Spring 2017 by The Ankh

THE

ANKH

WESLEYANâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S STUDENT OF COLOR PUBLICATION SPRING 2017

ANKH

Volume xxiii Issue 2 Staff: Taylor McClain Hailey Broughton-Jones Elijah Jimenez Kafilah Muhammad Catherine Wulff Kazumi Fish Jordan White Aili Francis Eloise Seda Leneil Roderique Lena Mitchell Campbell Silverstein Sung Joon Kim Sarah Sanders-Messmann Ananya Subrahmanian Justin Kim Franchesca Peña

Contributors: Kai Williams Katherine Puntiel Jaylen Berry Salim Green Katya Deve Jaime Wiesner Giselle Lawrence Princeton Carter Julier N. Escobar Solis Destiny Polk Tarah Timothe Madison McClain-Frederick Rachel Godfrey Saam Niami Jalinous Shirley Fang Rafael Orona Gisselle Yepes Kaiyana Cervera Renee Palmer Sydney Riddick Nadine Ng

Cover art by Jaime Wiesner Back cover photo by Salim Green

The Ankh

Who are we? The Ankh is Wesleyan’s student of color publication. We ask that all submissions fulfill the following criteria: that they be by and for people of color. What can you do? Read the Ankh, just like you are now, and contribute! Even if you aren’t on the staff, even if you aren’t confident about your writing skills, even if you’ve never done anything like this before, there are many ways you can contribute. The Ankh is for you and your creations. You can submit any type of writing— fiction, non-fiction, expository essays, news articles, poetry. Any kind of visual art is welcome. Music, playlists, and video can now be published on our website. Some of the pieces you will see in this issue were created at one of our open workshops, which we will continue to hold throughout next year. 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 website is now live! Check us out at: the-ankh.org

This edition was sustainably printed with support from:

The Ankh partners with the Green Fund to work towards a more intersectional notion of environmentalism and demonstrate our continued dedication to environmental justice.

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Anthem for My Women of Color Kai Williams

I am brown-black. A greenhouse. A dash of rhythm and blues. A yellow pearl, who’ll punch some yellow peril in your sternum. Have you calling for your mama forehead deep within my scarlet fever, heavy, hip-hollering heat. Beware. I’ll technicolor your opinions, change the perspective of your canvas, whisk you dizzily out of Kansas, you’ll be wiping sun out your eyes in my brown-black woman presence. But go on, place the white girls on the pedestal. I bet they’re easier to look at.

Katherine Puntiel

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Two Hands Jaylen Berry

These Two Hands murdered mountains to move men these same hands two hands love for freedom, but distance to advance these two hands bring healing and destruction All for the for the experience of elevation; To grow. To grow. To be. To be seen. To fail. To hurt. To dream unseen things. These two hands and your two hands made This new tree. Mines and yours begot one soul to move free. I understood the sounds, but your Heart made me believe: What was unsaid, Cause still bells ring in my head of those times. You Betrayer of my Heart; you never valued Time. To be. To be. To be seen incognito To fail. To breathe. We made these Leaves But I left those trees to be the Dream. Cause when these two hands combined, the byproduct was Power, when these two hands connected, the rain & storm overpowered the land. As they separated, my balance failed me & I forgot how to stand. I prayed that you would choose me, but your faith left my hands. Your mind left my glance. My eyes broke that trance. Visions of fallen leaves left greater damages, So I bundled my pain, and hid my bandages. In orderTo leave To leave Betrayer of Time, To seem To seem Betrayer of mines, You left these two hands to bleed.

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Salim Green

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Untitled Katya Deve

The conceptualization of my racial identity began with an experience with my cousins—though it was not really a moment of clarification, but one of confusion. We were sitting in Alyssa’s room and the room was buzzing with loud and boisterous conversation, so I was sitting silently, of course. There were a lot of people crammed into a tiny space, and I was significantly younger than the rest of the group (or at least it felt that way), which certainly contributed to my shyness. Throughout my life, I have learned to be a listener, which becomes the role I often play in my day-to-day life. I learn best when I listen, and I wish sometimes I was someone who could also speak, but I have not figured out exactly how to use my voice. At one point during the noisy stream of voices and laughter, one of my cousins loudly stated, “Get out of the room if you a white person.” I froze with uncertainty. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant to be white. I knew that I was brown, that my appearance was different from many people with and around whom I grew up—my classmates— who have always been predominantly white students. My cousin could probably tell that I was confused, because she looked at me and said, “You stay.” I flash back to a time in second grade when a classmate asked me why my skin was so dirty. A flood of memories holding realizations supervene. The process of my racial identity formation began here. I am historically dislocated. As a child of diaspora, I find my dwelling between the space of borders, in a country saturated with and permeated by notions of identity. My parents raised me in a place in the world which almost entirely detached me from the possibility of connecting with my being Dominican, which is something that I do not necessarily have a language for yet. My mother refrained from guiding me to explore my roots, leaving me with a clouded sense of pride about my racial identity. I am constantly and differentially implored to rearticulate for myself and for others my perceived, practiced, and embodied ethnic identity and its different meanings. For a long time, I felt shame about my cultural identity, because it resembled no one else’s around me. I resembled no one else around me. My desire to belong grew from here, and began as a desire for whiteness. This desire has rotted away and grown into a comfort and pride in my brown-ness, which has not been uncomplicated either. In a lot of ways, I feel alienated from a culture and people that I claim as my own and questions of authenticity about my racial identity resurface. “You’re not really Latina because you don’t speak Spanish,” I was told this summer. The appeal for authenticity is tangled up in these attachments, strengthening the impetus to identify with, claim, and defend the racial identities to which I have been assigned. The intensity of ongoing negotiations about my racial identity varies depending on context, company, and comfort. I’m not sure that things are becoming clearer to me—which speaks to the complicated nature of the topic. A flood of memories holding realizations supervene. A casual acquaintance who, after I mentioned to him that I am a first generation American and that my mother is from Dominican Republic and my father is from France, told me that I do look “pretty ethnic.” My best friend in kindergarten was the only other brown girl in the class and people would constantly tell us we looked like twins, though we did not look alike at all. Sometime last spring one of my close friends told me that he reads me as white. “We pretty much have the same skin tone,” he said. When I was a little girl, my brother’s best friend Sanjay explained to us that he was the “most bad” (of the three of us) because he had the darkest skin; I was the second “most bad,” and my brother was the best, because he has the lightest skin. My mother recounted this story to me on the phone the other night. A year ago a classmate of mine told me that he did not think that racism exists at Wesleyan and that he does not believe in microaggressions. In first grade one of my classmates asked me why my skin was dirty all over. When I was a freshman at Wesleyan, a boy that I had just met told me that I was “pretty much white” upon learning my racial identity. A friend of mine graciously included me in his family’s Thanksgiving plans when I could not afford to fly home to be with my own family. His aunt asked me, “what combination of human are you?” Excuse me? I realized that she was asking about my ethnic makeup, or whatever. What’s so threatening about not knowing? A year ago, a friend of mine tried to add me to a Wesleyan-associated facebook group for black and brown identifying people to share black and brown music. The creator of the page messaged my friend saying that I could not be added to the group because I am not black or brown. My friend corrected her, asserting my Dominican identity. I have not been added to the page. I told my roommate that I was upset after that experience and have been grappling with my racial identity and he said that

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I should worry less about what other people think. I wanted to explain to him that it wasn’t the specific interaction that upset me, but it was my inability to place myself in the conversations I have been trying to have about race and synthesize the theory that I have read in class with my real experiences. I feel constant but implicit requests for authenticity and yet do not know how to provide that authenticity. I have not yet adequately bridged my academic understanding of race with my self-understanding—my orientation as someone who has been simultaneously and differently racialized, disadvantaged, and privileged. For most of my life I have been placed in environments that have foregrounded (at least for me) my difference. I used to look at myself in the mirror and say aloud to myself, “I am a brown girl.” I have always felt aware of my darker complexion, or was made aware by a close friend’s grandma from Oklahoma telling me that I am “so tan.” So exotic. My friends’ mom decides to chime in to say that “[my] people are so beautiful.” I used to have curly hair as a young girl, just like my mom’s. I remember always pulling my curls down, wishing my hair was straight. I wanted so badly to embody the white beauty standards that I was so conditioned to praise. As I grew older, my hair grew straighter as if resulting from some miraculous force responding to my desire for sameness. The Census Bureau designates “Hispanic” and “Latino” as ethnic categories rather than racial ones. I am trying to figure out or at least articulate (mostly for my own understanding) the specific ways in which I have been racialized within the Hispanic/Latino category and my inability to think of myself as white, but the ability of others to read me as such. My orientation is suggestive of the ways in which racial categories are constructed, disseminated, externalized, accepted, and ultimately internalized as markers of social difference. Groups of people become different by virtue of being treated that way. I have been treated as different, but I have also been treated as ‘the same,’ or as exotic, or non-threateningly ethnically ambiguous. I am brown, but I am light-skinned. My father is white. My father is French. My mother is Dominican. Taíno. She is brown like me. Latina? Afro-Latina? Hispanic? Her identity to me feels just as ambiguous as mine. Why am I and others so compelled to find a category for myself? “What are you?” I am constantly asked. What am I? And how can what I know about myself further my understanding of race as a construction?

Anonymous

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Campbell Silverstein

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Color Curse

Giselle Lawrence i thought every wire in my brain was broken. that every synapse had been dulled. that my heart was wrong. for liking a love that seeked to free itself just as much as i. a black girl with that andro magic— i only sought to unchain myself, through you. that every act upon this feeling was a death to myself and my family—my world. that every acceptance was a failure to the truth that i only hoped to live up to. being unapologetically in your identity is… scary as fuck. hard as fuck. like a lump in your throat, dying a cancerous death to the lies you tell yourself, it becomes a truth. my body the vessel housed a spirit uncanny to the polarities of this planet. an understanding of more. an understanding that poison wasn’t all there was to drink. that there is the aftertaste and it can taste like liberation pushing through empty promises and hard walls. like mirrors shattering. again and again. seeing a new vision. a newer, beautiful vision.

Protect Her Psyche

Princeton Carter

Shout to the soul sistas melanin mamas, The girls with the night head wraps and onesie pajamas, The misses that don’t need a mister, The all natural feminist, misogynist disser, Be you and only you with a power that trembles, Be bright and kind from your toes to your dimples, Love your flaws from your boogies to your pimples, Walk in confidence and laugh loud, You’re unapologetically strong and proud, Free from social pressure and self-doubt, Always willing to step up and stand out!

Madison McClain-Frederick

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Standing, Shining Julier N. Escobar Solis

With a smile she drowns her tears. Her eyes hold the years of pain she has seen and felt. She is the sun that Rises. She is the sun that shines behind the clouds.

Her strength became her weakness She was no longer needed Her strength Made her replaceable Her replacement Became the woman That hadn’t found her strength Yet

As the clouds Her mind is floating, moving and creating

She now stands with her strength, because she had accepted it.

She deserves the world But the world doesn’t deserve Her

Her strength had always made her beautiful the love she gave and received was a reason to be a reason to stay stay stay and stay continue to take the pain continue to find the hope in a religion that was not created for her.

She gives the world all her strength. In return, the world inflicts more pain She lives knowing, her story and her strength isn’t to be written or to be known a man has seen her. Her strength became too much to overcome for him. he proceeded to try and break her. Her Strength had always been too much She found her strength was stronger than him and she found herself alone He did not love her Because love would’ve accepted her strength and loved her for it

Her faith, she made her home. She was never home, she had left home she needed to give me one. creating one in a home not hers. Home is her, Home is her strength. She is where I see the beauty that still stands, the beauty that remains, the world that should be. She is the sun For she has the strength to shine, after it rains and storms she stands and lights up this world

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Untitled

Destiny Polk Dear Fred The Kid, My uncle plugs in an old colored TV, one with the back still attached to it and a port for VHSs. I was just thinking about VHSs. How my senior spring of high school, me and my friends watched all the VHSs in the basement. Friends. They’re hard to come by. I had some. They are like distant memories who sometimes pop up. And I hit decline. Fred, you are kid genius, and for some reason my uncle places your story on top of this old TV that fits perfectly on my nightstand. You’re not like the other kids. You wake up to paintings. Sometimes your mother doesn’t understand you, but she loves you. School doesn’t challenge you. You have the universe on your mind. You got intuition, kid. You are blessed, but certainly not alone. Sometimes you can’t sleep because the world is dying, people are dying. Sometimes you want to be normal, but you’re not. Thank God for that. Because who would solve the problems? What’s a real summer vacation anyway? You give me permission to be pensive. Your mom tells you not to worry so much, you call her Dee-Dee though and that was my nickname when I was young and crazy and covered in bruises and reddish dust. My step-dad calls me to tell me “everything is going to be alright.” Sometimes I think about smoking cigarettes. To smoke away my loneliness and be like the cool kids. Maybe the buzz would numb the knots in my stomach from not reaching my full potential. Isolation. Bad dreams. Night owls. What happens when your thoughts won’t let you sleep? Or you feel like you’re missing out on all the fun? Like the 4th of July in Texas or Thanksgiving in Atlanta or concerts in New York or family gatherings back home. The occasion doesn’t really matter, but the laughter. The squealing. Cackling. Drinking and spinning and spitting and splashing and laying. Fred, you spat. In the face of objectification. You are not your gifts, though you have many and they are extraordinary. You just missed your mom. Like I miss mine all the time. Because we feel worlds apart sometimes…Sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing, so we wing it. And we love and we look back and say sorry. We say I love you, hug, and for a moment everything is okay. Dance. Laugh. Play stupid games. Be different. Be happy even when your excellence becomes normal and some younger, brighter kid impresses the world. You don’t stop existing. And friends will create themselves.

Anonymous

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The Third “Whitest” Thing I Have Ever Done: Vignettes From A Black Bitch in a *White* Fraternity Tarah Timothe

Every time I get to the back door, it immediately becomes a game. It all begins before I approach the house. I always come back late with hopes that everyone else will be away in someone’s room staying up far too late. If they are in a room, I definitely will not have to interact. I walk down one of the string of pathways to cross High Street. I look both ways and find my keys in my coat pocket. My fingers search first for the key that opens any of the doors of the house. I scuffle to the back door that leads to the turret. Timing myself in my head, dreading having to run into anyone that lives there, I rush to shove the key into the lock and jerk it around. The door gives and I yank it open, running up the back staircase like a slave not allowed to be in the main hall. I reach the second floor. Before I open the door, I have to pause to hear if there is anyone moving around the floor. When I am sure there is nobody, I rip open the door and bolt to the end of the hall to my room. Once again I shove the key, this time for my room, into the lock, jerk it to the side and pull open the door. On the other side, I shut the door and take a moment to catch my breath. Using the bathroom to shower or brush my teeth is another ordeal. Once my nighttime routine is done, I lay down to panic attacks in bed, desperate for the email saying my move has been authorized and I can go pick up my keys. “The brothers really don’t like you.” “The brothers are saying you are ignoring them when you walk around campus.” “Tarah, you are really causing problems within the brotherhood.” “You have to prove your commitment and care about this to the older brothers.” “You’re really being a problem here, Tarah.” “You’re being insubordinate” Flashes of white faces on tall male bodies whipping me with racialized language to put me in my place began to take up too much space in my mind. I was always sure in myself, but white people have a talent for making you doubt yourself, if you let them. They have this insipid ability, that has been groomed in them since the inception of whiteness, to see flaws in the world around them and not recognize it as a direct result of themselves. Acknowledging that there is no person exempt from being “problematic,” there are still many things I am confused about. Confused as to why everyone ignored two very uncomfortable rapists and perpetrators in the class of ’16 who were well known around campus. Confused as to why nobody could put together the historical shame and pain tied to an older white guy pushing my head down in a dark unfinished basement on a Thursday night besides me. Confused as to why I had to be the “angry black girl.” As I am walking out of the house for the last time, the house manager runs into me and smiles. He says that if there is anything I need, ever, I can always hit him up. I feel his genuine care and think maybe I will hit him up sometime. She smiles and giggles as I press her again and again for her to explain why she was so understanding. In between catching me up on her life, she looks at me and says, “I thought about it and ya know in my head I was like, Tarah went to Deerfield. She really just needs a break from white people.” I smile and laugh at how well she articulated something I did not think need articulation. Astounded at how well she knows. Astounded that her being in Psi U also helped her know me better. Astounded that I have always liked her so much. This time last year, there was a constant buzz in my life. Freshman spring I was pledging, dancing in too many groups, doing standup comedy at home and on campus, and simply trying to be a new person in a new place. Spring semester last year was filled with constant sounds. If each activity I did was music, pledging would be a white rapper like G-Eazy or Hoodie Allen. In my first two years of high school, surrounded by preppy rich white people, I bumped some “No Interruption” and old school G-Eazy. They are far from the best and exhibit intense appropriation, but your environment influences your taste. Rich white kids from the ‘burbs love hip-hop. Once I graduated from high school, I was ready to spread my black wings. Unfortunately, I did not do that as much as I wanted. I’ve have spent an incredible amount of time around a specific type of white person, and Psi U included many of those. I could play the game and be the token and I ended up pledging. Not shockingly, this time around, I really could not stand Hoodie Allen and G-Eazy. I had moved on from the music, but I was back again, listening to “No Interruption” on repeat. Stupidly, I put myself in a place where that was the soundtrack again. Now, a year later, I have wholly deleted their music off my iTunes. It is so much quieter without G-Eazy whining about ‘Tumblr Girls” and Hoodie yelling about how “Fame is For Assholes.” It is also so much richer because now there is way more D’Angelo and Smino and Sampha and Kodak Black. The music is made even better when now there are not a group of white people using it to relate to me or “be down.” “White liberals [do] what white liberals do best. They put their heads down and act like nothing is happening. Oh don’t worry! We’ll hug you after you need help.” -Hari Kondabalou

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We all live many lives. It is impossible to erase the people and experiences that have occurred. It is strange that remnants of this time in my life are littered around me. In Usdan, I see a boy rush to whip out a small spiral notepad as he gets a pledge task from a female brother. I am painfully aware of this custom as I watch the interaction in its feigned subversiveness. Around campus, I see people who are still in Psi U and it is more amusing than anything else. A handful of people knew me outside the context of Psi U, and that has been felt intensely after the separation. It feels interesting and distant and every interaction is different. There is another Facebook post rating the Polar Seltzer flavors from Weshop. I find myself smiling because tradition can be weird and pledging is the most interesting part of the whole organization. One night, I have a dream where the rapper of my dreams gets booked to play Psi U and I obviously go because it is TWISTA. The whole day before I am sweaty and anxious. The panic attacks return. I swallow my fear, my friends and I shoulder into the venue and as we walk to a spot to watch the concert, I see my picture in the composite amongst my ex brothers, framed on the wall next to the bar. I have a short blond weave and my face is contorted into this angry mug. The femme in the photo looks intimidating and cold and I remember feeling sick and scared when I took that picture. The femme in that photo is not the femme looking at her now. The person in the photo was never fully Tarah, but that slighted version of myself is forever memorialized in the house. I am proud of the mark she made. I am proud of her for always giving it her best try. I am proud of her for standing her ground and then being strong enough to GET OUT. “Okie. I’m in the parking lot.” The music softens as my phone lets me know I am getting a message. My best friend texts me to let me know he is waiting for me with the trunk open. I am finally moving out today. My best friend is moving me out today in between two snowstorms because he has seen my tears. He has heard my frustrations, my anger and my complaints. It takes too long and we are both exhausted, but determined. It’s slippery and cold, but finally I get my check and the last of my things and he drives me down High Street to my new residence. Before I get out, I thank him, constantly baffled at his kindness. His blue eyes sparkle in genuine care before he shrugs, smirks and says, deadpan, “Yeah, well I’m just fucking glad you got out of there.” My heart fucking smiles and I run inside to hide from the cold. Black power signs and fists raised in solidarity line the hallways. Rap music is blasting and the context actually feels right. Just before I get to my door, one of the girls on the hall sees me, smiles, and says, “Welcome home!” It is a warm day and I have plans to meet some friends on Foss. It is one of the chiller days I have had all semester because my schedule has been packed with rehearsals and extracurriculars. Around noon, I become really popular as I begin getting bombarded with messages from my pledge brothers. “Hey Tarah! Can we get a meal today?” Tarah! What are you doing today? Could you eat with us, maybe?” “Yo Tarah. We really gotta talk.” I plan to to ignore them, but they keep coming in and eventually one pledge brother with whom I am close texts me saying that apparently something serious went down at line up, and it has to do with me. My eyes roll out of my head as I arm myself to deal with the next installment of “pledge pledge” bullshit. It always has to do with me. We meet up and walk into Usdan. Before we reach the door, she looks at me and asks if I am ready. Obviously I am not, but I want this to be over. We walk in and all of my pledge brothers are seated in Usdan 114. There is a solemn and serious vibe. Everyone looks at me with a mixture of pity and apologies. I shake with laughter as I realize this is an intervention for the problematic pledge. I am the problematic pledge. It had become so costly and dire and painful for the brotherhood that they told my pledge brothers that I needed to be discussed. A group of mostly white people had another group of mostly white people intervene with me about my “behavior.” A group of mostly white people had a fake intervention with me where they bullshitted about caring about my well-being because of an asinine idea of this illustrious brotherhood. General statements about being “concerned about me” and “wanting to see me through whatever I want” are thrown around. Some of my pledge brothers condemn me and tell me of their disappointment in my behavior. It finally ends and I leave feeling surprisingly neutral. My friends text me asking if I am going to join them on Foss. I respond saying I am on my way, armed with some dangerous tea to spill about some wild white people. There was an intervention about my “behavior” as a pledge. A group of people I did not know had to tell me about myself. Most of them white and male. That is violence. While I was pledging, there were two senior boys who were well known rapists and perpetrators on campus. My behavior as a black person not subordinating myself to a group of white people was more troubling. That is violence. I want to be extremely clear that the experience was every word for absurd. An intervention? Are you deadass, b? Many old white men visited the house. They trailed in and out admiring this hallowed hall of male privilege. Brothers who had graduated would come back to visit and revel in their spectacular days of toxic masculinity. Most were shook at my existence in their

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once homogenous space. They would barge into rooms and share anecdotes about their time, as though white men do not command and take up enough space. Sometimes they would laugh and feel connected with me because white people really love other people who do the same shit they do in terms of secret societies, brotherhoods, fraternities, eating clubs, etc. They would include me in their stories of debauchery and maybe even give me the handshake. Most assumed that I was there simply to visit someone else. Someone recently told me to be careful about this piece of work because it should be stressed that the members of Psi U are really trying, or at least some of them are trying. I can always acknowledge progress and especially progress from cis males, white and black, acknowledging themselves and their privilege. Respectfully and unfortunately it does not detract from what has been done. White people tend to try really hard once irreparable damage has been done. Everyone can try after they have made a mistake. Further efforts cannot just include recruiting all the black kids you can find within a mile radius. For actual change to occur, the space has to be more accommodating to the people you want to attract. Being told that people are trying does not excite me or make me feel hopeful because ultimately more than half of the population of white men and women voted for Trump. They only felt distraught after they saw what their actions did. I cannot be told after that people are “trying.” They should have been “trying” when I was there. “We need to question what kind of work visibility is doing. We shouldn’t equate visibility with actual change.”

Rachel Godfrey

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White Toes and Brown Nose Saam Niami Jalinous

Mama came home one day With a crick in her neck and a smile on her face And kissed me goodnight the way she sings And told me My love my love I do it for my love I dreamt that night of a land far far away Where she was a princess, not a laborer A land where she was treated like a woman Not like a girl A land where she felt her father’s love And she could touch herself like a woman should Instead of letting Man fuck her over And I woke and she cried and cried Of the home she does not own Of the land she does not know Of the America she was not made for. II. Kill me kill me Said Sohrab to his Rostam Kill me kill me you Bastard kill me And his father ripped the life from his young son O! What a pain what a pain What a pain to kill a brown son What a pain to kill a beautiful boy What a shame what a shame What a shame what a shame.

IV. Coarse hair and deep eyes Levi jeans and Chucks Where is my American dream? Where is my American movement? Who told God that brown boys can’t make it to 2nd period English? Who said Rumi was a white man? Who said Alexander was that great? Why can’t I be an all-American? Why can’t I be a patriot? Without kissing my mother goodbye And burning my skin to a shrieking white Who scared the color out of me? Who made me a sheet who put the sheet on me? Who told my brother that his lashes were punishments? Who told my brother that he is not me because he is Russo? Give me back give me back my me Give me back give me back me.

III. Uncle is reading red reading red And Mama’s screaming dead screaming dead And Daddy’s feeling fed feeling fed McCarthy told me to find myself in AIDS McCarthy told me to come back another day Or never ever again Perestroika is in me Perestroika is in the little one Perestroika is in brother Perestroika is in Nana Come come the bombards are falling America is at the door and they’re asking for their money back Mama’s feeling tired and granddaddy’s faded Pers is in style and Arabs are lucked and fucked out Come come freedom is here don’t be late freedom is here!

Aili Francis

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Shirley Fang

Discovering My Mother as Other/Discovering Myself as Other Rafael Orona

I don’t exactly recall when I found out I was other. All I know is that it happened in sixth grade. Somewhere between my first day of private school And when my Chilean French teacher told me that the way she and I were raised Contradicted American modes of life And that I made the people in my class uncomfortable. I had never really been ashamed of what I had Ignorant to the luxuries they had, that I didn’t know I was lacking, Until I saw the line of luxury cars, Dropping off their kids for the first day of school. Or the cars the students themselves were driving. I made sure after that, they never saw me get into my mom’s old van When I got out of class too late to take the bus That I rode until the last day of my senior year in high school. The bus I turned bright red in Every time it hit a bump in my poorly paved neighborhood streets. “Why don’t you drive?” *I can’t afford a car *I don’t know how to get a license. *No one in my family has a license “Uhh I haven’t had time to get my license.” “What’s the difference between a bench and a Mexican?” *brace yourself “A bench can support a family.”

Volume xxiii Issue 2

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“Do you live in a van?” “What do your parents do?” As the teacher went around the room, calling on people randomly, I prayed they would skip me. “She cleans houses,” I rehearsed, hoping with all my heart that my voice wouldn’t crack. The teachers always changed the subject before they ever got to me. I believed in God in those moments. I refused to go into thrift stores Until Macklemore made it cool. When I stayed late for rehearsal twice a week, My choir friends would all go to Whole Foods for dinner. “Why don’t you eat?” *I can’t afford…“I ate a big lunch.” “I’m Hispanic.” “Aren’t you Mexican?” “I’m Mexican, but my grandparents are from Spain.” (I don’t believe my grandparents have ever seen a Spanish person in their lives) On the Importance of English You berate yourself everyday, calling yourself burra for not being able to grasp English after being here for 20 years. You stopped trying to learn English when we sat around the dinner table and chuckled at your pronunciation of English words like what. “Guat?” English was And will continue to be Superfluous You didn’t need to speak the language to stand in front of me and defend me as a group of kids and their parents threw gravel, words, and sticks at me, at us. (I have even thanked God you weren’t able to understand the scathing words hissed at us) You haven’t needed to speak the language to support four kids by yourself, making sure that one way or another there was always food on the tables, in our bellies. English was not needed to accept me as your gay son, even though your church had been very clear about how they felt about me. English was unnecessary when you talked me out of deep holes I didn’t believe I would ever crawl out of. English was not necessary when you saw my emotional exhaustion every day after school, making sure I knew you were there for me to talk to even though it was not a world you knew anything about. English is not mutually exclusive with intelligence, kindness, love, resilience, or patience. English was And will continue to be Superfluous

Volume xxiii Issue 2

The Ankh

Untitled

Gisselle Yepes part I he read the blurb, glanced at the cover, then flipped the first couple of pages, interested. his clear cold eyes popped out of his face, his jaw dropped into the part of my skin that read, “do not enter” interested, he was, until he ran headfirst into a wall of realization that this book, this body, my body is not his favorite genre. he left a bookmark in between my legs he closed the book but there was a bookmark, and I knew what bookmarks were you know, it’s like when you hit the spacebar while watching a movie so that you can pick up your ringing phone it’s like picking up your phone and pressing mute so that the gentle voice in your ear will not listen to the screaming aggressiveness in your battling home it’s like reading a book, sticking a fucking bookmark in, because that’s the spot where you finished reading that’s the spot where you tell yourself, this is where I will begin again it’s like saying “wait for me. I will come back to read the lines within your soul.” but why did you never return? part II maybe I interpreted it wrong maybe there was no bookmark and instead there was an underline a moment where your rolling tongue on my skin emphasized your conquer with “now I have her”

maybe there was no bookmark and instead there was a post-it because post-its are not return labels they are simply colorful punctuation marks or scars that scream to my next reader, “where did all these parts of her come from?” maybe I interpreted it wrong maybe I was not a book and instead I was a single chapter, a single sentence, a single word a hit single a hit single that died in your eyes before the filth within your fingers ever touched me maybe I was not a book since a book is too long for the time you wanted to spend with me maybe I was an article except all of my articles of clothing laid on the floor of your pride as my bare skin held tightly to a future you never even saw coming I was just another body and you were just that guy whose memory hugged my skin with mental brutality forcing me to warn every other that you are like oil on stained clothes you are the reason for all the reasons I tell myself that with me, comes no worth you are my hate for the heat of my favorite season - but still, I do not cross your mind

Volume xxiii Issue 2

The Ankh

“The Help”

Kaiyana Cervera They never prepare you for the “good white people.” The ones who celebrate your birthday and tell you how sweet you are. They never tell you that one day they’d become so uncomfortable that they’d slip up and call you “the help.” And when these words drop out of their mouths, slow like watching honey dissolve in sleepy time tea, they’ll try to cover it up because somewhere deep down they know they’ve messed up, and now the cat is out of the bag that they’ve been trying so hard to keep closed and hidden. And they’ll apologize profusely and they’ll deflect saying, “Oh you know what I meant. You help me out.” A few nervous chuckles and a condescending shoulder tap to follow. But if you’re socially conscious and interested in your own survival, you’ll know to never accept their guilty apology. You will be reminded of the danger that comes with trusting “the good white people,” with their fresh white tears and their empty white apologies. You will have a hard time forgetting that moment when you were placed ever so gently back into the shoes of the woman who probably raised them. But it will not consume you. You will not allow it to define you—for you will find a way to become detached from the golden chains she tried to lock around your beautiful soul.

Renee Palmer

Volume xxiii Issue 2

The Ankh

WWYAD: What Would Your Ancestors Do? Sarah Sanders-Messmann

did my ancestors shudder at my creation? two family trees colliding one the burden of the oppressed the other the burden of the oppressors my identity: a breeding ground for duality why do narratives of passing sit so heavily with me? imagine myself in another time and my existence is illegitimate because what they don’t tell you when they repeatedly jam the “not half, but double!” refrain down your throat is that the one drop rule still exists as long as you can see it reflected in skin

olive trees? olive skin. you look like you could be Egyptian Spanish Mexican Middle Eastern Italian Brazilian Grecian but that’s not what I am my mother is black my father is German did my ancestors shudder at my creation?

I am not white never will be white and neither will my children even if their skin is the color of ivory gouged from a murdered elephant even if their skin is so light you can see their blue veins popping up underneath the surface and yes i will teach them german my family histories now intertwine and I hope for some hmm cross-cultural communication? how much is a human being worth? not much if your skin is darker than mine which is the color of a returning German tourist who spent two weeks in Mallorca which is the color of Haagen Dazs coffee ice cream which is the color of, what was it my mother compared it to?

Katherine Puntiel

Volume xxiii Issue 2

The Ankh

Lost Identities in Migration Ananya Subrahmanian

My parents first met at Anu Mafatlal’s party. They stood under her extravagant chandelier, surrounded by guests cavorting to dance hits twenty-four floors above the similar chaos of Mumbai’s streets. Anu was a mutual friend from the college they both went to, and somehow this was the first time they crossed paths. My father told my mother that he was studying economics and that he wanted to leave India to live all over the world. My mother told him that she was also studying economics, but wanted to pursue fine arts instead. When the chandelier lights dimmed to darkness, both of them headed home. My father walked around the corner from the party. My mother slid into a car that would drive her three hours away. Years later, those three hours my mom had spent in a car that night became a habitual journey for me. The drive started in the heart of the city, the life of Mumbai’s streets moving along my window faster than the disorganized lanes of honking rickshaws and trucks ahead. Teenagers passed by, waving pirated DVDs that they were selling. Men in trucks stared greedily at me. Women with pained grimaces and babies in their arms knocked on my window for money. The car made a slow transition away from the chaos of the city and sped into the emptier, calmer streets of Juhu’s suburbs. My family and I would pull up in front of a white house with tattered paint on the walls and spend the rest of the day with my mother’s parents, Nana and Nani. Hours later, we would get back into the car. The empty streets that raced along my window slowed down into crowds of honking vehicles and shouting vendors that passed by.B y the time the sun tucked itself under a blanket of dark clouds, we were eight floors above the busy Mumbai streets with my father’s parents, Thatha and Patti. In 2009, the Sealink bridge was constructed over Mahim Bay. The trip from central Mumbai to the city outskirts of Juhu decreased from three hours to one, but the bridge did nothing to eliminate the differences between the two worlds it brought together. My parents met in Mumbai, in the state of Maharashtra, where they both grew up and went to college. My father’s parents came from the southern state of Tamil Nadu and migrated to Mumbai looking for better work opportunities. They were Brahmins, standing at the top of the now antiquated Hindu caste system. Thatha and Patti spoke fluent English and sent my father at age ten to a boarding school in Tamil Nadu, where he would gain what they considered a good education. When my brother and I were born, Thatha and Patti read us bedtime stories at night and bought us new books on every birthday. They watched the news in aggressive, fast-paced Tamil at night and taught us Hindu prayers to say before we went to sleep. My mother’s family is from the northern state of Kutch. Both Nana and Nani were born in Mumbai after their ancestors migrated from Kutch generations ago, and were set up for an arranged marriage within their tight-knit Kutchi community. They were Kshatriyas, part of the second-highest caste of warriors. Nani and Nana spoke to me in broken English and often in Kutchi, feeding off my replies in English. They let my mother go to boarding school when she was fourteen, giving in to her greatest desire after she begged for years. Nani watched soap operas in gentle, slow Hindi every night before bed. Fromthe time my milk teeth grew in, she would cook me buttery c hapathis with fresh mango sauce, which I would eagerly anticipate during my long trips to Juhu. Nana and Nani rarely went to the temple, choosing to sing my brother and I spiritual b hajans in lieu of religious prayers. My parents met far from their homes and farther from where they really came from. On the twenty-fourth floor where they stood together for the first time, they began a life of clashing and hybridizing the two backgrounds that raised them. I grew up calling Mumbai my home, the very same place where my two drastically different cultural halves coexisted on each side of the Sealink. My classrooms at Mumbai International School were filled with fellow Half-This-Half-That classmates, each with ancestry tracing back to one or more of the 29 states in India. Everyone understood that I was Tamilian by my last name and Kutchi by my lighter skin. They understood that I grew up living on Carmichael Road in Mumbai and speaking Hindi, the dialect of Maharashtra, better than I could ever speak Tamil or Kutchi. After moving to the US when I was seven and spending years seeing India through my colonized eyes, I accepted the broad term “Indian” that everyone used to identify me. Amongst the People of Color and White Americans in the US, I felt the northern and southern parts of India that shaped my upbringing blend into the heart of my newfound and generalized identity. As I revisited Mumbai throughout the years I spent growing up abroad, I came to a slow recognition of the multifaceted cultural identity of India. When I finally stepped back to understand my own layers of Indianness, the first thing I realized was that I was the only person I knew with both a Thatha and Patti and a Nana and Nani.

Volume xxiii Issue 2

The Ankh

Inked Thoughts Sydney Riddick

Written in gel in the book on my desk. That desk that I spend way too much time at worrying about last week and what I should have done, and next week and what I should do, and not enough time thinking about the now. And when I’m not doing that, I find myself infatuated with how time picks up during the best parts of life and how it slows down during the worst. And how we sometimes settle for the “it is what it is” instead of saying it is what we make it. And how sometimes after we take the time to think things through, we realize it’s a little too late. And how we say it’s never too late, but then find ourselves at a dead end when we go for the u-turn. And how as the world turns, it steadily grows warmer, its people colder. And how the political climate is a mess. And how people say it’s lonely at the top, yet the 1 percenters have banded together to be the 1 percent of the 1 percent. And how there should be a tax on empathy and compassion. And how there is a deficit in respect. And how it’s easier to remember the lyrics to a song than it is to remember the sounds of missed voices. And how the days are getting crazier. And how we forget what we say, and can’t say what we forget. And how we wait too long to say what we want. And how things don’t always come out right. And how I wish I would have taken the time to write the letters that I can’t write now. And how I would prefer to read letters than to scroll up. And how I’d rather see someone in person than to text them. And how when it rains it doesn’t always pour, but I would like it to. Because I love how when it rains everything looks different. Because I love how when it rains, I can look outside from that desk that I spend way too much time at worrying about last week and what I should have done, and next week and what I should do. Because I love how when it rains, I can finally think about the now and write it in gel in the book on my desk.

Volume xxiii Issue 2

The Ankh

Nadine Ng

SPRING 2017