By Button Poetry
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Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
During the 1970s, the term Latina was invented
00:06
to describe a woman of Latin American ancestry
00:09
living in Latin America or the United States.
00:12
Merriam-Webster, however, does not consider
00:15
the term “Afro-Latina” a word.
00:18
To them,
00:20
America’s most trusted dictionary,
00:23
Latin American people of African ancestry do not exist.
00:27
It is merely hearsay,
00:29
a term attributed to those who have felt the noose,
00:31
but have only loosely been hung by the tree.
00:33
Or maybe she is the tree,
00:35
the way her roots always got their foot on the necks of all cultures.
00:38
Thank a Black woman for always giving you something to be micro-aggressive about.
00:44
Latina, an adjective that behooves to be seen.
00:49
Afro-Latina, a myth, a folktale,
00:53
a thing she becomes after the search party leaves,
00:55
like she hadn’t been standing there all along,
00:57
clearing the forest while you grind her bones to fertilize the soil.
01:01
This isn’t a metaphor for Black girl magic or anger,
01:04
this is me, no longer flat-ironing my fro to fit within the margins of a term
01:10
dependent on my proximity to whiteness.
01:12
I am not Black and Latina, I am a Black Latina.
01:16
I am anomaly–
01:17
I am anomaly stranger’s whisper about in disbelief,
01:20
confident my tongue don’t conjugate like theirs.
01:23
I am creating my own narrative before they write me out the wrong story.
01:27
Contort my surviving into their savior, build me a shrine to die on.
01:33
And haven’t we always been damaged goods?
01:36
Sold at a bargain price.
01:38
Carbon copy us into ash.
01:39
Snap their fingers and blow us into dust.
01:42
Her silhouette, the standard.
01:44
Her Afro, a wig they take on and off.
01:47
Her melanin, packaged and sold at leisure.
01:49
Her culture, a billion-dollar commodity.
01:52
Meringue, Bachata, Salsa, Rumba, Tango, Samba,
01:56
name a beat her hips ain’t formed and twerked into baile,
02:00
into ritmo,
02:02
into música.
02:03
When Celia says, La negra tiene tumba’o
02:05
she’s speaking for millions of Afro-Latinas who go missing
02:09
in history books, in movies, in television,
02:12
in conversations about their own identities.
02:14
In real life, in real life, Afro-Latinas, Black women, poor women,
02:20
marginalized women are dying,
02:23
are targets,
02:25
and those who love her culture won’t attend her funeral,
02:29
will not speak of her life.
02:32
Instead, tape up her house, ready to thrift and shop her culture away.
02:36
Buy up heirlooms and call them spicy,
02:39
bloody red with passion.
02:42
Do you see it?
02:44
How easily Black girl becomes wallpaper to the building of her own identity.
02:49
A mime always in front of her to edifice a movement.
02:53
My culture is not your cash crop.
02:55
My mother’s country is not your paradise.
02:57
My bilingual tongue is not your inquisition to crusade over.
03:01
Dicen que soy Latina…
03:04
Until I start talking about colorism,
03:08
until I check them on erasure,
03:11
until I choose to speak on my own behalf,
03:15
until I remind them my Afro comes before Latina.
03:22
Thank you!
03:26
(cheers and applause)
03:27
Yas!
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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