Seeds bursting open in fire
#DefendBlackLives
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This month, I’ll donate all subscription funds to the Movement for Black Lives, which “seeks to reach millions, mobilize hundreds of thousands, and organize tens of thousands, so that Black political power is a force able to influence national and local agendas in the direction of our shared Vision for Black Lives.” They and local affiliated groups have been doing powerful organizing in recent weeks.
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Image description: A row of yellow tigers and black panthers line the top and bottom of the graphic, against a purple background. Text: Asians for Black Lives
How we got here is centuries of genocide, slavery, and oppression by white people. An entire society built on the unpaid labor of Black people, on land stolen from Indigenous people. The careful construction of an economic system designed to concentrate power and privilege in the hands of some white men. A system designed to take everything from the land, to extract cheap or free labor from people of color, and to pit everyone against each other, with Black folks always at the bottom.
Rage is righteous. Love is righteous. Survival is miraculous.
And here we are. Black folks are leading in righteous rage and love, and the rest of us must follow, support, and lift up. We must be as fearless and beautiful in our love and rage.
That means, in part, educating ourselves and our communities about the specific ways we have perpetuated and been complicit in anti-Black racism. In the past week, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the racist attacks against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that our belonging in American society is conditional, and has always been so—often at the expense of Black people.
I’ve also been thinking about what I learned in Nikole Hannah-Jones’s 1619 project essay about how the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended racist quota-based immigration, was made possible by the civil rights movement. Many Asian Americans can trace their roots in the U.S. directly back to that act. Many are here as a result of the labor, struggle, and sacrifice of Black folks.
Our communities are deeply connected. But we have been taught in so many ways not to see or acknowledge those connections.
This is a moment when we must lift up the ways Asian Americans and Black folks have supported each other and struggled together. And this is a moment to acknowledge how Asian Americans have pushed down Black people and even killed Black folks. This is a moment to step up and defend Black lives. It is a moment to understand in a visceral way how none of us will be free until all of us are free.
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Once a week I join an online meditation sangha in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. The small squares of the screen are filled with people, mostly women and nonbinary people, who are Black, Asian and Asian American, Indigenous, Latinx, mixed race. We introduce ourselves with our names, our pronouns, whose lands we are sitting on.
When we do this, many people say “she/her” and “they/them,” and many also include “we.” This makes me happy. To be part of a we. It makes me feel less anxious, more grounded. I think about what it means to be a we. How this we is so full of diverse spirits and bodies and hearts, and still, we can be a we and find some moments of silence and peace together.
We can be a complicated pronoun. It can erase difference, foreground the dominant experience, silence voices that need to be heard. It can also be inclusive, welcoming, and acknowledging interconnectedness. It moves toward wholeness but can easily fracture. It requires discernment and care.
I have always been drawn to we in my poetry and my writing. I find myself looking to reach out beyond the boundaries of my body, my ego, my self, and to write into the collective experience. Never have I been so conscious of that than in these past few weeks, as I’ve been meditating on the we, the collective, and my place within it. I’ve been asking who is my we and how can I authentically write into this space?
What follows is a piece I’ve been working on: an attempt to write into a we in this moment that is liberatory and disruptive. I share it with you, raw as it is, imperfect as it is.
~~~
We are shining in the streets and in our homes, our bodies on fire in grief and rage.
We are seeds bursting open in fire.
We are soaked through to the bone in grief, breathing in grief with every gulp of air.
We are soaked through to the bone in rage, breathing in rage with every gulp of air.
We move toward each other, hands out and some distance away. We search for ways to collapse the distance. We collapse the distance, some of us.
Some of us are fighting to remember the ancestral knowledge we carry in our bodies, all of us. The knowledge of how deeply we are connected to every creature around us, all of us.
Some of us don’t need to learn this anew, some of us have learned this from our grandmothers and ancestors who held onto this wisdom when white people tried to rip it out of them and still they kept this knowledge like breathing. Some of us breathe this connection in every breath and with every step.
We are returning to the ocean and the forests, our bodies like waves, our bodies like seedlings. We are becoming like mushrooms connected underground, like birds murmurating, all of us.
Because we are breathing, all of us.
We are breathing and our blood is running through our body, all of us.
Our breath travels out of our body and the air travels into someone else’s body. We don’t have much control over this process. We are all breathing and sharing our breath. We have become so aware of this recently.
And maybe this is the beginning of something. Maybe this is the beginning of learning how to love beyond the boundaries of our own selves. Maybe this is the beginning of learning how to love beyond the boundaries of our own communities.
Some of us know this already and are waiting for the rest of us to catch up. Some of us are eager to learn how to love this way. Some of us are terrified to love this way, how vulnerable it is, and so are violently resisting it. Some of us feel exhausted just thinking about it. Some of us are not thinking about it at all.
We are all of us doing all of this. We are all of us breathing, shining in the streets and in our homes, breathing and shining.
Prompting
Sit still, and take four deep, conscious breaths.
Trace the journey of the air into your body and out of it.
Imagine your breath weaving into the breath of all the creatures around you, becoming a net that holds you and others around you.
Write a poem, story, essay, or song that makes that net visible, tangible, and material.
Engaging
What else I’m reading/listening to/thinking about:
#Asians4BlackLives in 2020, by Leena Yin. This essay powerfully describes the necessity of Asian American solidarity with Black folks. And it includes a good list of resources for further reading and action.
Black Lives Matter. APAs Must Stand in Solidarity. Lantern Review. A statement and excellent resource list from the Asian American poetry magazine.
Adapting Strategy & Building Power in Crisis, Irresistible. This conversation between organizers and strategists Ejeris Dixon and Dove Kent about how to stop fascism in the U.S. While it aired in early May, it’s even more timely now as Trump calls protesters “domestic terrorists” and threatens to use this moment to bring in military power.
Helpers in the Time of Coronavirus, Asian Americana. Following Mr. Rogers’ advice to “look for the helpers,” this podcast episode covers a wide range of Asian American organizations and people stepping up in beautiful ways to help and to organize during the pandemic. A much-needed listen for me this month.
Community/announcements
Today culminates a week of action to defend Black lives, organized by the Movement for Black Lives. Join a national call tomorrow, hosted by the Movement For Black Lives and The Rising Majority: Making Meaning Of This Moment; Forging An Abolitionist Strategy For Defending Black Communities.
There are many places to donate here.
APA folks: Take action with 18 Million Rising—pledge to not call the police.
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