English | Indian
I’ve written a poem, entitled - How brown?
Have you ever thought about
What it feels like, to be in front
Of your grandmother on her deathbed
And not understand
The language she uses
To tell you
how sorry she is
For abandoning you.
To sit on your dads lap,
Skin to skin
Watch the same hands that put you to bed
Wrapped you in safety
White
As the oppressor.
There is no place mixed people go
When we want to experience
Family.
There are no people
Who ever really look like us
Just off white
Off brown
Of colour.
Am I really just this dolly
For your fantasy
Your amusement
Your canvas
To colour with your pain
Your privilege
Your oppression.
I stand here with my open arms
Your easel
Let you paint
Just
To feel it.
It isn’t a likeness you really want,
To a trophy.
Like Meghan Markle
Oh, doesn’t she sparkle.
But at every move
You are
Selling out
To people
Who never claimed you.
If I hear the word
“Exotic”
I will combust
Into a thousand colours
And shapes
To paint the picture
Of a palm tree
A coconut
That I know you want to see.
Hey Cultural Appropriation
I need a job, gimme some cash.
You make a living out of me.
Stick me on the United Colours of Benetton
Take a picture.
Yeah, I know.
You want babies like me.
I can be interesting
Without saying a word
Without reading a book
Or knowing a thing
About history.
But I do.
And when I talk,
My voice shouts out into the
Echo chamber
Bounces of the wall
To come back at me.
No group
Wants to claim it.
Take it back,
You don’t understand
You aren’t cultured
You don’t experience,
Your Dad’s white,
You don’t know.
But you do apparently,
As you can’t wait to tell me:
You have a cousin like me.
The only people who understand me
Are “Palatable”
I have one ear on the left
One ear on the right
A brain trying to process
My body
In between.
Look at me in the eyes
There are two.
I’m whole.
This chest, that you laugh at
For being “overly sensitive”
Goes through.
Do I look like half of anything
To you?
Turn my skin
Inside out
And smear it across
The borders
That still reign.
I’m not your poster child
For a murky idea of
Interacialism
Colourism
Assimilation
Dilution
Internationalism
Multiculturalism
Exoticism
Fetishism
“Person of the World”.
I wonder how many more will throw me away
Before I able
To stick
To anyone.
I identify as mixed-race and practice Hinduism. My mother was born in Tanzania but identifies as Indian. My father is originally from the north of England, near Manchester. My parents had a secret relationship for around two years. It had to be kept private as my mothers’ family was setting her up for an arranged marriage. After they had married, she was totally outcast by her family and community. She moved in with my dad’s family and had to rapidly become accustomed to living in an English culture from that point. I was aware of my ethnicity because it was explained to me a lot, and I felt like I was explaining it a lot to other people. That hasn’t really changed. I remember that when we moved to the countryside, another child asked me at school ‘why is your mum Brown?’, I remember just wondering why everyone else’s wasn’t. I definitely think there are stereotypes towards mixed-race people. We are fetishised, all the time. My experience as a woman has unfortunately involved hypersexualisation because of my mixed-race heritage. I think in the South Asian community in London, they are still in the generation that is predominantly navigating interracial marriages as a big deal. A negative is that as my identity is a bit ambiguous, I sometimes find myself never feeling like I belong anywhere. A positive is that you have social adaptability skills. A bit like a chameleon, you can blend into different situations, cultures and groups because you have to as you don’t find many people who identify the same way you do, and often find parts of yourself in totally different groups anyway. Based on my religious beliefs I do think we all come back again, but it would nice to be a whale. Moving forward, I think there will be more conversations between us as a community, rather than feeling displaced out of other more dominant groups that make parts but not all of who we are. I think that more and more mixed-race people are going to be made in this increasingly global world.
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