No one and nothing prepared me for this. Not college. Not courses in feminist, post-modern, post-colonial, or Marxist theory. Not reading Doestoyevsky, the Bronte sisters, Donne, Shakespeare, or George Eliot. Not all the papers I wrote about hybridity, syntax or laughter. Not being good at school or good at my job. Not praise from teachers, employers or peers.
Nothing.
Part of being the hero means you get to have layers. So, for example, one of the most jarring things about inhabiting my identity is the baffling (to me) denial that I have a past. That things have happened to me. Not only that things have happened to me, but that I've been affected by these things that have happened to me.
At every fresh encounter with a new person, I'm assumed to be (supposed to be) a blank slate.
As if you were the first stranger to tell me to, "Smile."
The first white guy to call me "exotic."
The first person to ask, "So, where are you from?"
The first man to speak to me in a condescending tone of voice about something technical.
I'm told that I'm "cynical." That I have a bad attitude. That I "hate white people."
I feel like part of being human is learning from the past, taking in experiences that repeat themselves over and over again, making sense of these experiences and even molding them into a narrative.
Like any three-dimensional character, don't I deserve a back story too?
Like Marx said, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. But sometimes it seems like even laughter is not allowed to me. Because to laugh is to have a distinct point of view that sees the cracks, the contradictions, the absurdities of the status quo.
I think I can say that I've paid a price for not aquiecsing to the dominant narrative. And as I fight for my story, I can't help but feel like I'm fighting for my life. That if I don't have this, I have nothing. That if I don't fight for my story, no one else will.
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