When I was age 13, a brown two-tone girlchild with the door locked, in my feelings because of what I today know is called verbal abuse, I would diary so I could capture my level of awareness at that moment. These were my first notes to self. I knew eventually years would pass and I did not want to risk the possibility of an older me being insensitive to the intelligences of 13 year old gurl me. I was like, listen, you might be a parent one day and I'm writing this so you know better about them than your family knows about you. I was truly on some next level woc time machine shit. I am impressed with lil sumi for being so down for gurl smarts, remembering, and the next generation.
image via starteatingreal
On that tip: I'm sensing that the time is now to write me, for me, by me, again. I want to write about building self-confidence&self-worth at age 23 as a bisexual desi womyn. I am an upper caste desi womyn (kshatriya). Thenmozhi Soundararajan writes in her piece, The Black Indians (required reading on caste), "The Indian diaspora thrives on caste because it is the atom that animates the molecule of their existence." Yes, this shit goes really deep and is hardly ever acknowledged by Brahmin and other upper caste writers. This is basically like throwing a sheet over a hippo and going about your business pretending said hippo ain't there. BTW you are the hippo, so that is very confusing also. Something that is very powerful and significant is the connection between Black feminists and Dalit feminists. I first learned of this connection on Problem Chylde's blog where they quote an interview with Ruth Manorama:
“I was looking at why these Black women were organizing themselves differently. Why were they separate? Then, I understood the racist notions of purity and pollution that operates there [US]. Just like our situation, the Black women don’t have leadership in the mainstream women’s movement. The White women were not going to solve the problems of Black women…They not only wrote about the racist inequality, but they spoke about the class struggle, they outlined the economic oppression, the absence of land and resources. There are so many connections between the Dalits and the Blacks.”
Caste, a form of anti-blackness, as she says, is a system where a persons' value is based on a racist hierarchy of purity and pollution. Upper caste hindu identity as enlightened ass bharatnatyam dancin bearers of "indian culture" is built on the backs of lower caste, dalit and adivasi peoples. It is a deeply psychological racism (it exists in the mind) that does not solely rely on skin tone. To fellow desi sisters and queers who are reading this, why do you think our people assimilate like a muthafucka once they reach the West? Why they think they're better than Black and Latin@ peoples? Why they believe in the US Government??? Unpacking and resisting caste as an upper caste bengali desi is a responsibility. It is a part of my journey in finding self-worth.
To be continued.
grow grow sumi bean!!!!... crack and crawl over the white marble estates, soil that glistening smooth concrete slab underneath which lay the earth upon which u grow.. cover it all in an engendering green once again as the surface once was.. and bring forth more and more pods that contains similar cute little seeds such as urself!!!...
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