Resilience

Does it come naturally/free flowing from the tip of my tongue/to the depths of my soul
chopped/blocked/blotched/it gives way
to free rhythm/raw and unstained.

I came in this cafe to intentionally vent on my blogspot, but I'm already exhausted. The black girl's soul is full of contradictions and maybe because of that's what attract me to the Beauty. The way her Grace is mixed with her internal repressions. Maybe it's just resilience--the fact that she cannot be evaluated, understood by the general eye. Don't doubt me, I don't know what if feel like to be black in America, but I too come from a different angle--being the son of immigrants and a gay Asian American. Those three words do not confine me, they refine me.

"perhaps for the final time, that notions of purity--of race or of culture--could no more serve as the basis for the typical black American's self esteem than it could for mine. Our sense of wholeness would have to arise from something more fine than the bloodlines we'd inherited." Dreams from my Father (204)

That race or culture is an excuse to the problems of minorities has a hidden meaning. A black women going into a Korean hair product shop and being stared at is a deeper, more philosophical way of saying,"I'm as inundated by media's portrayal of blacks as the next person," or "looking at you is something that is socially constructed and I don't mean to, but shoot, I have my own language barrier to deal with and I don't want to be taken advantage of either." These are the words that are so often exchanged in the subtle gestures of the every day minority.

Yet, commonalities bridge differences. Instead of a glance, what about a "herro" in broken Korean English or a smile from the University student who's shopping? Doesn't the subtlest of gestures break the tension of the moment--builds trust?

To collect my thoughts I have commonalities I share with others. The Asian 'other-ness', the tingle of joy we feel every time a young lesbian couple expresses their affections as any normal couple does in the middle of the street, of the sadness when we see a child and reality hits us--I can't legally have one with my partner. The sadder we are, the more cohesive our goals become because they are ingrained in our struggles, our perseverance, our resilience.