As we heard Suheir Hammad’s First Writing Since, It clearly brought back a lot of memories of the attacks on US government buildings on 9/11/01. However, as she was speaking about pride and shame, mixed in with sorrow and anger, my mind jumped to the recent events at Virginia Tech. I felt for the author, because I can’t imagine dealing with the same horror and sadness that everyone is sharing, and all the while having an isolating sense of fear for yourself mixed in. I thought it was interesting that she never actually said that she was talking about 9/11, but it was obvious from her imagery and such. However, several significant parts of her piece could be applied to any number of events which result in racialization. I don’t know if that was her intent, but it certainly works as a more timeless piece, and I can see where this could describe the feeling of a lot of minorities, more often than U.S. society would like to admit.
I will try not to treat this work like a poem, but it is sort of difficult to deal with it in another way when I have the physical text in front of me. For some reason the section in which she talks about people being thankful that they were not, for whatever reason, near the world trade center on the morning of the attacks. She begins this by being thankful for Korean food. As she further reveals, her craving for a particular Korean restaurant prevented her from being a victim of the attacks. I thought this was very reflective and satirical of human nature. Not only do we blame people who had nothing to do with unfortunate events because of some remote tie, we also equally absurdly thank those (and often ourselves) who had a remote tie to a more positive event. I guess this is part of our nature to not simply accept things, but we must find a reason, no matter how disconnected our logic. People will also resort to religious reasoning for this same effect, but that is another debate for another time. This is a bit frightening to me, as I’m not sure (if my speculation is in any way correct) if there will ever be relief from minority profiling for scapegoats. I guess that depends on our level of understanding about one another, like when Hammad said that most Americans don’t know the difference between different Asian racial groups, or can separate them from the different religious groups that are more mainstream in Asia.
The anger of the spoken word almost had the same effect on me as it did on my feelings toward Americans. It seemed not to have a concrete target, except towards people’s misunderstandings, and her own fear. As a white American, I almost felt like she was angry toward me, even though I am not personally guilty of the racism which has caused her so much pain. She seems to be angry at all white Americans, which is a bit insulting. I am lumped in with a group of people who are racist, and there is nothing I can do to prove my innocence. Like the man on the Wilshire bus, I feel like there is little I can do either to separate myself, or to prevent it from happening to other minority Americans. I guess this contention within myself is the closest I can come to understanding of her much more unfortunate position. We are all guilty of pointing fingers and afraid of the finger being pointed at us. I did like the end of Hamman’s piece, in which she calls people to take some responsibility for this, since even though there are only a few of us who are guilty of what they have been accused, we have all had to defend ourselves from the accusations, some admittedly worse than others. Hammad in the end is more optimistic than I, as she calls people to peaceful action in order to combat racism, I suppose. I just feel that somehow it isn’t quite that simple, and that there is no clear starting point for that action. If anyone has any ideas, please, please share!
-Megan