Hi friends,
Wow. I had not expected the momentous outpouring of love I've received from you in response to this project! It totally feels like I walked into a room of all my favorite people from all different areas of my life and received a million smiles and hugs all at one go. Thank you so much for the gift of loving encouragement. It makes me really aware of how fortunate I am to have such wonderful people to share my life with.
And it also makes me all the more able to enter the space of vulnerability needed for writing.
I'm going to get myself a cup of coffee and then launch in! ;)
Opposite my desk (I work in an MBA program, mind you!) I have a poster that I've had for many years that I still love and look at every day. It has a photograph of Audre Lorde, hands raised, gaze slightly up, and a smile on her lips. The quote says, "When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid."
I also remember the writing advice, perhaps from Natalie Goldberg: "Go for the jugular."
Plus, at this stage in life, time's a wasting!
(oh, hilarious. Ready to write now and I get a call from Germany, a call from Mallika's pediatrician, and a call from China all in a row! There are drawbacks to writing while at work.)
The political and physical dimensions of race and racism shifted to a very different level for me with Mallika's birth. She was born just two weeks after Obama's inauguration, which had been such an amazing and hopeful moment. On inauguration day, I remember going over to the Center for African and African-American Studies to watch the ceremonies on TV with a group of people. While there, I felt my place in history so distinctly -- so many things that had happened to me in my individual life and all the forces, decades and centuries old, that proceeded my sitting there with my enormous stomach, carrying my mixed-race child, and watching and listening while a mixed-race Black man became president.
However, the significance of Obama's election took on a different dimension when Mallika was born.
I was still in the hospital and recovering from the incrdulousness that after labor and delivery, there was still more to do -- what? a crying, hungry baby??!! where's my well-deserved nap??!! I hadn't slept more than maybe 15 minutes at a stretch in at least 24 hours, but when I was finally able to really SLEEP, I had a very powerful and disturbing dream.
In this dream, I was living and working with a group of people, a small group of people, of all different racial backgrounds, though most of us were young. We were living in a very bounded space -- somewhat like an office or an office with cubicles. It was very clear to all of us that this space and our lives within it were very, very vulnerable. We had to be constantly vigilant, watching for threats all the time, working in shifts to keep doing our work while also protecting our little community. In fact, as Mohan helpfully observed, it was very much like in the Matrix! We all knew we were fighting every moment of every day to keep ourselves and each other together. What was very striking, however, was that even though we knew that we would "lose" people to the outside forces, there was no sense that these losses would be betrayals. We all fully understood that the pressures we were facing were shared by all and that we were all doing everything in our power to keep ourselves and each other together.
So, we were used to being under siege and having to confront all kinds of threats all the time -- our foes were very strong, very smart, very strategic, and ever-present.
What happened in the dream is that I received a package addressed to me. It was a very large, padded manila envelope, addressed to me in somewhat hurried, all-caps handwriting. I knew that I had to open it and, when I did, I found, to my horror, that it contained a human leg. And not just any leg. It was the skin of Obama's leg, and it had been stuffed with ground-up Obama, like a sausage. They had killed him just to be able to send me this horrifying message: if I was going to celebrate the "mixing" of races, they were going to let me know how much power they had to destroy mixed race people, including the President of the United States. I held this leg and mourned for the space of a breath the disgusting violence enacted on this man who, after all he had lived, had become yet another victim of violence. I knew that "they" could see me, though, and they knew exactly how this piece of gory hate mail would effect me. I also understood that, though I wanted to scream and vomit, it was absolutely essential to take a deep breath, put the leg down, and carry on as if nothing had happened.
I awoke then, and cried out for Mohan who was sleeping on a couch in the hospital room with me. He came and held me while I sobbed uncontrollably and I tried to tell him about the dream and how disgusting, horrifying, and terrorizing it was. A nurse heard me and came to check that I was OK -- I must have sounded like a crazy lady. But perhaps new mothers go through similar emotional or psychological experiences post-partum more often than I'm aware.
I'm sure there are many interprettations of this dream, but what I felt very clearly has stayed with me ever since: that racial violence is ever-present and that, in giving birth to Mallika, I now occupy a different place in society, a place that requires a certain type and amount of vigilance to protect myself and the people I love.
Writing about this now, I reflect on the fact that, in my dream, silence and carrying on as if nothing had happened was the response I clearly felt was my only option. Sometimes this may be true, especially when oppression is at its greatest. But perhaps my waking reality offers the possibility of other responses.
Peace,
Briana
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