by Suheir Hammad
from Born Palestinian, Born Black
please
learn to pronounce
the name of my spirit
the spirit of my name
correctly
and don’t complain
it’s too throaty
too deep
too guttural
begin it in your gut
let it tickle the back of your throat
warm under tongue
let it perfume your breath
smooth your lips
and release it
round my hips
clearly
My school brought Simon Ortiz down to South Texas earlier this week for one its Native American Heritage Month events. He read several of his poems and even sang for us, but this poem is the one that stuck out the most for me considering how there have been a couple of recent highly publicized cases of obnoxious cultural appropriation lately (most recently, this No Doubt video). I have to share:
Several years ago,
I was a patient at the VA hospital
in Ft, Lyons, Colorado.
I got a message to call this woman,
so I called her up.
She said to me,
“I’m looking for an Indian.
Are you an Indian?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh good,” she said,
“I’ll explain why I’m looking
for an Indian.”
And she explained.
“Every year, we put on a parade
In town, a Frontier Day Parade*.
It’s exciting and important,
and we have a lot of participation.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “Our theme
is Frontier,
and we try to do it well.
In the past, we used to make up
paper mache Indians,
but that was years ago.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And then more recently,
we had some people
who dressed up as Indians
to make it more authentic,
you understand, real people.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well,” she said,
“that didn’t seem right,
but we had a problem.
There was a lack of Indians.”
“Yes,” I said.
“This year, we wanted to do it right.
We have looked hard and high
for Indians but there didn’t seem
to be any in this part of Colorado.”
“Yes,” I said.
“We want to make it real, you understand,
put a real Indian on a float,
not just a paper mache dummy
or an Anglo dressed as an Indian
but a real Indian with feathers and paint.
Maybe even a medicine man.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And then we learned the VA hospital
had an Indian here.
We were so happy,”
she said, happily.
“Yes,” I said.
“there are several of us here.”
“Oh good,” she said.Well, last Spring
I got another message
at the college where I worked.
I called the woman.
She was so happy
that I returned her call.
Then she explained
that Sir Francis Drake,
the English pirate
(she didn’t say that, I did)
was going to land on the coast
of California in June, again.
And then she said
she was looking for Indians . . .
“No,” I said. No.
“A New Story” was published in Ortiz’s 1992 poetry collection, Woven Stone. (Source)
Today’s Author Friday video: Nikky Finney’s acceptance speech from last year’s National Book Awards ceremony. I know it made the rounds all over the place last November, but it’s so amazing that I just felt like hearing it again. The speech starts at about 4:45.
You can get a transcript of the speech here via her website.
Forgive me if this blog gets a little Sandra-licious on you this week…Sandra Cisneros is in town to do a reading/signing for Latino Heritage Month. No joke: I’ve been waiting for this day for about seven months now. I wrote a large chunk of my MA thesis on Caramelo (I’ll try to refrain from blurting that out tonight when I see her, but there’s a good chance I’m going to geek out in front of my students), and I’ve been perusing her books a lot lately.
Anyway. I know I featured a poem from Loose Woman a month ago, but I couldn’t resist sharing “You Bring Out the Mexican in Me” today. It’s one of my favorites.
You bring out the Mexican in me.
The hunkered thick dark spiral.
The core of a heart howl.
The bitter bile.
The tequila lágrimas on Saturday all
through next weekend Sunday.
You are the one I’d let go the other loves for,
surrender my one-woman house.
Allow you red wine in bed,
even with my vintage lace linens.
Maybe. Maybe.
For you.
You bring out the Dolores del Río in me.
The Mexican spitfire in me.
The raw navajas, glint and passion in me.
The raise Cain and dance with the rooster-footed devil in me.
The spangled sequin in me.
The eagle and serpent in me.
The mariachi trumpets of the blood in me.
The Aztec love of war in me.
The fierce obsidian of the tongue in me.
The berrinchuda, bien-cabrona in me.
The Pandora’s curiosity in me.
The pre-Columbian death and destruction in me.
The rainforest disaster, nuclear threat in me.
The fear of fascists in me.
Yes, you do. Yes, you do.
By Sandra Cisneros
From Loose Woman: Poems
Bring me a drink.
I need to think a little.
Paper. Pen.
And I could use the stink
of a good cigar–even
though the sun’s out.
The grackles in the trees.
The grackles inside my heart.
Broken feathers and stiff wings.
I could jump.
But I don’t.
You could kill me.
But you won’t.
The grackles
calling to each other.
The long hours.
The long hours.
The long hours.
May is Latino Books Month, so I’ll be highlighting something Latin@ books-related every Saturday in May.
By Jo Carrillo
Our white sisters
radical friends
love to own pictures of us
sitting at a factory machine
wielding a machete
in our bright bandanas
holding brown yellow black red children
reading books from literacy campaigns
holding machine guns bayonets bombs knives
Our white sisters
radical friends
should think
again.
I’m glad I came across this one. I love her reading of it!
Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf is a choreopoem that was first performed on Broadway in 1976. Its seven characters are all black women identified only by the color of their clothing (lady in brown, lady in blue, lady in orange, etc), and each live in different cities across the United States.
The book is full of powerful prose, and the women each take turns talking about the difference experiences they face, such as love, rape, domestic violence, virginity, and youth.
I first read excerpts of this book in undergrad, and I’m glad that I came back and read For Colored Girls in its entirety. I’m not usually a fan of poetry, but Shange’s work is captivating; I would love to see a performance of this someday. It’s a pretty easy read in terms of length (the book is only about 80 pages long), but some might find some of the topics—particularly rape and domestic violence—difficult to get through.
In terms of its place in the womanist/feminist canon, this one’s definitely a must-read.
