i finished reservation blues

i have spent a lot of my life feeling ashamed and less-than and insecure and obligated to redeem myself or prove something to people for being brown and being the way that i am. i have spent a lot of my life being angry for feeling that way. i grew up in a black neighborhood in a white town. i have always been eccentric and i have always been a reader. when i went outside in my neighborhood, the other brown kids made fun of me and said i talked white and dressed funny and rejected me and so i rejected them. in school, i gravitated towards the white kids because the black ones wouldn’t have me. the white kids played with me because according to them i ‘wasn’t really black,’ and ‘didnt count.’ i’d laugh at racist jokes and  deprecate the fuck out of myself. a decade and a half later, i still get the same shit from blacks and whites alike.  i am older, and i know better, but old habits die hard. when i am driving in a car with my black friends (besides leroy and essence), i only play the rap/blues i know. when i am in a car with my white friends i only play the rock/folk i know. my brother likes nirvana and my white friends like big l, but my entire life i’ve felt like i couldn’t fit in anywhere without compromising some aspect of myself. today i say fuck that noise. i am proud to be brown. i like my skin. it suits me and it is my favorite color and i want to kiss myself. i am gorgeous.  and i am proud to read as much as i do and talk the way i do and have the music taste i do and dress the way i do because i have a vibrant personality and when i was baby soup that they poured into the mold i grew hands and fingers and karate chopped the shit out of the mold and i say fuck ever ever ever feeling like you need to apologize for who you are and please please try to help anyone who makes you feel like you should because they probably don’t know they are okay. you don’t owe anything to anybody but yourself and what you owe to yourself is to be true to yourself.