One of the most prolific professors that I've heard speak is Lani Guinier, a Harvard law professor and a hard-core education activist. She wrote a book analogizing minorities to a miner's canary - the small yellow bird that is sent into the mine cave or shaft to gauge poisonous gas and instability before the miner's risk their lives. The canary is a barometer.
I got to hear her speak as part of the 50th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education in Lawrence, KS, and wrote this after hearing her speak.
***Everyone who is interested in education/exploratory learning, in creating schools, encouraging global dialogue, or in creating policies informed by race/class or should check out her great website: http://www.racetalks.org/indexfla.html
*********
Miner’s Canary
Canaries
blowing by
swirling lines exciting
terror wronged
swinging out of hollow rock
soft yellow underbellies
beaking toxic knowledge
triumverate
terror has held us for a history
and back beyond the
sad silent store of infinity
lost muscle breaks loose
singing the death of nostalgia
who among us
born in future centureies
will believe this
so very far
far so very rude
pulling my mind a steel drum
these are words nothing more
miners directing an orchestra of mud
the wings lapping wind against body
censured land bare
the brightness
the hardness
frayed in human mind
strength and indifference
we shall say
we heard the canary sing its plain song
and we lined white teeth
with long held dreams
Sunday, March 4, 2007
on women in the world
My friend requested that I post this excerpt from a letter I wrote to her. Since it relates to women and their increasingly recognized role in globalization, I agreed to do so.
I think another woman put this much more succintly and more beautifully than I could- a Palestinian spoken-word artist named Suheir Hammad: http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=LFbE8RBhSDw
*****
Malcolm X was amazing. But he spoke and used and embraced a male aggression. He also spoke to that kind of aggression we as minorities adhere to, that double edged feeling towards any kind of restraint, limit, violence, and invasion. Women could hear him and believe that our day was coming to. We wanted our men to be empowered. What I like about King is that he kind of spoke to a different man, in a way, because of the peace-loving aspect of his philosophy in the first part of his life. Afterward, when he started being an uppity black, I’m not sure what type of aggression he was tapping into, or if he really did have an alternative model. I would like to find out.
Either way, the women behind did not always identify with aggression. Where are their stories, we are not living those stories right now, except as they are in the background. It’s time for the mythical male aggression to die, its time is over. It’s a dead religion.
The woman’s voice has never been so powerful in that it took a step back from the traditional male concept of power in war, conquest, domination, even manipulation, which ironically males pin on females all the time. But manipulation is only a mirror of what we had in our faces, our families, at our dinner tables, the whole time, a game wherein males were trapped like animals, embracing their animalhood, while we participated, feeling that our own humanity trapped us, the system using our humanity to trap us, our own men holding us down for it, resenting at times that our humanity should gain a voice or place in this world, in its raw and strong form. I know there were more women who imagined an entirely different game, a revolutoin poured from our minds and spirits.
The woman’s voice has never been so powerful as today, when we are in tune to each other all the time, growing as a stronger coalition, free to decide what model to choose, or to build our own, for we, like devleoping countries, like young men and women everywher,e like people of color, have the lessons of corruption to lean on. We have soul knowledge of fingers down our throats, of animals trapped in cages, of addiction and greed and hopelessness, of victimization upon victimization, of internalized hate, of self-hate and what it has done to our men, to our friends, to our leaders, to our mothers who have frantically tried to hold onto their sons, their husbands, and have been crippled by the tools handed to them. Who have been told that our place is our place, and we can never go too far, because the only reality in this world is animalhood. Our only hope for success is to marry the aggressor, or become him. Our only choices the ones handed to us, the only boxes to check those determined by another.
I grew up knowing there was something different, something newer, stronger, more aware. I grew up knowing a tangible difference between humanity and aggression, a difference in feeling whole when both are present in a rightful balance, in a temperance that brings all of human instinct and creative power to the world. I was raised up on this.
Then I lived to know these things shoved down my throat, I lived through the digestion and now I’m trying to get it out of me. I do not know how to absorb it and turn it into something new. I do not know beyond the choice I possess- to find a balance.
Now, for me is not a time of battle and aggression.
I am tired of seeing my brothers starving on their feet, driving themselves and me to a bitter end.
I think another woman put this much more succintly and more beautifully than I could- a Palestinian spoken-word artist named Suheir Hammad: http://www.youtube.com/wat
ch?v=LFbE8RBhSDw
*****
Malcolm X was amazing. But he spoke and used and embraced a male aggression. He also spoke to that kind of aggression we as minorities adhere to, that double edged feeling towards any kind of restraint, limit, violence, and invasion. Women could hear him and believe that our day was coming to. We wanted our men to be empowered. What I like about King is that he kind of spoke to a different man, in a way, because of the peace-loving aspect of his philosophy in the first part of his life. Afterward, when he started being an uppity black, I’m not sure what type of aggression he was tapping into, or if he really did have an alternative model. I would like to find out.
Either way, the women behind did not always identify with aggression. Where are their stories, we are not living those stories right now, except as they are in the background. It’s time for the mythical male aggression to die, its time is over. It’s a dead religion.
The woman’s voice has never been so powerful in that it took a step back from the traditional male concept of power in war, conquest, domination, even manipulation, which ironically males pin on females all the time. But manipulation is only a mirror of what we had in our faces, our families, at our dinner tables, the whole time, a game wherein males were trapped like animals, embracing their animalhood, while we participated, feeling that our own humanity trapped us, the system using our humanity to trap us, our own men holding us down for it, resenting at times that our humanity should gain a voice or place in this world, in its raw and strong form. I know there were more women who imagined an entirely different game, a revolutoin poured from our minds and spirits.
The woman’s voice has never been so powerful as today, when we are in tune to each other all the time, growing as a stronger coalition, free to decide what model to choose, or to build our own, for we, like devleoping countries, like young men and women everywher,e like people of color, have the lessons of corruption to lean on. We have soul knowledge of fingers down our throats, of animals trapped in cages, of addiction and greed and hopelessness, of victimization upon victimization, of internalized hate, of self-hate and what it has done to our men, to our friends, to our leaders, to our mothers who have frantically tried to hold onto their sons, their husbands, and have been crippled by the tools handed to them. Who have been told that our place is our place, and we can never go too far, because the only reality in this world is animalhood. Our only hope for success is to marry the aggressor, or become him. Our only choices the ones handed to us, the only boxes to check those determined by another.
I grew up knowing there was something different, something newer, stronger, more aware. I grew up knowing a tangible difference between humanity and aggression, a difference in feeling whole when both are present in a rightful balance, in a temperance that brings all of human instinct and creative power to the world. I was raised up on this.
Then I lived to know these things shoved down my throat, I lived through the digestion and now I’m trying to get it out of me. I do not know how to absorb it and turn it into something new. I do not know beyond the choice I possess- to find a balance.
Now, for me is not a time of battle and aggression.
I am tired of seeing my brothers starving on their feet, driving themselves and me to a bitter end.
Global Patterns
A lot of my poetry is focused on globalization, mainly issues of race and class that are personal to me.
Last semseter in a Public International Law Class one of my favorite teachers taught a session on colonization. He held a black overhead pen at one end of the projector and began to trace freehand an entire outline of the world, starting from Japan. He named the countries as he wove through, mentioning relevant pieces of history and calling for responses on our knowledge of the countries' independence. He dotted in islands as he spoke and asked me about Pakistan.
Then he took a different color and began to mark where regions were colonized, beginning with the Africa, then working his way over to the Caribbean and South America. He facilitated a student-led history of where groups of slaves were brought over and filled in the holes of conquest and dominion with stories of fierce independence. When he was done my senses were overwhelmed with the map of the world, and I wrote this poem:
*******************
I sat in the classroom
The screen sprayed out before me
The 10 feet long and 5 feet high
The size of the world
The map of the world
My teacher named the countires
As he drew his way around
Alaska north America
He started form the left
Down to south central
Latin he swept over western
Europe inside finland
Carving down through Africa
Across the bottom belt of asia
Or south and southeast and subcontinent
Around the wide breast of Europe
Then the islands and Australia
Then he began to color in
The colonization of the world
Sweeping with different colors
And broad strokes
He swished back and forth across
North America
1492 uncle c-sailed the ocean blue
Down south America
Each color each line building
More of the world
Across and up
Naming colonizers
Spain Portugal, the dutch
Through south asia ticking off
Their history, red now bleeding over blue
Black strokes drawing
Bounds
Africa, eastern Europe, Australia
Subcontinent china japan
The british
In the end the screen stood
Sprayed out before me
My throat closing fast
The tears surging
My heart flowing
Is this my history?
Is this the history of the world?
Is this your history?
Who take ownership for this history
Then he asked the question
Who was most recently decolonized
The answer was pouring
From my blood –
None
Who is recently colonized
Someone said – Iraq 2003
The new colonies
The new states
The old people
The new scars
Last semseter in a Public International Law Class one of my favorite teachers taught a session on colonization. He held a black overhead pen at one end of the projector and began to trace freehand an entire outline of the world, starting from Japan. He named the countries as he wove through, mentioning relevant pieces of history and calling for responses on our knowledge of the countries' independence. He dotted in islands as he spoke and asked me about Pakistan.
Then he took a different color and began to mark where regions were colonized, beginning with the Africa, then working his way over to the Caribbean and South America. He facilitated a student-led history of where groups of slaves were brought over and filled in the holes of conquest and dominion with stories of fierce independence. When he was done my senses were overwhelmed with the map of the world, and I wrote this poem:
*******************
I sat in the classroom
The screen sprayed out before me
The 10 feet long and 5 feet high
The size of the world
The map of the world
My teacher named the countires
As he drew his way around
Alaska north America
He started form the left
Down to south central
Latin he swept over western
Europe inside finland
Carving down through Africa
Across the bottom belt of asia
Or south and southeast and subcontinent
Around the wide breast of Europe
Then the islands and Australia
Then he began to color in
The colonization of the world
Sweeping with different colors
And broad strokes
He swished back and forth across
North America
1492 uncle c-sailed the ocean blue
Down south America
Each color each line building
More of the world
Across and up
Naming colonizers
Spain Portugal, the dutch
Through south asia ticking off
Their history, red now bleeding over blue
Black strokes drawing
Bounds
Africa, eastern Europe, Australia
Subcontinent china japan
The british
In the end the screen stood
Sprayed out before me
My throat closing fast
The tears surging
My heart flowing
Is this my history?
Is this the history of the world?
Is this your history?
Who take ownership for this history
Then he asked the question
Who was most recently decolonized
The answer was pouring
From my blood –
None
Who is recently colonized
Someone said – Iraq 2003
The new colonies
The new states
The old people
The new scars
I love New York City
Everyone who lives here has stirring moments where they realize their place in the city. I wrote this to my friends February 1 on one of those days.
Today was one of those days where I fell in love with the city all over again. This place is why I wanted to study here - it is a model of the world where you go to find the richest and poorest living on the same block. Stepping out onto the 34th street hub where I'm literally moving faster than my feet can keep up with me, I hear the crowd before I see it, braced against the wall and slamming on breakbeats, the NYC float committee showcasing breakdancing to yelling and clapping, and kids making streetnoises of joy. The arrested motion lights up the crowd as it does when those crowds come together, snapping photos, throwing money, enjoying themselves with each other. Back to the trains where people are talking about the neighborhood I live in, in Queens County, of which a cross section taken reveals one of the most diverse places in the world. Where the Italians yell at the Jews who make the meanest pastrami for their Macedonian landlords whose children walk home with ill-tempered Jamaican crossing guards in front of the gay Latino club who donates their internet to us. And when I cross the street I hear them yell the world's language.
The energy binds the people like the snow gently covering all the flat rooftops that mirror the birds arcing in wide array over the 7 train, whose schedule has become a part of my life (and my dreams). Then to the class where I sit in front of the airy Senior UN Fellow who teaches my class and tells us that women are slaves to fashion, so that when we choose to follow fashion we are simply acknowledging that we are monkeys; in the same vein he tells us that the only way to exercise human rights is to raise hell. I come home at 10 pm on the trains feeling like I have brushed against the live wires that blink like lightning on the train tracks and find the city is kind to sleepless people. On the block of my apartment I can smell the best gyros (really, he was voted best vendor in the city), made by a Pakistani man who proudly displays his picture next to a trophy that is NASCAR-worthy in its absurd size.
My friend Imran says the thing that distinguishes this city from all others is hustle. Everyone here is looking for that better thing, or improving their hustle. I have noticed that even my boss's driver has something I have seen in natives here - fierce and steady pride in their work, so that almost anyone on the street is happy like the neighborhood kids or my teacher or the breakdancers to talk of their work with sincere interest, even the simplest of jobs. Maybe it is, as Imran says, because they are screaming to be noticed, and the talking is how they won't go unnoticed, but the pride is why people feel like this city is communal, more than Chicago or DC or Houston. Their pride, like the music played daily in the subways, or the smell of frying food cutting across awnings, or the earnest students walking their ideas down the street, is undeniably human.
So thanks for those of you who helped me get here, and are celebrating it with me.
peace,
Ambereen
Today was one of those days where I fell in love with the city all over again. This place is why I wanted to study here - it is a model of the world where you go to find the richest and poorest living on the same block. Stepping out onto the 34th street hub where I'm literally moving faster than my feet can keep up with me, I hear the crowd before I see it, braced against the wall and slamming on breakbeats, the NYC float committee showcasing breakdancing to yelling and clapping, and kids making streetnoises of joy. The arrested motion lights up the crowd as it does when those crowds come together, snapping photos, throwing money, enjoying themselves with each other. Back to the trains where people are talking about the neighborhood I live in, in Queens County, of which a cross section taken reveals one of the most diverse places in the world. Where the Italians yell at the Jews who make the meanest pastrami for their Macedonian landlords whose children walk home with ill-tempered Jamaican crossing guards in front of the gay Latino club who donates their internet to us. And when I cross the street I hear them yell the world's language.
The energy binds the people like the snow gently covering all the flat rooftops that mirror the birds arcing in wide array over the 7 train, whose schedule has become a part of my life (and my dreams). Then to the class where I sit in front of the airy Senior UN Fellow who teaches my class and tells us that women are slaves to fashion, so that when we choose to follow fashion we are simply acknowledging that we are monkeys; in the same vein he tells us that the only way to exercise human rights is to raise hell. I come home at 10 pm on the trains feeling like I have brushed against the live wires that blink like lightning on the train tracks and find the city is kind to sleepless people. On the block of my apartment I can smell the best gyros (really, he was voted best vendor in the city), made by a Pakistani man who proudly displays his picture next to a trophy that is NASCAR-worthy in its absurd size.
My friend Imran says the thing that distinguishes this city from all others is hustle. Everyone here is looking for that better thing, or improving their hustle. I have noticed that even my boss's driver has something I have seen in natives here - fierce and steady pride in their work, so that almost anyone on the street is happy like the neighborhood kids or my teacher or the breakdancers to talk of their work with sincere interest, even the simplest of jobs. Maybe it is, as Imran says, because they are screaming to be noticed, and the talking is how they won't go unnoticed, but the pride is why people feel like this city is communal, more than Chicago or DC or Houston. Their pride, like the music played daily in the subways, or the smell of frying food cutting across awnings, or the earnest students walking their ideas down the street, is undeniably human.
So thanks for those of you who helped me get here, and are celebrating it with me.
peace,
Ambereen
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Give them hell
So this is a comment that Kamal makes often in class. I think it's funny and insightful because it is atypical of many professors.
Many just encourage us to think, write and read about the issue, even the brilliant professors who facilitate great lectures on race, class, international power and politics, etc. So, when you get to the ''so what'' part of the lecture, the resulting ideas are ironically disconnected from reality or direct action. So it's good to feel charged. In many ways being so surrounded by privilege at NYU creates in me a sense of stark self-consciousness....as the daughter of immigrants my reality sifts through a distinct filter where privilege is a sacred thing to be earned. So to have someone charge you with a message and a light and an idea is worthwhile.
I also think it's so typical to be burned out in the field of international development, so finding other people who sustain your passion is vital. I'm priviliged to be a part of class where I would welcome a chance to work with those students. This means you, Marlon and Luciana! : ) And to everyone else.
Many just encourage us to think, write and read about the issue, even the brilliant professors who facilitate great lectures on race, class, international power and politics, etc. So, when you get to the ''so what'' part of the lecture, the resulting ideas are ironically disconnected from reality or direct action. So it's good to feel charged. In many ways being so surrounded by privilege at NYU creates in me a sense of stark self-consciousness....as the daughter of immigrants my reality sifts through a distinct filter where privilege is a sacred thing to be earned. So to have someone charge you with a message and a light and an idea is worthwhile.
I also think it's so typical to be burned out in the field of international development, so finding other people who sustain your passion is vital. I'm priviliged to be a part of class where I would welcome a chance to work with those students. This means you, Marlon and Luciana! : ) And to everyone else.
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