March 2013
1 post
3 tags
RETURN THE GAYZE: a breakup letter to stanford... →
dear lovely followers: as some of you may know — i’m also a spoken word poet and i make art around a lot of themes on this blog. i have made a separate tumblr (returnthegayze) to post my poems. i hope that you will follow that as well and share with your networks. i have included my most recent poem on mayor bloomberg, stop and frisk, and the ennui of elite universities like stanford....
February 2013
1 post
The Real Significant Other: The Queer Politics of...
Hi friends it’s hard to believe I wrote this ONE YEAR AGO on valentine’s day — but I think it’s just as pertinent! Here’s to a year more of resisting capitalism and how it creates illusions of scarcity in our love lives, even though we are so connected! XO
queerlibido:
Today is Valentines Day and you pretend that you don’t care about it (even though, at some level,...
November 2012
1 post
7 tags
Dear White and Other Privileged Friends: or,...
Dear white and other racially privileged friends who experience fits of indignation when I post anti-racist critiques on my facebook page:
You see I’m often conflicted on how to best respond to your feelings. I recognize that they are legitimate and come from a well-intentioned place, but I respectfully and vehemently disagree with you. I could send you articles, data, statistics, artists, and...
September 2012
2 posts
7 tags
Unapologetic Bodies: Or, You're a Hot Mess (And I...
I’m a hot ass mess. I am sooo messy. I’m the gurl you gossip about with your friends because she don’t have her shit together. I’m the mess who’s crying at the club (you think she’s drunk out of her mind, but she’s pretending). I’m the guy who’s giving you mixed signals. I am all of these people, all of these feelings, and more. And, I don’t give a fuck.
Recently I had a pretty serious accident...
5 tags
For Lack of a Better Word: Queering Our Libidos
This essay is the second in a collection of essays I’m writing on race and sexuality. In the first essay I discussed how we must begin to think about how constructions of race and white supremacy are central to even our most personal sexual desires. In this essay I want to back-track a bit and outline the framework I am using to grapple with these questions.
I can’t tell you how many times my...
August 2012
1 post
Confessions of a Snow Queen: Owning Up to Our...
In Spring of 2011 I wrote and performed a poem “Tryna” expressing and owning up to my internalized racism and how it shapes my desire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ3GXKYy3mE
After performing this poem for the first time I had several queer people of color approach me and tell me in private that they, too, shared similar desires for whiteness, but had never felt comfortable articulating it...
July 2012
1 post
8 tags
Protect Me From What I Want: Radical Sex for the...
As part of a day-long workshop called “Mapping Your Sexual Desire: Liberating Your Sexual Body” we were asked to write our name and what we were “interested in” on our nametags. I was the youngest – and perhaps most inexperienced (though not to conflate age and experience here) — of the bunch, simultaneously shocked and excited by the prospect of being so honest, so public of the nature of...
April 2012
1 post
A Speech to Queer Youth Activists
I typically employ a particular type of coming out narrative – one that deeply implicates spacial and geographic transformation (emotionally and physically) and falls along a relatively linear conception of mobility and development. I explain to people that my high school was not a safe space. I don’t go into detail (I think I don’t want to remember what it felt like) but I list a couple of...
February 2012
1 post
The Real Significant Other: The Queer Politics of...
Today is Valentines Day and you pretend that you don’t care about it (even though, at some level, you do). Today you will find yourself increasingly bitter. You will hate the couple engaged in intense titanic meets glacier PDA in front of you (a little more than yesterday, that is). You feel like you are oppressed, like you have been denied something. Today you will think of all of your ex...
January 2012
1 post
3 tags
The Politics of Claiming Oppression
The first time I learned that I was ‘oppressed’ was when I arrived as a freshman at Stanford University. University was the first time I met like-minded ‘activists’ and we began to organize around our collective ‘disempowerment.’ I learned how to construct a narrative of my own oppression – as a ‘queer’ ‘gender transgressor’ of ‘color’ from ‘the South,’ I learned about the distinct axes and...
