This essay speaks to the erasure of ones identity at the hand of someone else. Queer women of color are constantly being forced to separate sections of their identity in order to be accepted into parts of the LGBTQ community. Queer W.O.C. 's voices are frequently ignored and dismissed because "[white lesbians] control the production of queer knowledge in the academy and in the activist community (pg.165)." This leaves fragmented identities in which many are asked to separate their sexual orientation from other parts of their identity. In addition it is very difficult for White queer women to understand a queer woman of color's writing because it is not something they have lived and thus could comprehend. But it is not the duty of the writer to spoon-feed their experiences to the reader.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a slam poem about how and why I started identifying as Chicana. The first time that I read it out loud I was in the mist of other self-identified Chicanos. Their responses were positive and they all spoke to how they could relate to what I was talking about. A couple months later I entered the poem into a CSU sponsored symposium, MURALS. While presenting it I was in a room that was predominantly white and female. There was a very different response from the audience. For example, a section of my poem reads as follows:
I have the scars handed down from my Aztec ancestors
given to them by the same Europeans whose descendants
tell us that we are uncivilized
I have the scars handed down from the Chicanos lynched
given to them by the same people who descendants
tell us that we are violent and dangerous
I have the scars handed down from the Americans who were deported to a Mexico
they've never seen before
by the same people whose descendants
tell us to leave to make this country great again
At this point in the poem I could see that much of the audience was visibly uncomfortable. It was then that I realized my writing was not give the same emotion to everyone.
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