#political analysis
By Sofiya Ballin, Staff Writer from Philly.com
Patrick Rosal resides at many cultural intersections. You can find it in his poetry, you see it in his Filipino heritage, and you hear it in his vernacular. And that’s how he likes it.
Rosal, a poet and professor at Rutgers-Camden, just finished Brooklyn Antediluvian, his fourth book of poetry, slated for release on May 3.
As the title indicates, his book addresses many kinds of flood: Hurricane Katrina; Tropical Storm Ondoy, which hit the Philippines in 2009; the emotional flood after a breakup; living in Brooklyn amid the flood of gentrification.
“I want people who know poetry to feel they recognize a heightened music and fresh imagery,” he says. “For people who might not be as familiar with poetry, I’d love for them maybe to say to themselves, ‘I didn’t know poetry could be like this or about things that I could relate to.’ ”
In his poetry, he takes us from Brooklyn to Spain to his Jersey hometown. In “A Scavenger’s Ode to the Turntable,” he writes:
In a basement of a maple splint
in Edison, NJ, we were learning to turn anything
into anything else …
a dance floor could go from winin’ to riot
quick if a record skipped when we spun back
the wax to its cue
His hometown was diverse, comprising black, white, Hispanic, and Asian working-class immigrants. The influence is apparent in his work. As a poet, he says, he focuses on the connections among people, places, things, and histories. There are no binaries when it comes to his influences - rap cyphers, DJ and b-boy culture, Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, Sekou Sundiata, James Baldwin.
As for race, Rosal urges that we break out of the black/white binary: “If the only differences that we are navigating are black and white, then we are oversimplifying the racial dynamics in this country.” And he says communities of color need to see one another, as well.
The award-winning poet says growing up, he hated books: “I resented literature because it didn’t have anything to do with me.”
It wasn’t until he attended Bloomfield College, before attending Rutgers-Camden, that he learned art, music, literature, and music stemmed from everywhere, including Africa, Asia, and from indigenous peoples around the world. Before that, much of his education came from hip-hop culture, in which he still finds cultures mixing.
“I’m fascinated by that,” Rosal says. “Hundreds of years of university research has not been able to produce structures that allow us to see each other as clearly as the cypher has.”
A few days ago, Rosal was reading in a class at the University of Pennsylvania, telling students about the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, where Filipinos were “on display” along with U.S. imperialism and colonization. He stressed, especially to the Asian students, that in his class mistakes are OK. In fact, they’re welcomed. The flawed space is a growing place.
“Asian folks are held to a standard that white folks are not,” Rosal says. “We have to fulfill this idea of the model minority. It’s a myth. You can sustain conflict between communities if you perpetuate that narrative.
In "Lone Star Kundiman,” Rosal writes of being rendered invisible by the dominant culture:
I keep saying it was the way you took my arm,
the small imperceptible squeeze, that tiny shove,
the way you told me Get to the back of the line,
how you eyed me to my place with your little smirk.
Some keep saying it was the rum. I keep saying
it was history… .
In Texas, you can sit in a diner packed with white folks
who dip their sweet potato fries in honey Dijon, while
you practice what it’s like to be the last man on earth
or the first one to land in a city where no one sees you.
“Communities of color have always recognized, as a way of survival, various kinds of trouble that you run into,” Rosal says. “Now we’re in a moment in history where that trouble is made more public.”
Bridging gaps within those communities is crucial, Rosal says, for both healing and loving. “We have categories, definitions, and boundaries to help us navigate the world,” he says. “When we become over-reliant on those tools, certain sectors of our lives and our imagination become segregated.
"I wonder,” Rosal says, “what happens when we take those boxes away to bring them back together.”
InFrame - Zun LeefromInFrameonVimeo.
The Life and Work of Doctor-Turned-Photographer Zun Lee
FEB 13, 2016
By day, Zun Lee is a doctor in Toronto, Canada. When he’s not working, he’s often unwinding from stress with a camera in hand. As a self-taught photographer, his documentary and street projects have caught the eye of The New York Times, The New Yorker, Magnum, and more.
The 8-minute video above by Format’s InFrame is an inspiring look at Lee’s life and work.
Lee first got into photography in 2009 after a colleague gifted him with a camera.
“As a clinician, I’m trained to work with people at their most vulnerable who grant me permission to invade their privacy,” he says. “As a result, I have always had an intense interest in the dynamics of trust and control when it comes to that interaction.”
“At best, it can reveal a unique connection, a kind of truth that would otherwise not be foregrounded.”
Two of Lee’s projects, “Father Figure” and “Fade Resistance,” are intimate series that challenge stereotypes of African-American families. Here’s a selection of photos from those projects and from Lee’s street photography portfolio:
“When a human being connects with another and – even if for a split second – relinquishes a certain level of control, it is fascinating that complete strangers can share an alternate truth about themselves that was hidden not only to others, but perhaps even to themselves,” Lee writes on his website. “It is in these moments that individual emotion transcends the personal realm and gains universally understood context.”
On his website Zun Lee writes:
“Father absence is a highly visible social issue that affects all demographics and ethnic groups but is particularly highlighted in African-descended communities. According to census statistics, over two-thirds of black children are raised in single-parent households, the vast majority of them being led by the mother. However, research also shows that black fathers are no less present in their kids’ lives compared to fathers of other ethnic groups, whether they happen to cohabitate with their family or not.
Against this backdrop, stereotypic tropes of deadbeat black fathers continue to persist in the media and in politics. Much of the visual narrative intended to counter these stereotypes has remained formulaic, too, often consisting of “über-dad” archetypes (e.g. The Cosby Show’s Dr. Cliff Huxtable), celebrity fathers and “traditional” family patriarchs.
Lost between these two extremes: the everyday black father who may not fit conventional notions of fatherhood but is nonetheless taking his parenting role seriously. He may not live at home with his partner or kids, he may not be legally married and he may struggle to provide on a consistent basis, but this does not automatically mean that he is irresponsible. However, these visuals of quotidian presence remain underrepresented in most mainstream media coverage.
From September 2011 until 2015, I photographed black fathers and families from different walks of life and in different US cities. Rather than accumulate a series of portraits, my aim was to build trusted relationships and immerse myself in these father’s lives to get a sense of how they negotiate their daily spheres not just as fathers but also as men. Over time, my relationships deepened beyond the realm of a “photographer-subject” dynamic. Many men were able to reveal a level of intimacy that allowed a nuanced picture of very personal parenting scenarios to emerge; scenarios that are fleeting and often hidden from the public realm but nonetheless meaningful.
My own journey of identity formation and cultural belonging formed the motivation for this visual exploration of fatherhood: I used my lived experience of being nurtured by African American families and father figures since my early childhood while dealing with my personal history of paternal abandonment. This helped me to build a specific visual vocabulary that guided me through this work.
As I observed these fathers interact with their families, key themes revealed themselves loud and clear: Few of the men I met were in traditional relationships but they were loving, present and responsible fathers nonetheless. At a time when the profiling of black men and women by law enforcement and citizen vigilante has given rise to a social justice moment and a national conversation about race, the fathers I worked with were also acutely aware of how society tends to perceive their black bodies as threatening and dangerous. Many collaborators felt an imposed burden to answer to preconceived notions of black father absence while their actual daily parenting efforts go largely unnoticed.
Given this contemporary context of black male hypervisibility/invisibility, the work has also situated itself in a broader conversation about the ongoing pathologization of black masculinity and how that continues to impact society’s perception of black males. It is my hope that this work can contribute to how we can look at fatherhood and father absence in a more nuanced fashion, and more importantly, how we can find ways to more fully describe the humanity of African American males”.
From this facebook page
The elusive trans woman of color
This is a rallying cry:
Trans Women of Color, or #TWOC (as people who engage in social justice discourse usually abbreviate with no context) are often used to deploy all kinds of guilt and condemnation at groups who experience any number of privileges that my identity group typically does not. I know I should be thrilled by this, but alas, I am not. Moralistic castigations of all sorts are lobbed at people who don’t already ‘get it’. At my expense.
This puts people off whom I so desperately want to support me. I see it all the time, and it is discouraging. I know that calling out racist, cissexists [google it] must feel like a rush of righteousness to the brain. The likes and comments of approval can’t hurt either, eh?
If it matters though, I’d like for those people to be plied with resources and information instead. Given the chance, they could be transformed. They could become my comrades.
I’ve seen it. I’ve facilitated it. Lots of times.
Whoever first said “It is not the role of the oppressed to educate their oppressors” put me in a world of hurt.
I, TWOC in the flesh, do not feel the pangs of interpersonal bias or microaggressions. I’ve endured immense abuse and trauma in my past. What facilitated my healing and resilience was a materialist analysis of the world that relocated my anxiety from individuals to institutions. Namely our economic system, capitalism, and its necessity to perpetuate poverty stricken conditions and perceived scarcity that give rise any number of antagonisms I’m faced with.
Indeed, I want and need people of all stripes at my side against the state. So if you don’t mind, I- your crown jewel and Princess of the oppressed will continue to educate anybody I can. No matter how problematic.
Many social justice advocates, 'warrior’ is a pejorative in this context so I won’t use it, are well intentioned when they use the suffering of trans women of color to decry systems of oppression. Again, I know they are well intentioned, but they do not speak for me.
They go on about TWOC voices being 'centered’. Well here it is. Center it.
Focusing our ire on people who receive privilege instead of people who dole it out is a losing strategy for ending oppression. This idea flows from post-structuralist academic theory that sees collective struggle against domination as largely misguided; That locates interpersonal interactions as primary sites for transformation. Smells like rugged individualism to me. Tumblr has taken this heady theory, and parsed it out for disaffected users to reblog. How convenient for people in power. I imagine Goldman Sachs loves this garbage.
I’m a student at Portland State University. For now. I have received multiple threats of expulsion from the president, Wim Wiewel, and his administration. The nightmarishly oppressive Board of Trustees have armed campus security despite widespread and vocal disapproval from students, staff, and faculty. My confrontational tactics with PSUSU - the Portland State University Student Union to collectively resist have landed me on the chopping block. This has taken up the bulk of my headspace as of late. The clumsy liberal hipster in my Environmental Sustainability class who does not yet understand the gravity of asking people their pronouns simply cannot fit on my list of fucks given.
For the record, said hipster only needed a small push from me to get it. He now stands among our ranks against the power structure of the neoliberal university. This, as revered classroom radicals lambaste incompetent 'allies’ to TWOC on social media to thunderous applause. But the TWOC you use to advance your line of moralism needed you at the Board of Trustees meeting to help her shut that shit down! Thanks ally.
Wim doesn’t need to check his privilege, he needs to be removed from his position. His administration’s salaries need to be cut to fund fair pay and job security for adjunct professors. The Board of Trustees model needs to be dissolved and replaced with democratic models that advance the Campaign for Free College Tuitionand15 Now for all campus employees. The racist campus police need to be disarmed because Black Lives Matter.#DisarmPSU!
I actually want to fucking win. The TWOC you love and adore in the abstract does not think that collectively shit talking problematic individuals constitutes radical community. Concerted actions and campaigns against the power structure does. But will you help me do it?
I have held much of this in because it feels petty to rail against those who don’t agree with me. I think it further entrenches sectarianism. I’ve felt that all I need to do is to press on with my vision for winning justice. That other oppressed people would see me in active resistance, and would be inspired to do the same. So far, it’s mostly congratulations. But I can’t bring your congratulations with me to protests! I need comrades at my side.
Love,
The elusive TWOC
please share widely
ThINGS to avoid when fighting the “revolutionary” fight to keep from repeating the SAMOSAMO #dont’supportthesamepowerstructureswhichwishtokeepusprisoner
Don’t inundate your self with social media television media news paper media showing black bodies dying— take a break from it.. Remember that the major thing that has changed between now and 50 years ago is that we now have cameras. Important to question the paradigm: is reality feeding media /media feeding reality? While it’s important to be aware and document, its good to balance it out. Though it may be hard to see now, there is and has been many great strides forward and positivity across “race” lines. To feed only on consumerist culture even within the land of the “political” is to end up malnourished and deflated— take care and keep faith- as Audre Lorde said “we were never meant to survive”. Understanding this we take away the power away from the structures that wish to keep us prisoner.
Black lives matter means Black LIVES, regardless of gender identification. Always speak inclusively instead of simply quoting the death toll of black men —use black people— do not fall into the trap of making this a dick against dick thing, contributing to the erasure of women, and otherwise identified people, supporting patriarchal hierarchies which are complicit to racist structures . To speak and think otherwise is to give more power to those structures.
Don’t be quick to call some one an ‘uncle tom’ because they don’t agree with your “conscious black” rhetoric. Remember it’s all about divide and conquer. Yes there are some folks of colour who are not politicised -who live perhaps- in a bubble where they can pretend to be untouched. However, just because someone has a difference of opinion, challenges your polemics, or has a different world view doesn’t necessarily make them a traitor. Remember that not so long ago, and still today among many of our ‘own’, so called radical black power folks held and still hold the belief that homosexuality is a white mans disease. Remember that not so long ago simply listening to or playing rock/punk made you less black. Happily, these ideas are being challenged on a more massive level than they were 20 years ago, but they still do exist. We are a diverse and ever changing people, to set up codes up blackness is a form of imprisonment that only gives power to the structures we wish to destroy.
Don’t spend too much time with the “white man” on your eyeball. Let’s take responsibility for our own actions. take care of yourself. Don’t give too much energy to the folks who say stupid things in order to protect their privilege. It’s wasted energy. Better to use that same energy to bring out the positivity and the force we have in our inter-connected and diverse communities. Also its important to realise that there is an interconnected-ness between all of us— despite the constructions of “race”. To act without this understanding is to support the very power structures we are trying to dismantle.
Don’t acquiesce to hate. Anger and rage are healthy when it becomes a tool for creativity and positive change. Anger can come from a place of love. Rage can come from a place of love. When it does, it’s more powerful. When you acquiesces to hate it can only eat you a live, and again give power to the very structures you are against .
