Asa white person I do not experience racism but that doesn’t mean I SHOULDN’T BE FUCKING OUTRAGED ABOUT RACISM.
WHYAREN’T YOU FUCKING OUTRAGED? THERE ARE DEAD BODIES ON THE STREET AND NO THAT DEAD BODY WILL NEVER BE YOUR CHILD, YOUR LOVER, YOUR COUSIN, YOUR FRIEND – IS THAT WHY YOU CARE SO LITTLE, BECAUSE THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU? BECAUSE YOU KNOW YOUR RAGE WON’T TAKE CENTER STAGE? AND FOR FUCKS SAKE DO NOT EXPECT IT TO TAKE CENTER STAGE. THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU. YOU DON’T DESERVE SYMPATHY FOR BEING MAD THAT BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER IN AMERIKKKA. YOU DON’T DESERVE SYMPATHY FOR BEING SICK OVER IT. YOU DON’T DESERVE SYMPATHY FOR BEING EMBARASSED TO BE WHITE. BE SICK ANYWAY. BE EMBARASSED. BE MAD.
I’ve had white feminists back-handedly critique me for expressing this outrage, implying that I think I am some sort of expert on race – to them I say FUCK YOU. NO SHIT I AM NOT AN EXPERT ON RACE. YOU ARE PROJECTING YOUR SHORT-GAME COMPETITION UPON ME AND UNLESS YOU HAVE A CRITICAL THOUGHT ABOUT SOMETHING I HAVE SAID, CHECK YOUR CAPITALIST HABITS AND INTERNALIZED MISOGYNY. I AM NOT HERE TO COMPETE WITH YOU. I DID NOT SPEAK UP TO COMPETE WITH YOU. IF I AM A THREAT TO YOU THAT IS ON YOU TO FIGURE OUT WHY. IF YOU HAVE A LEGITIMATE CRITICAL ARGUMENT ABOUT SOMETHING I’VE SAID, I WELCOME IT. OTHERWISE BACK THE FUCK OFF.
TO THE POETS AND ARTISTS WHO INSIST ON DEFENDING ART WITH A CAPITAL A IN THE SERVICE OF ART WITH A CAPITAL A: THE STATE OF ART & POETRY FUNCTION SYSTEMATICALLY IN WAYS THAT ARE NOT EXEMPT FROM WHITE SUPREMACY BUT AN EXTENSION OF IT.
PUT YOUR FUCKING PEN DOWN AND PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ELITIST ART ASS. LOOK AT THE DEAD BODIES ON THE STREET. FEEL THAT. SEE THAT.
You don’t have to write about the dead bodies (those bodies are NOT yours for the taking) but for fucks sake STOP DEFENDING WHITE SUPREMACY IN THE NAME OF ART.
BEING AN ARTIST IS NOT A PASS FOR NOT CHECKING YOUR PRIVILEGE. THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL EVEN IF YOU THINK IT’S NOT. IF YOU FEEL YOUR PERSONAL IS NOT POLITICAL IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE PRIVILEGED. WAKE UP.
As a white person I AM INHERENTLY RACIST. SO ARE YOU. AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU AND YOU. So don’t say you’re afraid to speak up because you might be called racist – LISTEN AND THINK BEOFRE YOU SPEAK. SPEAK ONLY WHEN IT IS YOUR TURN TO SPEAK, TO ECHO THE PAIN OF PEOPLE OF COLOR THAT YOU HAVE BEEN EMPHATICALLY LISTENING TO i.e. DO NOT SPEAK OVER THE VOICES OF PEOPLE OF COLOR, DO NOT COMPARE BLACK PAIN TO YOUR PAIN, DO NOT COMPARE RACISM TO SEXISM AS IF WOMEN OF COLOR DON’T EXPERIENCE BOTH, DO NOT SPEAK ABOUT BLACK SEXUALITY – LEAVE. BEYONCE. ALONE. I’M SURE THERE ARE VALID CRITIQUES TO BE MADE ABOUT BEYONCE – IT IS NOT YOUR PLACE TO MAKE THEM. THAT’S LAZY. SIT DOWN. SHUT UP.
DO THE HARD WORK: Speak out against your racist peers. Tell your white friends to check their white privilege. BURN YOUR BRIDGES, WHITE FRIENDS, BURN YOUR NETWORKS, BURN YOUR CAREER PATH, BURN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BURN YOU FOR MAKING THEM UNCOMFORTABLE. MAKE THEM UNCOMFORTABLE.
Know that you might get called out for racism. ACCEPT THAT. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR FUCK-UP. IF EMPATHY IS THE ROOT OF YOUR INTENTIONS, IT DOES NOT ABSOLVE YOU FROM WHITE PRIVILEGE. IF EMPATHY IS THE ROOT OF YOUR INTENTIONS, IT IS STILL POSSIBLE TO FUCK UP. OWN IT. IF EMPATHY IS THE ROOT OF YOUR INTENTIONS, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. IF EMPATHY IS THE ROOT OF YOUR INTENTIONS, IT WILL SHOW.
Do NOT depend on people of color to call you out and check your privilege for you. STOP DEPENDING ON AND EXPLOITING BLACK LABOR.
Do NOT pretend to care about racism in the service of your public image.
Do NOT romanticize the work of anti-racism. Do NOT romanticize your own work of anti-racism. DO YOU SEE ANY FLOWERS HERE. I AM NOT FUCKING AROUND. Don’t expect a cookie for being a decent human being. Any cookies any white people try to offer me for saying this will be returned with a note that says
CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE. WHY ARE YOU THANKING ME? WHY DOES IT TAKE A WHITE PERSON TO SAY THIS TO GET YOU TO LISTEN? TO FEEL? WHY AREN’T THE DEAD BODIES ENOUGH FOR YOU?
“Every time I speak up about misogyny in the lit world, I am met with resistance, as if it’s merely a matter of personal opinion that violence against women is a global epidemic, as if it’s merely a matter of personal opinion that one in four women will experience sexual violence in her lifetime, that one in five women will experience rape, that I can’t think of a single non-male person in my life who hasn’t been subjected to male violence in one way or another.”
There’s a difference between heartbreak
and abuse, though people keep comparing them
as if they are the same, as if someone’s rejection of you
is the same as someone’s destruction of you,
as if a broken heart
is the same as this mangled creature
at the foot of the bed, giving birth to orgasms
that fall dead between my legs like stillborns. Continue Reading →
Caitlin Scarano’s chapbook, The Salt and Shadow Coiled, SOLD OUT IN ONE DAY!
Caitlin has several copies she may sell to you (so send her a message or track her down at AWP) as well as several additional copies for reviewers.
Which is more feminist: attempting to use the patriarchal family structure and the marriage industrial complex to my advantage as an artist, or subsisting on my own strength and hustle? Is seeking an arrangement wherein a man sustains me while I achieve maximum success and freedom the most feminist thing ever, or just a cliché admission of my reliance on capitalist patriarchy? Are we only feminists if we struggle? Are we only feminists if we are alone? Can I at once work to break down a heteronormative capitalist system while reaping its benefits: money, time, freedom, leisure, and peace of mind?
The idea of “grey area rape” is bullshit. Rape is rape. But what they don’t tell you is that unraveling that experience is complicated because it cannot be homogenized.
Due process doesn’t really exist. According to RAINN, only 2 out of every 100 rapists spend a single day in prison. This is because those laws the victims and their advocates are supposed to follow so thoroughly make it impossible to prove what happened to them.
[…]
In the aftermath, you lose your best friends, who don’t know if you can talk about normal things, who need you to need them so badly you have to run. Sex is over for many victims, so is trust. The ‘fame’ these bros think we’re aiming for is pages and pages of internet comments so lethal you forget living outside of a cloud of suicide contemplation. That is what due process is.
has anyone ever set up a kissing booth at AWP? cuz I need dollarzzzz & public kissing is something I can deal with.
Submissions are currently open for Bye Bye Bukowski, an anthology featuring erasure poems about erasure.
The literary canon is built on the erasure of marginalized voices and experiences, i.e. the literary canon is fancy speak for “the voices of white cisgendered heterosexual men.” It’s exhausting, to say the least. Not only do these texts continue to dominate literary spaces, but these privileged and oppressive narratives permeate far beyond the page and into the beliefs that shape real human interactions and experiences in the world.
Let’s burn it down is my forever rallying cry! If only it were that easy – writing against the status quo is hard, often miserable work, but I’m nonetheless committed to and interested in how we can use language to subvert the power of language. How can marginalized voices inhabit spaces that aren’t built for them to inhabit? How do marginalized voices build new spaces when they are, by definition of being marginalized, still going to be marginalized?
There are, of course, many ways to answer these questions, and I hope we keep at it. One of my answers has been to make erasure poems about erasure – not only is there an immense level of personal satisfaction in taking a Sharpie to Bukowski and bringing my own truths to the surface while shutting up his woman-hating ass, but the act of erasure also reflects the function of oppression – to silence – yet in this case the silencing is a justified silencing, allowing the voice that has been suffocated to come to the surface while still cognizant of the fact that there is no “pure escape” from oppressive forces.
Bye Bye Bukowski - Submission Guidelines
1. Who? Anyone who doesn’t identify as a white cis/hetero man (this doesn’t mean we don’t love you, though we are not obligated to love you. shhhh….)
2. What? Send 1-5 erasure poems about erasure – poems that speak to experiences of oppression that you made from erasing words in other texts. Ideally we’re looking for poems made from classically oppressive texts, though you can choose to erase any text (poetry, fiction, cookbooks, newspapers, microwave manuals, whatever).
3. How? Email your submission as a .jpg, .pdf, or .docx with a short bio to [email protected]. Please include 2-3 lines about your work that mentions the title and/or a description of the original text you erased.
4. When? Submissions are open from March 1 - April 30, 2015.
5. Does this go without saying? PLEASE be intersectional in your erasures i.e. recognize your own privileges within systems of oppression i.e. do NOT erase marginalized voices to demonstrate your own marginalization.
6. Bye Bye Bukowski is being edited by Sarah Xerta and will be published by Hyacinth Girl Press in late summer/early fall of 2015 as a chapbook-style, handmade book. Payment will be in the form of one contributor copy.
7. Questions? Email [email protected].