Textual erosion...inspired by Claudia Rankine, killing of black bodies, justice-giving re-telling of stories

Our bodies as text.  What are you reading?  Are you reading me right?!  Do you have the right reference text (it's big and heavy and goes back a long way and you couldn't have read it in the minute it took you to make your judgment)?  I judge all the time.  Unfairly, perhaps.  Instinctively sometimes. Trained, yes.  The types of judgment I pass are protective and I was trained and then trained myself up to do this.

My mind flashed back on erasure today...both as in the poetic literary technique, and as in the feeling that I and other people of color have felt in certain spaces and around people who don't (want to) see us.  This thought was sparked (again) by starting to read Claudia Rankine's An American Lyric.

We are...scattered fragments...text worn away by the elements...disappeared landscape...molten objects...why did I just read about the alleged lynching of a black man in Mississippi?!  Why did this happen?  Why is this still happening?...

We are being disappeared because of the threat of our insistence to be seen.  To be heard.  To be revived as human form who can inject power in our stories and tell them ourselves.

The re-writing of a story to inject power in it...  I saw this in Scandal recently when Shonda Rhimes wrote a story that was achingly similar to Michael Brown's.  A teenage boy was shot by a police officer who claimed he had been armed.  As the boy lay dead in the street (in Scandal), his father appeared with his shot gun and determined, sat over his son until he was assured that the investigation would be handled properly.  Turns out that in this story, the shooting officer planted a knife on the teen to make it look like the killing was justified; the officer was arrested.  All of this uncovered by Olivia Pope, a black woman who is the protagonist in this show.  There were many layers of race, class, judgment, protection issues being addressed, and inherent in the writing of the story was a making visible the invisible factors that surround these real life dramas.  The erasure was of the dominant narrative.  It happened slowly in this story as Olivia herself came to realizations and through her lens, the narrative shifted.  +++++ our renewed insistence to be seen and heard and to tell our own stories through every possible medium will mean a wearing away of the imposed text that some have trained themselves up to see, at the exclusion of all reference.

passage from Tablet I*:

he is splayed on the… … … like a worn-out pig (god?)
he is un- + + + + + + + +
his is dis- + + + + + + + + + + + +
he is + + + + + + + + + + + -less
his de- + + + + + + + + + + +
he is impossible on the dry ground + + + + + + + + + + before … … … ..
he is non- + + + + + + + +
he is pre- + + + + + + + + + +*

*Armand Schwerer

Resource me, Mum

like a dream to me now, faded in its imprint but real nonetheless 

...She was darker than you and me but despised her own blackness.  She would have loved your humor and you would have won her over with your big grins, hearty laughter, and irreverent jokes.  She was queen of irreverent jokes and liked to carry a cutlass.  She was a warrior.  She shook people down for money owed her.  She ripped at things like thongs (*uck me quick panties), people who said things she didn’t think made sense (what are you, shtupid?!), and sniffed out lies around every corner.  She was straightforward, no nonsense, and cared about our wellbeing.  After she died I mused about how well I knew her.  What had our connection meant.  What did I learn from her.  That’s when I started to dream about her and when she started to come to me about the then-current man in my life.  She came to me I believe, to teach me, to build me up, to strengthen my belief in myself and the role I could have in this world.  She had a man (my step-grandfather) who though married, built her houses, dwellings for her and for her family to live in and to have a future with financial resources and security.  He was moved to care for her in tangible ways even when he was primarily responsible for others.  This was a strong example to me of a relationship that superseded the seemingly impossible circumstances to survive and thrive.  She supported him until his death and she was supported well past hers and their legacy has now benefited the second and third generations of her family.  I don’t know yet what legacy really means to me but I’m finding my own definition...