writing thru...oppression
oppression is the perfect killer: even if guilty, it cannot be convicted for the tragedy it enacts on the body.
this is the statement i told myself that has carried me for the past year -- a year that has put my convictions, my identity, my work ethic, my morality, my health, my mind, and my heart to test. this moment, however, is not about the details of the moments that have passed. it is not about the many failures i have witnessed on my journey through Gethsemane. it is not about the victories that seem hollow after reaching the mountaintop. it is not about the silence that rings with dehumanization. it is not about performance for vitality's sake -- even when "performance" works more like chemotherapy than xanax.
no, this moment is about writing -- writing that has carried me thru: from pew in an evangelical Pentecostal church in Stone Mountain, Georgia to stage at the first National Black Lesbian Conference in Atlanta to a secured data room in Bloomington, Indiana to a tiny apartment in West Philly. it is only because i first put pencil to paper that i can now put finger to keyboard. it is only because someone saw poetry in me that i now see ethnoracial inequality as rooted in the political economy. it is only because i wrote that i now eat.
this writing, however, has not come freely. the very words that i fix to my pen are ordered, stretched, distorted, organized, and denigrated by the oppression i have lived. the details themselves are not of essence, but it is of essence to know that those details did in fact happen. and, because those details did in fact happen, i now know that no one will write our story except for us. i can no longer deceive myself by holding on to the comfort that the next generation or that dataset over there or there is someone out there somewhere that will make it happen. our writing, my writing, is the lens by which the world will know that we are all simply living thru...oppression.
this is the statement i told myself that has carried me for the past year -- a year that has put my convictions, my identity, my work ethic, my morality, my health, my mind, and my heart to test. this moment, however, is not about the details of the moments that have passed. it is not about the many failures i have witnessed on my journey through Gethsemane. it is not about the victories that seem hollow after reaching the mountaintop. it is not about the silence that rings with dehumanization. it is not about performance for vitality's sake -- even when "performance" works more like chemotherapy than xanax.
no, this moment is about writing -- writing that has carried me thru: from pew in an evangelical Pentecostal church in Stone Mountain, Georgia to stage at the first National Black Lesbian Conference in Atlanta to a secured data room in Bloomington, Indiana to a tiny apartment in West Philly. it is only because i first put pencil to paper that i can now put finger to keyboard. it is only because someone saw poetry in me that i now see ethnoracial inequality as rooted in the political economy. it is only because i wrote that i now eat.
this writing, however, has not come freely. the very words that i fix to my pen are ordered, stretched, distorted, organized, and denigrated by the oppression i have lived. the details themselves are not of essence, but it is of essence to know that those details did in fact happen. and, because those details did in fact happen, i now know that no one will write our story except for us. i can no longer deceive myself by holding on to the comfort that the next generation or that dataset over there or there is someone out there somewhere that will make it happen. our writing, my writing, is the lens by which the world will know that we are all simply living thru...oppression.
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