enslaved peoples, and further, in the so-called “postcolonial” world, continued to profit by way of dispossessing people of color by further expanding its physical land to accommodate a growing student body.

Students that attended this institution before us demanded recognition and self-determination when the Vanguard Class of 1965 took over Fisk Hall. They highlighted a disconnect between students of color and the institution.

This continued in 1994 when the latino/black brotherhood confronted members of the DKE fraternity for their participation in exclusionary practices.

Despite the efforts of those who came before us, the work is not done. Right now we face a lack of funding for ethnic studies-- an indication of our devalued lives and history, low retention rates of faculty of color, daily microaggressions from all areas of campus, general lack of institutional support (especially from those who are meant to serve us, namely the Office of Equity & Inclusion), and the perpetual vilification of those of us who try to speak out against these hardships.

Still, despite the injustices we face on an institutional level, we must also acknowledge the historical discontinuity of our community. We continue to be torn apart by focusing on our differences amongst us as students of color. Many of us continue to be exploited by Wesleyan. Leaving us little time to focus on caring for one another. Our oppression historically and presently illustrates why we need solidarity amongst POC.

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Community Standards: Each of our voices can be used to dispel the myth that all members of the SOC community have to have the same opinion. In order to be a supportive community, we need to respect everyone’s voice. As we continue to educate ourselves, we must remember to challenge ideas, not people. We must treat everyone as human and not mistake a difference of opinion as a personal attack on specific members of our community. Our relationships with each other should be grounded in mutual respect. Of course, we are not always going to get along, but we should address these conflicts utilizing the mantra that “your truth is not the truth”.

The spaces that we share in community with one another should be an uplifting environment for everyone. Our community should be a model for inclusive spaces. Although SOC groups seek to empower those in our community, and they are primarily for us, we must recognize the importance of reaffirming that our spaces are open to the larger student body. SOC student groups should work to recognize the intersectionalities between each of our affinity and identity groups. We should all strive to advertise and attend each other’s events and help advance each other’s goals.

Through solidarity, collaboration, and coalition-building we can all work to create spaces on this campus that better represent and reflect the interests of all members of the SOC community.

Future: The burden of lifting oppression falls upon the oppressed, and nothing changes when we become complacent.

Wesleyan affords each of us with certain privileges, but social justice ain’t a cute trend. It’s truly about survival. We acknowledge that this is a struggle and that our time at Wesleyan, as activists, will often make us tired and frustrated, but let us not be discouraged. Many have come before us and made progress while fighting for the same goals. They have laid the groundwork for us to be successful. Let’s be okay with knowing that there are things that we will not be able to accomplish, that we will not have the chance to do, but it is our responsibility to continue to build upon the foundation of our ancestors.

At times we may not be focused, but let’s try not to lose sight of our goal(s). Instead of letting our anger cloud our judgment, let’s use our emotion as fuel. Real change is implemented through strategic planning and resistance.

Our community should be a space where we can support and challenge each other. We must actively work on communicating effectively, because if we continue to break up into smaller groups nothing will get done. Everyone has different obstacles, but this is not the oppression olympics. It is important to recognize our individual positions in the system without conflating our experiences with others who share an identity. Push yourself to learn your history, and our history as a community at Wesleyan. Knowledge is power. Acknowledge that liberation is an eternal process, not a destination. Do not let struggles hinder your focus. Look at failure as a point of provocation, not as a point of stagnation. Do not imagine a singular utopia, which will obscure the task at hand, and force everyone to fight for a restricted goal.

Provoke. Fight. Fracture. Demolish. Persevere. Celebrate our victories, but do not let them blind you from the work.

We always need to keep going. Fuck respectability and assimilation politics. The work that you do is not about you.

Make sure your activism does not end your generation, teach those that are coming after you. This is not easy, or comfortable, but nothing worth fighting for ever is.

Signature: Acknowledging that we have a responsibility to support each other, we hold ourselves accountable to strengthen each other’s voices. We call to each other to embody solidarity in our actions. Let this statement be a testimony to our collective power. We recognize this power and grant ourselves the agency to exercise it.

Signed in collaboration with the 2015 - 2016 Student of Color Coalition

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A Millenial’s Civil Rights Movement Taylor McClain

Thinking back, the diversity within the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 70s was clear: on one hand, Civil disobedience by Christians dressed respectably, juxtaposed on the other hand with the cool, confident demeanor of the Black Panthers holding guns and organizing breakfast programs. Respectability surrounded acts of civil disobedience. Despite grotesque responses to such reasonable demands and methods, the movement that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other Christian leaders orchestrated is memorialized around the politics of morality. Black power, on the other hand, was a younger and more militant and assertive wing of black liberation activism. Building on the foundation of past civil rights gains and Black Feminist Thought, and shaped by the near omnipresence of social media technologies that keep communities in constant communication with each other, the black liberation movement of today, Black Lives Matter, leaves space for the vast multiplicity within black liberation actions and methods.

Unlike the 1960s, the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement is not necessarily grounded in chapters of the official organization. Ferguson, Missouri has had a huge impact but there are no official chapters of the organization there or in the greater St. Louis area. Anyone can become a part of the collective having a conversation about equity and black lives. Social media like Twitter has made this activist movement a more democratized space. Black Twitter has been a rallying force, calling out celebrities, companies, organizations, and each other on racism and misogynoir. Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter hashtag, explained how the movement is grounded in feminist thought.

She says, “Our work is heavily influenced by Crenshaw’s [intersectionality] theory… People think that we’re engaged with identity politics. The truth is that we’re doing what the labor movement has always done--organizing with people who are at the bottom.” The Black Lives matter movement is ecumenical and inclusive because it centers marginalized voices and lives. This means that it is a platform that multiple struggles for liberation can speak on. The university has always been a prominent stage for black protest and today there is more publicity and a larger audience for such acts.

Several coalitions of student groups, especially on college campuses, have band together to speak out against today’s challenges to equality. Though under the umbrella of Black Lives Matter, which has been focused on the valuing and safety

of black lives by tackling police brutality, these students’ protests are about making the university space institutionally safer and more supportive of black students and other marginalized people the campus affects. In her article, Rage Against the Narrative: “I don’t do diversity, I do triage,” Lisa Brock writes, “When you live in a society that does not acknowledge the existence/ humanity of Blacks, ...protests are viewed as nothing more than disturbances to mainstream society’s daily routine rather than the pleas of disenfranchised citizens … They are fighting a battle to destroy the comfort zones created

by White blindness, which has rendered so many Whites incapable of empathizing with the pain and suffering of non-Whites, especially Blacks.”

All marginalized students have a stake in this movement.

Most protests on campuses have been sparked by a specific event, but are also fundamentally in response to a culture of hypocrisy. Brock argues students are misled and made unsafe by high education institutions that promote diversity and then do little to end racism on campus and in university practices.

Historian Barbara Ransby says, “On most campuses, there was a specific incident that sparked protests; the real issues are much broader and ongoing.

The protesting students are not simply angered by a single incident of racial epithet; they are fed up with duplicitous campus cultures that tout diversity and tolerate pervasive racist practices, symbols and policies.” For example, universities sell their school as progressive by using people of color as pawns.

This happens during a post civil rights era where diversity is fashionable. In “Faking Diversity and Racial Capitalism” Nancy Leong mentions a recent study of 371 higher education institutions’ view books which found that “black and Asian students were overrepresented by 50% in photographs relative to their actual presence in the student body.” This crafted image of diversity only bolsters the white supremacist tendencies of historically and predominantly white institutions (PWIs).

We must change the structure of institutions to make them inclusive of students from all racial backgrounds instead of just integrated. The #itooamharvard campaign was launched by students to address microaggressions they have experienced in their time at the ivy league institution. This campaign basically says: “Both white normativity and anti-blackness won’t do and we plan to stop them.”

In this campaign that received national attention, black students at Harvard addressed the contradiction that anti-black racism allows: being invisible yet hypervisible and always being cast as a threat. Just like “Black Lives Matter,” this affirmation, to others and to oneself, is a reminder of belonging, despite current troubles.

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Students like these at Harvard have protested and declared demands that, according to Brock, include “more faculty of staff and color, non-Eurocentric curricular innovation, institution-wide anti-racist training, intercultural competency as part of assessment and promotion for faculty, safe space centers, greater mental health supports, removal of racist symbols, and conduct protocols that hold those who practice racist/hate speech and actions accountable.”

In a letter to university administrators, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva wrote, “after hundreds of years of all white EVERYTHING (demography, curriculum, symbols, traditions, etc.), the white structure and culture of PWIs did not change their practices much after they were integrated… Thus, the main problem … is white normativity … doing things as usual which reproduces the ‘racial order of things’.” Student activists take many actions to combat the silencing and erasure of their influence on universities. Whether its campaigning to change the university crest which valorizes slavery or combating everyday microaggressions, student activists who chant “black lives matter” are taking steps for everyone to understand that black students and other students of color, too, are a part of the university’s student body and deserve equity in the higher education setting as well as in all other aspects of civil existence.

Over the past few years, this type of black liberation protest on university campuses has been happening world wide. In South Africa, the hashtags #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall respectively address the increasingly high tuition for the black underclass and the demand for removal of white supremacist colonial symbols and practices at educational institutions. The picture below is one that I took while studying abroad in Durban, South Africa during Fall 2015. Last spring, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College campus had defaced a statue of King George the IV. Earlier in the year, there was a “END WHITE PRIVILEGE” banner on the statue. The spray paint in red reads: “Colonial symbols must fall.”

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The current movements in South Africa seem to be an example of how the Black Lives Matter movement is global. These presentations of black liberation activism are rooted in black power and Black Consciousness. Along with the desire to get certain images and phrases trending so that others affirm and protect black lives, there is at the same time a desire for self-affirmation and self-love. Saying “black lives matter” is just as much for others as it is for black people. It is a reminder to condition ourselves to love ourselves despite a heterosexist, white supremacist patriarchy that tells us we should not.

Steve Biko’s writings and thinking were core to shaping Black Consciousness as an ideology. Biko strove to free Blacks’ minds of racism and inspire a sense of self worth. According to him, Black Consciousness was created to: …pump back life into [the Black man’s] empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. This is what we mean by an inward-looking process. This is the definition of ‘Black Consciousness’. Biko’s definition of Black Consciousness, which he details in an essay called We Blacks, is a mindset, which allows the Blacks to see themselves with dignity, respect, and the ability to understand what they deserve. This process relies on the individual realizing their place in society, but knowing what it should rightfully be. This consciousness did not need to be validated

by Whites for it to be realized. As an “inward-looking process,” the focus is on one’s own conception of self. The internalized racism that Blacks have endured cannot linger in people’s minds if equality is to be reached. Though Biko saw integration as an end goal for South African society, he put his efforts into eradicating the inferiority complex that was ingrained into Blacks by centuries of white supremacy.

He and his fellow Black Consciousness thinkers fought for natural integration instead of integration on Whites’ terms, constructed with white supremacy still in mind. I imagine today he would fight against the pervasive white normativity on the campuses of PWIs here and in his country.

Most higher education institutions place a high priority on protecting White comfort and tip toeing around White emotional fragility. Some people think students protesting now do not have anything valid to complain about. Their “leg-up” already came with Civil Rights. Basically, students should deal with the uncomfortable or degrading displays of racism, heterosexism, and misogynoir they face. This attitude tells students of color that they are not the kind of student this school is really for, so they should be happy they have made it into the space at all. It is easy to hear the bitterness behind this sentiment.

Many white people feel that they are being swindled out of their chance at climbing the American social ladder; that their opportunities are being stolen. This is a time when Abigail Fisher’s court case alleging college admission discrimination because she is white reaches the supreme court. It is clear that an argument saying students of color should acculturate to what the university is like rather than have it address histories and participation in perpetuating patriarchal white supremacy, might prevail.

Of course, this is not without protest. Black Twitter responded to the Fisher case with #StayMadAbby, a display of black excellence and academic achievement. It came with the connotation that their academic achievements are well deserved and the result of resilience and perseverance through adversity.

All of this is to exude confidence and self-love for one’s blackness. Yes, some students of color get admitted to their universities through affirmative action policies created with acknowledgement of structures that disadvantaged them for generations. They also can manage to excel in environments riddled with remnants, reminders, or flat out continuities from a colonial and patriarchal white supremacist history. While students and activists have rallied around hashtags and phrases that make it easy to collectively discuss blackness in the context of the U.S., the variation in responses is eye-opening. Though entire movements form around a so-called collective black identity, each person will reflect the particularity of their experience in relation to the pressures they encounter concerning their identity. The future of the Black Lives Matter movement probably does not hold any particular leaders that millions of people will rally around, but it does hold the unmistakable power of a diverse collective.

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Breathing Under Water Ainsley Eakins

Am I beautiful With cracked lips?

With crevices carving out Premiere cuts of that fleshy fruit Hanging there?

They called them negro fish lips.

You once called them black and beautiful.

Well now you have Your fine, fresh, select filet, Bruised, bloodied, beaten to tenderness, Tender lips set out to market, Dried out for hours, sent home, Seasoned with the salt of tears.

Or is it star dust?

Am I star dust?

Or just ashes to ashes to ash ­Beautiful is an autumn leaf felled too early, Burned grey by the rays of the sun ­You left the filet out too long, You cut it, Open, cold, Third bite, you said it tasted old.

Beautiful is leftovers illuminated Under the microwave bulb, Thrown down on the mismatched ceramic tiles, Dinner for the dog.

At least I’m not a bitch.

Beautiful is cracked lips, Baking under buzzing headlights At the station.

“Did he do this to you?” “....No, I’m fine.”

But he did this to you.

Let him burn.

A poem for two resilient women who taught me about strength, sacrifice, and family.

Katherine Rosario

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Thoughts of a millennial descendant Hailey Broughton-Jones What do you want to forget?

How close.

Holding the hands of one who was born into a house of ex­slaves “I remember her.” she said “I was three or four but I remember her.”

Pop’s harsh words, when I wanted to open up and excavate the bones of my grandmother’s memory Shutting me down “That shit’s painful” he said While I was thinking about how “cool” it would be to interview my grandmother For A Grade school history project “Cool” A name? Could I get her name?

Forgotten.

Mabel?? X

Ask again?

When?

Over tea? Dinner? When we go over to Nana’s house for Chirstmas? NoShe’s in her 80s now.......

Birthday dinner?

Slip it into casual conversation the family inheritance of enslavement one day while talking about the weather in Connecticut vs. the weather in Westbury, New York?

While talking about Obama and Michelle?

While talking about Pop? You start to collect the crumbs along the years But I don’t think I’m catching them fast enough

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Millenial Child Shirley Fang

Charcoal, Acrylic, Papers. 48 x 70 inches.

See more of Shirley’s art at: facebook.com/shirleyfangart & fangsmark.com

The Ankh

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Undercover Lover Jennie He

the honey moon for the past six years, i have been in a secret relationship, hidden from the world, my loyal undercover lover. we would nestle together under the divine, murmuring till death do us part. each morning, comfort curling around us, drawing us closer, we’d hold each other so tenderly, the kind that only existed in fairy tales. we promised to never let each other go the infinity of our love expanded, stretched, bloomed, held us in its warmth when we made love, it only escalated the intensity burrowing deep in our hearts we would lie in bed, exhaustion heavy on our bones, our muscles, we’d had grown weak for each other. each time the world seemed to collapse, burning everything in sight, i knew i had a shoulder to return to, a set of arms to envelope me into comfort. i was unafraid. there was no safer, more comfortable place in the world than in the arms of my undercover lover, depression. i was ready to give you my everything. every piece of me. every flicker of my energy. i was utterly enthralled. under your spell. there was no love greater than between you and i. a match made by the gods above whispering, gently teasing us together, wrapping their influences on us, but we didn’t even need that, we were enchanted with each other well before that. we had unintentionally seduced each other. my loneliness revitalized you. your promise of sweet nothingness enticed me. i was ready to die for you. and i almost did. on many occasions. i did not want to live without you. i did not want to be without you. any time we spent apart was excruciating. only in moments where i felt like i was drowning in your love, suffocating, did i feel alive when i began starving myself, i didn’t feel like i was depriving myself of anything, it felt like this enormous sacrifice that i was willing to make for my love. i was doing it for you. 5 crackers a day. that was it.

trim off the fat all of the non­essentials that happened to be your entire existence. i needed to not be me anymore. it was a desperate act. i was desperate. i didn’t know how to live anymore. i needed to leave, to get out, away from my undercover lover. remove the evidence that they were ever here once and for all the thought of cutting my hair shot fear and anxiety through my body. i can’t cut my hair. it is who i am. i thought. i told myself that i could not do it. no, echoes of my lover told me i could not do it. i could not do it. fuck that. i mutilated my body in hopes of severing any final tendrils of my lover that clung to me. in an act of defiance, i removed 6 years of my life from my body. in july 2014, i carved my depression, my anxiety, my dissociation, my disordered eating from my body. i sliced off 26 inches off my hair. the fuck you all of a sudden, with my newfound relationship status prominent on my head, i began receiving friendship invitations. it seemed like the clouds had parted, people that didn’t want to be my friends last year, started messaging me. people that would never have looked in my direction before now asked to hang out with me. get a meal with me. slapped with surprise, i was dumbfounded by my newfound visibility, but with this raw constant exposure, i realized how wholly dull and forgettable i was before.

the break-­up i was dying. that’s a lie. i was already lifeless. my lover had moved into me, i had hollowed out my body so they could sit comfortably within me. so upon their eviction notice, i felt how heavy emptiness can feel. all of the times i forfeited my right to eat, all of the times, i abandoned my friends, all of the time i had so sweetly surrendered to my lover, began to boil and disintegrate any piece of me left. i was a heap of bones, figments of a mind, slivers of a person. the recently excavated barrenness of my mind still sore, throbbed at my temples, my vacant body felt meaningless. after years of being molded to another, i didn’t have my own thoughts. i didn’t have my own feelings. i couldn’t feel. i sat in my purposeless silence, my haunting loneliness, what is the point of living when you don’t have feelings? i had attempted to release myself from the grasps of my undercover lover, i had attempted to unstrangle myself, resuscitate myself, breathe again, but how do you do this when you are constantly looking in the mirror and only see a lump of flesh unworthy to call itself a person

Kafilah Muhammad

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The Ankh Mujer que me diste vida Julier Escobar

i ran from one abusive relationship, into a community of people armed and ready to strip me of my agency. so, good­intentioned that they silenced me. this heightened visibility made me relapse. i rewound myself into the cycle of violence. i slipped back into the arms of my undercover lover. the more people began imposing their language on my body, my “gender fucking,” my “queering,” my “radical,” my “extreme,” my “insurgence” the more the whispers of my past lover grew louder. thoughtlessly, people excited to become my friends, interact with me, would state: i don’t remember seeing you beforehand. how utterly uninteresting i must have been for my passings to be undetectable, no, hopelessly camouflaged into the background of another long­haired asian girl. why is it that only after i severed myself, unsuccessfully, from my past, with my queered state of being now openly crowned on my head that i finally exist to you. you didn’t know me before? oh shit, must have not existed. how dare anyone tattoo their theories, their ideals, their imaginations on to this body they see as an open canvass for their interpretation i am not your china doll. you do not get to define me, use me. but how dare anyone diminish me or anyone else, reduce us to just a haircut. don’t fucking quell some fabricated anxiety you believe the first­years have about needing to shave their heads to be part of aasc. don’t project your own internalized racism, believing that people only see asians in fractures, the cool, the smart, the hot, the pathetic. last year, as i was preparing for the asian american course that i was teaching, i was met with a yik yak post about how i was fracturing the asian american community because i had posted up a photo of a couple of my fellow aasc members with our shaved sides. if anyone is fracturing the community, it is you, with your regurgitation of the white hegemony. playing into their false economy of visibility, as if me taking up more space leaves you with definite scarcity. as if my existence was threatened your realness. as if we were competing for those white eyes to validate us. how dare you essentialize your own people? how dare you do exactly what we constantly fight against.

Mujer que me diste vida Mueves al mundo con tu amor.

Existir por ti, un honor.

Por ti, soy yo

Tu, como nadie Nadie como tu.

Fuerza tiene Tu existencia, Tu presencia.

Tu abundante amor, ante tanto Dolor

at what point do we become our own oppressors. i agree that the person is political but that is not an invitation for you to ejaculate and thrust your own assumptions on my body. i shouldn’t have become more evident, more present, only postsurgery. when i snapped the ties to my abuser, how dare you pour glass shards of idealism, reductionism, and “coolness” expectations onto the very path i was desperately trying to run on. i did not want to be in my body. but you made it impossible for me to feel safe anywhere outside of my body. you do not get to insert yourself in my relationship history. get that erect anxious attention-seeking phallus out of my fucking face. i do not have time for you.

-Julier

my hair is not cool. it is not a phase. it is a radical reclamation of my mind. do not claim this battle­scarred body as a part of your social justice porn. stop colonizing my revolutionary acts of self­determination.

Malcolm Phillips

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The Ankh

On Mourning that Younger Girl Inside of Me Jennie He

If you lie to someone long enough, they will no longer know the difference between their body and public property. If you lie to someone long enough, they will not know that sex for pleasure and sex out of a false sense of obligation are not interchangeable. If you lie to someone long enough, they will believe it when you say sexual liberation is only found nestled in the rustles of college dorm room beds.

rope

I am sorry to that girl who found out that she was only worthy to be around when she was drunk or high. I am sorry to that girl who had to experience all of her firsts because she felt she had a responsibility to prove her sexpositivity and outlook on hook-up culture. I am sorry to that girl who cannot help but cringe every time she thinks of her firsts.

colored friction

I need you to know all of this because I cannot bring myself to share any part of the fissures that have laced this body without first healing our relationship.

I am so sorry that it has taken me years to write this. I am sorry that I have ignored your ghost as she moves with me everywhere I step. I have been terrified of speaking with you, recognizing your wounds, acknowledging your importance, and accepting you.

I cannot move forward without remembering how your scars paved the path I walk on now. So here I am, with all my pretenses, anxieties, and hesitations dissolved. I am unconditionally extending my embrace to you.

You were sexualized and sexual before you even knew what that meant and I do not blame you.

I do not blame you.

I used to leave a footprint now I can barely Double­dutch

rubber tires quickly running reds over skin

windowing I’ve long been told my voice is here before I get a chance to speak

fice and the skies opened to see the cross in ashes their bibles became novels. their religion turned to book clubs.

I love you.

counting followers kneeling— down to history— with future as their master.

by Christian Black

Kazumi Fish

Volume xxii Issue 2

23

The Ankh

A Survivor Aleyda Robles

“Describe a time in your life when you have faced an obstacle, how did you overcome it and how has it shaped the person you are today?”

If they gave me money for every time that I’ve written essays for scholarships and schools answering this question, then I’d probably have enough money to pay my tuition.

Just tweak the story a bit to fit the different institutions and there it is, I can press submit.

I’ve begun to wonder why I always have to answer this question.

Why does my value derive from my struggle?

It is clear that you understand that the odds are never in my favor because the system is setup to crush me and my aspirations. That’s why you ask that question.

You hand me this role of the strong, resilient, survivor and thus undermine my current struggle. I am a prop used to further marginalize, and reprimand mi gente. I am used to justify their oppression because if I can make it here then they all can, they’re just not working hard enough. I’m a commodity used to sell the American Dream narrative.

“Be resilient, you are strong, you will get through it in the end.”

You use this narrative to justify all the bullshit I am currently going through because at the end I will get through it. I’m a survivor.

You will use me as a symbol to demonize mi gente porque yo sobreviví.

I’m a survivor.

I’m a survivor.

I’m a survivor.

Pero también estoy cansada. I’m so fucking tired of being the survivor. I’m tired of letting my brown skin be a shield to my vulnerability. I am vulnerable, despite what you believe.

Because you can only acknowledge that my pain exists without acknowledging that you’re the source of the pain.

Because knowing what I know leaves me in a state of constant anger but a slight demonstration of this anger, a small slip, and I become irrelevant.

My opinions and thoughts are dismissed because I have proven to you that I am that angry Latina.

That I did not survive because I couldn’t be assimilated into your culture.

Because the blood that pulses through my veins has a calling and it is not to this country, es a mi tierra El Salvador. I am tired of constantly trying to make you understand that I am simply human and thus deserve respect and compassion. That my humanity allows me to have the capability to feel more than just anger or pain.

I am just tired and want to rest but my mother is right, people like us, black and brown people, we can only rest in death. Porque nos tienen miedo, they fear us and thus will not let us rest while we live. We can only rest once our eyes close for the final time, close to never open again.

And the depressing yet empowering part is that since I am a survivor in your eyes, I will play up to the troupe. I will allow you to place value in my pain and struggle because like I said my mother motivates my every move in your world, so I will play by your rules to gain the power and knowledge to fuck shit up.

So I guess you’re right, I am a survivor.

My struggle can satisfy all you white saviors who can now sleep comfortable at night knowing that you have taken one more person out of the hood: A survivor.

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