Brown Girl Manifesto: #allpinayeverything

Because so much depends upon the suppression of us, the erasure of us, the omission of us; because we are not made to scald, to starve, to stuff in closets; because we have our own lyrics to drop; because we inherit our mothers' immodest tales;

Because our nests and nooks hold buttons, stones and string, pressed flowers, feathers; every rosebud, every bead, every tarnished charm, every scrap of paper nestled between rosaries, safety pins, and scapulars—there are always poems here;

Because so much depends upon the blaming of us, for birthing too many babies, for birthing none at all; because the unruled pages of this body refuse to be marked and ripped in two; because we bind our own perfect spines;

Because of the low hum soothing the lungs, thrum in the throat, buzz in the skull till the head is numb, the body is a chamber of echoing song; scars are stories, healed fractures are as well (this, of course, you've heard before), but not all scars are bodily;

Because we are razor-tongued (this, of course, you've heard before); because we've been told since the beginning of time to hold the tongue lest we lose it; because we still recoil at tendered words; because we remember the water's lullaby;

Because we are a nation of the wretched and the occupied; we reclaim our elders' taken tongues, cut, and burned; because our foremothers were taken, cut, and burned too; and so we offer words, verses to warm, a balm;

Because so much depends upon white nonsense and white fragility, orientalists, white microaggression, white supremacists with their shotguns and tiki torches; because telling us we don't fucking belong is an old and tired story;

Because our being, our breathing, our speaking were never guaranteed; because our father's bones rest in this land and we have grieved; no, I will never leave this place, and no, I will never leave him; because his roots, this land are also mine;

Because so much depends upon vacuous speech, and so sometimes it is best to refrain from all human voice; because when we sit with ourselves, there is just air, just light, and this is how we will learn to listen—