r3fugitiv3:

four letter term meant to devalue a body’s history, family, ancestry as intimately intertwined within its physicality –

slanted eyes unfit to blink within the round boxes as seen on tv and cosmo-girl magazines; faulty lenses indicate faulty perception, and thus receptions from the higher-ups in professions made to cause us shame and cause our little ones to go through pains with scotch tapes, fake blue contacts, and eyelid surgeries seek to make us seem alien.

and who’s to blame?

four letter term meant to devalue a body’s history, family, ancestry as intimately intertwined within its physicality –

un-able body : scrawny, large, long, short, up, down, left, right, of, above, around, unsound, rotate. “able” bodies take away our agency projecting upon us a misrepresentation – these binary presentations: asian american - asexualized and oversexualized, male and female, uncivilized and idolized, invisible and juvenile.

and who’s to blame?

four letter term meant to devalue a body’s history, family, ancestry as intimately intertwined within its physicality –

yellow skin carve a space to conceptualize one crayon in the box of marginalization. one color to draw in the shades of experiences numbering more than a million. yet with one color, one can only move in the direction of darken or lighten. true pictures, then, colored over and unspoken.

and who’s to blame?

but these slant eyes can see my grandmother’s flaring nostrils

but this body can speak my grandfather’s sturdy back

but this skin can breathe the inbetweenness of my pale mother’s city and my tanned father’s countryside

four letter term meant to devalue a body’s history, family, ancestry as intimately intertwined within its physicality –

U as in [yo]U the celebrated subject of this piece, G as in your G[enes] a reminder in the mirror of the stories and secrets bestowed upon you through flesh and blood, L as in these are the essential [e]L-ements which ought to [e]L-evate your being, Y as in the answer to [wh]Y you exist lay no farther than looking back x years minus 9 months.

four letter term meant to devalue a body’s history, family, ancestry as intimately intertwined within its physicality –

DIS-member the term into four letters and RE-member the well-worn paths which stand higher than these colonizing invaders. those features inscribed upon our bodies is an unshakable beauty greater than a single mind (or many) could ever seek to shatter: for each jut, gradient, nook and curvature of our bodies is a monument to a landscape that stands higher than any four letter term; we ourselves are the true creator.