Come meet me and 16 other contributors to @magdaragat_anthology next Wednesday at Ben McNally Books, 6pm! You can register at the link in my bio- and get your books signed!
I’ve always preferred communicating in text- so this reading feels both very vulnerable and very empowering to me. I have a lot of mixed feelings around sharing this!
Video description: A video of Kaia Arrow reciting an excerpt from her piece in Magdaragat in a dark room, reflected in a round mirror. Kaia is a Filipina with long dark hair, a dark top, and a pink & gold malong worn as a skirt. She has silver finger braces that flash in the light.
Text:
I am privileged
That my survival
Depends on Asking Questions
Instead of Swallowing them down.
This is our intergenerational wealth.
Passed down by parents who survived on a steady diet of silence.
My body is an act of defiance
That I’m an un/willing accomplice to
Sometimes I revel in how uncomfortable it makes other people.
Sometimes I have to, to keep going.
They “play along” with our personhood until it’s too much work, too tiring, too challenging. They “tolerate” and “allow,” these so-called allies of anti-racism and anti-colonialism. They tell me (token Brown woman, token crip, token queer) about their token learnings, as if they’re gifts I should be grateful to receive. As if unlearning white normativity, capitalism, and colonization isn’t work to free us all.
I dream of celebrating in tandem with our ancestors once again, to sing their songs and write new ones.
The Willows Work 