even this page is white

yellowface

found poem based on michael derrick hudson (as yi-fen chou), “biography,” in the best american poetry 2015, lehmen, david, and sherman alexie, eds. (new york, ny: scribner, 2015).

what pride looked like june 24, 2015

based on events at lgbt pride reception at the white house on june 24, 2015.

sources

my writing practice for this book consisted of consuming a lot of poetry. below is a list of books by black and indigenous authors, and authors of colour that were particularly inspiring:

the black unicorn: poems, audre lorde

citizen: an american lyric, claudia rankine

for your own good, leah horlick

kiyâm, naomi mcilwraith

seva, sharanpal ruprai

salt, nayyirah waheed

brown dreams

how often must you prove your pigment

when your entire body is painted bronze

have you ever heard white question its colour

snow moon salt milk tooth chalk

what if there is no right way to be brown

besides the brown you are

soil nut clove wheat bark pluto.

how many books have to be written?

two hundred thousand years

of human life

fire flight language music wheel

architecture vaccine electricity

one five ten fifteen twenty years

from now another brown person

stares at white screen glare

types the word race

five billion years

until the sun dies.

skeptic

once i loved a brown woman

you said i hated myself

now i also love a white man

you say i hate myself.

under the pink

i have been aching for you to remember me to remember you

as intimate instead of adversary so how can i love you better?

being an ally is ultimately learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

: i think many white people are angry about racism, but white people are both consciously and unconsciously attached to power. white people are taught that our experiences are authoritative and right. when we learn to be allies, we must wake up the fact that we are actually so fucking ignorant. we’re undereducated when it comes to just about anything outside of the white gaze, and we’re grossly under-practiced in talking about racism.

i don’t think privilege makes any one human a bad person. i think ignoring your privilege, defending your privilege, or refusing to understand where that privilege comes from is the problem.