The Political: The Brown Experience
Designed by Missy Soto
Shame is something we know all too well.
I’m not sure how many generations ago
we came to know it as the word of our people.
The experience of us.
But I know shame like the back of my hand.
Know it as a virtue,
A teaching so sacred to my parents,
As if it were the way of life.
Our life.
And shame has blurred the lines between the outside and inside,
Us and them.
Us and ourselves.
We have welcomed it into our homes,
Given it a place at the table.
Allowed it to guide us in our understanding of ourselves.
Often my parents wonder where I learned it,
As if no system exists to teach me.
To tell me que lo moreno es ‘feo’
That being one of them was bad.
Que eso me hace ver…,
As if the I had no place.
Because we’re taught what’s acceptable.
What’s ugly and what has no place to exist in the refined.
In the new found now of our antepasados
See I learned to be ashamed the way my parents did,
Held onto it the same way my grandmothers did,
My fists clutching onto it as if it were a rosario.
And I held on to it all the way to my grand exit.
Shame made me foolishly desire to rid myself of the place I had called home,
Believed that I had to be well-read to understand.
Oh how foolish of me to not recognize the embrace of home.
The revolution that was served to me on a platter.
See, my sisters knew no shame.
They proudly held onto their latinidad as they defied the norms of the home.
Just like my tia, they were loud and refused to conform,
Fearlessly confronting the existencia del patrarquismo.
My neighbors spoke Spanish como se les daba la gana,
Porque somos Latines,
And we continue to resist the conquest of our people.
Our Spanish is not for the colonizador,
It was never meant for their tongue.
We’re creators.
So much stolen from us,
But we continue to adapt our resistance,
And create new cultures that transpire borders.
So no,
We don’t need you to correct us,
We said it correctly the first time.
My peers never hid their anger with the school board.
Their rage transpired through the sentence made up of curse words,
Because sometimes a “fuck you” is all you need.
They began conversations that had to happen.
Lead movements that could not exist without them.
They continue to teach us that we are excellence.
Que somos el orgullo,
And there’s no vergüenza in how we live.
Lastly, Evelyn taught me that shame was not mine.
Never was.
She taught me to be proud of my raices,
Y qué espacios adecuados no existen.
She taught me to disregard the perceptions of others,
Because my understanding of me was more important than anything else.
