2.01.2012

Week 1 Writing: WCC Writer's Workshop

Prompts for Week One

"Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate the English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent’s tongue – my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence.”
― Gloria E. Anzaldúa

What is your voice? What are your voices? Where do you hear your voice? When do you raise your voice? What are its frequencies, its resonance? How do you find your voice?

What narratives do you draw on from your history, your culture, your life, to tell your stories? What codes do you speak in and around?
What silences do you observe, which do you break? How do you overcome silence?



Response


My voice is one of a woman of color who has experienced multiple forms of sexual violence and oppression and colonialism. I speak mostly about the injustices that we face. How sex and our bodies are used against us when we are the creators of this world. How hate is used against when the source of love can be found in our vaginas and in our wombs. I write because its one of the fundamental ways that I relate to people and the world around me. I write to make this world more tolerable. Its an art to me, but I rarely write poems. I hear my voice and my inspiration in my people and the people who've experienced the same shit as I have.


I observe silence surrounding sexual violence. The only thing that gives me solace is to talk to the people I know. To end the silence and isolation. To mend relationships.

2 comments:

  1. You were one of the first people to sign up for the workshop, and I've been enjoying reading here since the last few weeks of January. "when we are the creators of this world." your words are poetic even if they don't /look/ like poetry.

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leave it here.