Este Cuerpo es Mio: No se Toca. No Se Viola. No Se Mata!
Consent. Learn about it.
Humanity. Teach about it.
Self determination. Be about it.
Had my first rehearsal for this show yesterday and felt the spark, you know that one you feel when you know it’s going to be something good.
Third Root presents an afternoon of solo theater performance in collaboration with Joyce Gordon Gallery’s Women’s History month installation, “For Colored Girls Only” in Oakland!
Saturday, March 27th, 3-6pm
3-4pm view the amazing art
4-6pm solo performances
Solo Performance Artists:
Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner
Maya Chinchilla
Lisa Marie Rollins
Coke Tani Nakamoto
(and more!)
$5-10 sliding scale donation
as a part of:
“For Colored Girls Only”
A Celebration of all Women
and a tribute to WOMENS History MONTH
at Joyce Gordon Gallery
406 14th St
Oakland, CA
Full Exhibition is February 12 – March 28, 2010
For Colored Girls only
A celebration of women from all color, size, age, gender, local and international as a form of politics/non-politics & as a body of thought. Erasing the indistinct lines of class, gender and geography, and celebrating even the contradicting facets of womanhood.
Group Exhibition Featuring : Addiam Tsehaye, Angela Angel & Robin David, Angela Silva, Ashley Eberlien, Atiba Sylvia Thomas, Barbara Aliza, Bethanie Hines, Clarisse Fulgado, Constance Terrel, Dimeng X. Brehmer, Elizabeth Carter, Hiroko To, Jeannie Dragon, Kameelah J. Rasheed, Katie Richardson, Kim Mason, Latisha Baker,Letitia Ntofon, Lisa Jean DeSoto, Maash Pascal, Maggie Yee, Marguerite Browne, Marilyn Lacy, Melissa Kreisa & Marilyn Lacey, Michele de Mendaire, Mildred Thompson, Favianna Rodriguez, Mina Marquette, Nicole Hsiang, Orlonda Uffre, Paula Craig Steel, Rosalyn Parhams, Rozita S. Folgeman, Sally Moore, Saska Smith, Shirlee Perlow, Susan Mathews, Talita Suassuna Brandao, Tomeekha Pitre, Jessica Seran,Viva H.VanAssen, Zahava Sherrez
I wish I could sign up for punctual intellectual/em-BODY-ied know-ledge pep talks/instant messages/texts/email blasts/ like signing up for daily horoscopes.
I’d also like to slash and dash through the (parenthetical) identity spaces of hyphenated name calling and come up with daily trans-national decolonial anti-oppression dance moves that reinvigorate our daily missions.
I wish we could engage at each others levels until everyone felt heardbut barely said a word and you wouldn’t interrupt my stutter because you think you know better.
I wish revolutionary self-care were a required subject in high school.
I wish I got more hugs in a day and that respectful eye contact from above/ below/in-between were a given.
I wish I could space-time travel to the exact locations where I am wanted, needed, effective and just to bear witness.
I wish I could remember that love is what I was born to do.
I wish loneliness would quit arguing with intimacy about silence and make amends with time.
I wish the burden of discipline came out in syncopated song harmonies even when the clouds hide the sun.
I wish polite anger and so-called irrational outbursts could double date with guilty repressed self hate and recognized- privileged-solidarity.
I wish I could eat your tears with rainbow kisses and quench my thirst for 8 daily glasses of balance, self-determination and growth.
I wish I could archive our knowledge of pain, self-destruction and manifest destiny, to only revisit when I needed a reminder of how far we’ve come.
I wish everyone got credit for the work they’ve done and extra credit for fleeting thoughts, mediation meditation and verbs that bridge the chasms.
I wish I had a big glitter filled pen to write in the names where the documents left you out over and over until everyone had their say, exhausting the possibilities, only taking a union break for healthy snacks and structured consensual affection.
I wish we weren’t in competition with crumbs and that we could form a new Voltron-being anytime we needed to call on each others powers. I wish hibernation didn’t draw attention to your absence.
I wish I could give degrees in harmony, spirit and collective progress and that you/I understood my/our herstory like I know yours/theirs.
I wish I didn’t loose my breath when I/you need to speak my/your truth. I wish the powerful had to play rainy day games to remind them that they are small.
I wish lovemaking gave birth to the earth’s breath evenly distributing health, sustenance and star shine to those who are hungry in the love vacuum.
I wish intellect didn’t make emotions feel less than. I wish release valves were built by prisoners insight into hierarchy towers of pressed chests gasping oppression.
I wish we were required to renew ceremony every time like car registrations, library books or TV seasons.
I wish every status knew each speck has its place, that updates were more than a wish that created shelter from the norm’s storm.
I wish I could draw mathematical equations out of recycled materials that gave us all we need.
I wish inspiration never ran out of battery.
I wish I could say, dance, sing, be all the words/visions/theories/encyclopedias/flesh I/You need to hear, see, touch, be.
I was born a bridge
A teeny tiny sickly little bridge
a plank really
didn’t really seem like I would make it from one place to another
Looked more like a brief line in the sand
Told I could be ANYTHING much more than my scaffolding
could challenge structures. bridge ideas. up hold a standard
Sturdy resilient women were counting on me.
It’s just what we do. What is necessary. What we should.
But you always worried about me
I didn’t cry didn’t complain so quiet you could almost forget about me
fell asleep after one chi chi
Took me so long just to speak my first word.
I was a baby who traveled so neatly under your huipil several weeks after I was born
with you, speaking on behalf of women from this continent
words careful studied not too proud but necessarily round
from the intellect. Research from the ground
equally competent women traveling internationally conferring to build strategy and solidarity
serious business representing a hundred different countries
soften when they see this tiny milk drunk baby
so calm among the urgent business of organization,
intellect and influencing the powers that be to save humans from these policies
for
babies
like
me
I am passed around
so peaceful
comfortable in each woman’s arms
women smelling of earth and dignity.
but along the way I would pick up all these anxieties that I was not enough
I would escape into the silences in between
It would take a long time before I learned I could use my bridge building skills to just connect all the parts of me
Freeing up so much time worrying that I was meant to fall.
Would you know about the weight I would carry when I learned I was joining territories?
My fight with responsibility, duty and authority
That my body’s desires, my intuitive impulses would betray me,
My serious need to laugh at rules, rub up against destiny and play close to the edge
before I would
give in, forgive, let go, have faith,
Let someone in… just a little bit.
Love much more than family identity and community.
Let
you…
Let Me…
Love
me.
News Flash: Humble Poet’s Birthday Wish for Peace, Decolonization and Glitter Granted!
Phew! Sitting on my balcony teary at the multihued ocean of people flowing through my street, taking in all the sights and sounds of the annual international parade in my honor. I love how loud and glittery it is.
Much props to the talented sound engineers to creating the perfect sound scape. And to the lighting engineers thanks for the box of sunshine. You know how sound and ambiance is so important to me! Also the brilliant event organizers have managed to keep the performance flow going without any lag time, everyone seems entertained and joyful which helps keep my crowd anxiety at an all time low.
All the children enacting their visions of a queer and decolonized, borderless utopia makes my heart sing! I love how they are so patient with this ugly process of decolonization. It’s unending but so necessary.
It really gets me all *feelings* how this country honors its poets and artists when all we want to do is speak our truth ( it ain’t always pretty) engage in the ritual, reflect visions and give gifts of moments lost and histories reclaimed flipped and rewritten exposing the wound to inspire transformation. That is all. I know. We make this look easy.
Thank you for this honor. Giving thanks to my mother and father and the ancestors for giving me life on this day many moons ago and to my chosen family/community that makes it all worth living.
I am your humble servant! (Just don’t boss me around or you will not see the god in me…) and remember today all sins are forgiven and/or encouraged.
P.S. Really after all these honors no need to give me anything more than your presence love and affection, but if you feel you *must* I love poems, short stories, flash fiction, memories, mixed tapes, serenatas, song dedications, hugs and kisses, consent, glitter, rainbows, spread sheets, a color coordinated closet, love and support, artwork, demonstrations of your favorite dance moves and yummy dishes in my honor.
Post Data: I am so very humbled by all this attention. Please don’t stop though because of my shyness. And remember when you bat your eyelashes at me, pay the price of admission and laugh at my jokes borders come tumbling down, everyone has a place to live with dignity and a queen gets her wings.
Listen/view/read some alternative media or a book even, or write something new in my/your honor. Get up get out and do something, cause you and I need to do for you and I… And if you need to doubt something, doubt your limits.
Invocation: bendita sea entre todas las mujeres (que rico) amen & ahhhwomen & can I get an uuuuuuuuu ooooh genderfierce borderland dwellers *prince scream* amor inshalahinlakech tantish ashé shanté okaaaaaaaay. (throws glitter, drops the mic and stomps away)
Graduate school is about proving yourself to a series of people who put obstacles in your way. Its is not about nuturing talent, it is not about caring about your struggles, it is not about growing as a person, it is not about subverting the dominant paradigm. They give the degree to the one who doesn’t give up after being torn down and finds a way to survive this system.
Adelina is my most favorite performer of all time. Smart, sexy, politically conscious and a master improviser. I love performers who are so present in each performance no matter how crafted and polished manage to make you feel that every word was crafted just for your time and place. She makes it all look easy. She’ll have you eating out of the palm of her hand by the end. Like really, she might invite you up on stage to eat a tamale out of her hand. Depends what kind of show she wants it to be. Because, of course, she is in charge. And then there’s la famosa pero elusive Cherrie. She seems real low key from the times I have seen her read and the few times I have met her. Maybe she just prefers to write and create than put herself out there, you know, not a lot of flash… but then again she doesn’t need it. She is the editor and author of seminal Chicana works such as This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color and Loving in the War Years: Lo Que Nunca Pasó Por Sus Labios as well as many plays, poems and essays. I hear she is an amazing mentor and teacher too. She doesn’t let you get away with any writerly bullshit and really cares about helping other people of color succeed. I hope to one day take a class from her or even better yet work with her.
So go this Saturday.
You will not regret it.
LA RED XICANA INDÍGENA presents… A Night of Queer Women of Color Performance* featuring Cherríe Moraga & Adelina Anthony
ONE NIGHT ONLY! SATURDAY, JANUARY 30 @7:30PM Multicultural Community Center, Martin Luther King Student Union, UC-Berkeley (corner of Bancroft & Telegraph) Suggested donation: $10 – $25 or more.
ADELINA ANTHONY, performing “Zen Ranchera” and excerpts from “La Chismosa” (directed by D’Lo)
CHERRÍE MORAGA, reading from new works, including an excerpt from her play, “Who Killed Yolanda Salívar”
PLUS MUSIC by LAS BOMBERAS DE LA BAHIA * SOLIROSE
*Some material may not be suitable for children under 16.
La Red Xicana Indígena, which originated in 1997, is a network of Xicanas Indígenas who are actively involved in political, educational and cultural work that serves to raise indigenous consciousness among our own communities and supports the social justice struggles of people of indigenous origins of this continent North and South, especially the human and civil rights campaign of undocumented migrant peoples and their children in the U.S.
If you cannot attend but would like to make a tax deductible donation, please write checks to: “Citliliztli” for “La Red” c/o J. Luna. 22167 Montgomery St. Hayward, CA 94541. If you have “In Kind” donations for this event or for La Red Xicana Indígena, please contact Elisa Huerta at UC Berkeley Multicultural Center 510-642-6528 or elisahuerta@berkeley.edu. See flyer for details.
This may be the first christmas I am spending in the Bay area that I can ever remember. I am still debating on when and how I can go visit home either christmas day or after. Since I am spending this time here I am in search of some good Guatemalan tamales, mostly tamales rojos de puerco y pollo and a few sweet tamales negros. So far I have found that the Guatemalan restaurant San Miguel in San Francisco sells them but they wouldn’t be ready until the 24th which is cutting it a little close and I would be coming from the East Bay to pick them up. I need to make a decision and put an order in soon.
Papa tells me
not to cry
tears are of no use to the
the generation of friends
that are gone for ever
no family
to stand
no bills
to avoid
no houses
to build
no systems
to regard
no open toes afraid of the cold
no pools of release
what use are the hot drops except to mark the ache in a clear ink no one will read except your weary flesh dried and cracked
drenched in someone else’s sweat
holding on
an
addiction to the past
no one sees
fascination with blank faces
eyes refracting heart walls
to protect
the parchment of historical ‘supposed to’
craving an individual category of soil to rest
that doesn’t exist.
