By Button Poetry
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Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
The man’s words to me are not offered, but flung.
00:06
“So, what are you?
00:09
Where are you from?”
00:11
I say,
00:16
“New York.”
00:18
“But your name is Carlos.
00:23
I mean, where are you really from?”
00:27
I say,
00:32
“New York.”
00:35
“Bueno, yo soy latino. Mi padre es colombiano.
00:37
Mi madre es estadounidense. Nací en New York City.
00:39
I lived in four countries. Moved 12 times.
00:41
Went to 12 schools before I graduated high school”
00:43
is not what I would say in 12,341 years
00:45
because I don’t owe a damn thing to anyone.
00:47
What am I?
00:48
What am I, a financial aid form? A vegan red-velvet cupcake recipe?
00:51
Dude discovers his first Latino with green eyes
00:54
and suddenly appoints himself the authority on Latinidad.
00:57
Like, “But you totally don’t look Mexican.”
01:00
“Oh, Colombian, but like what percentage are you?”
01:02
“You speak it, though? Fluently? Dance salsa well?”
01:04
“Oh, but not both parents.”
01:05
“You’ve been there, but not lived there, because you weren’t born there.”
01:07
I’m not a government questionnaire.
01:09
I’m not an anecdote for your homogeneous social gathering
01:11
of your homogeneous friends.
01:12
I know, everyone you hang out with looks like you,
01:15
has a name you’re able to pronounce and/or share,
01:18
and/or sounds pulled directly from an episode of Leave it to Beaver.
01:21
Here’s the deal.
01:22
Latin America is not just Mexico,
01:26
actually pronounced Méjico, pero whatever.
01:28
Central America is not part of South America,
01:30
and Mexican is still not a language.
01:32
The question “Where are you from?” in our current America
01:37
is a slur disguised with a question mark,
01:40
a passive-aggressive microaggression saying you are other,
01:44
saying you are not from here,
01:45
saying you are not nor will ever be one of us,
01:48
saying go back to where you came from.
01:51
But I… I am from a place beyond place,
01:55
a place where, once you’re from there, you can never leave,
01:58
because it exists beyond dirt and flesh,
02:00
beyond your linear and limited concept of time.
02:03
I am from bloodlines unkillable as water.
02:06
I am the return that is only earned
02:08
when absence has stretched its greedy void
02:10
across a passage as stoic and sacred as an abuela’s hard-edged love.
02:14
I am my black and Latina daughter’s grace,
02:17
chimeraed into the cobalt pulse of these once-too-often fists.
02:20
I am a boy without a word of English in his mouth
02:23
in a Catholic school classroom in South Florida,
02:26
his son on a stage 58 years later, tonight,
02:30
reading this poem for him.
02:32
I am the steady ray of light unlocking my mother’s teeth
02:35
tossed skyward in a laugh,
02:37
what hard-earned joy looks like,
02:40
carved from the wreckage of a lifetime’s worth of grief.
02:44
You are not ready for the answers to the questions you ask,
02:47
not ready for the worlds these words might shake free.
02:51
You could never understand what I am,
02:53
or where I am from.
02:56
(cheers and applause)
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video