My skin, in itself, means nothing. I stress the point because I know there are people who would label me "disadvantaged" because of my color. They make the same mistake I made as a boy, when I thought a disadvantaged life was circumscribed by particular occupations.
If I am interpreting this the right way, the author is proud of their skin? I like this. They don’t see it as a disadvantage in life.
Behind a mask of humility, I seethed with mute rebellion.
Beautiful display of anger.
Because of the color of my skin they betrayed me. The dark-skinned woman has been silenced, gagged, caged, bound into servitude with marriage, bludgeoned for 300 years, sterilized and castrated in the twentieth century.
This is heavy and so true. I watched a documentary about dark skinned women that live in Mexico and the way they are treated is beyond me.
But I will not glorify those aspects of my culture which have injured me and which have injured me in the name of protecting me.
Admitting flaws in your culture, those that hindered and grew you, is bold.
“half and half” I’m perplexed. It’s similar to calling someone biracial a halfbreed. Always loathed that.
Women are at the bottom of the ladder one rung above the deviants.
Another hit to the gut. The way we are perceived. I’m glad I’m part of a generation that is changing the narrative.
In my culture, selfi shness is condemned, especially in women; humility and selflessness, the absence of selfishness, is considered a virtue.
Yes, you must bow down in order to be seen, but when you speak up you’re in the wrong. It’s an unbalanced scale of life.
Which was it to be—strong, or submissive, rebellious or conforming?
This resonates with me. Growing up in minority households, our mothers were raised by mothers that come from the old school. Their mothers came from an era where they had to be strong and tolerate a lot; so they raised their daughters the same way, and then our mothers coming along with the same generational curse. There was always lessons on being strong, but submissive in areas or conforming in some. There was never an in between.
I know in mexican culture leaving home is difficult. I have a friends who still live with family, but what this piece shows is that leaving home isn’t just leaving the people you grew up with, it’s leaving the land you’ve walked on for years. The author shows this in the next line with, “But I didn’t leave all the parts of; I kept the ground of my own being. On it I walked taking with the land of the Vaelly, Texas
Y como mi raza que cada en cuando deja caer esa esclavitud de obedecer, de callarse y aceptar, en mi está la rebeldía encimita de mi carne.
I particular admired to power behind this part of the poem, the end where I believe narrator writes: “there is a rebellion on top of my flesh.”
Esos movimientos
I guess this a curse of growing up in a black and Dominican household; speaking the language but not being able to read it. Either way, challenge accepted.