ReplyResponse to Avren post on 2.28.17 -TD

PS: I didn't know how to add pics to a reply so  I had to create another post

Mista Popo

Remember this... now see pic under...

A white or lighter skinned person dressed up as Mista Popo(even dropping the “er” is inferring Black dialect in problematic way)

Jynx ! I mean COME ON!!!! And the title “ who you callin’ a jynx?” provokes the stereotype of the angry black woman, & damn it if this pic doesn’t do the same, obviously for different reasons but Diggs does a brilliant job of bringing up the racism that isn’t hidden yet cloaked in what’s considered costume or character .

and finally the Japanese character , Yama-uba, also mentioned in the poem,a dirty woman with tattered clothes and wild hair, when I googled the character she is always presented as crazy and mangy, and often  w/ a purple Black face. Here she is eating a white child... I’ll just leave that there

Avren,

Thank you for bringing the reference of Anime/ Dragon Ball Z to the content of this piece. I watched Diggs perform in many languages, and read her speak of her wanting to write and “to communicate with other languages”, I was compelled by her vision to craft poetry that broke away from the monoglot society we live in, a society that “fails to hear the Bengali spoken just feet away from them in the 7-eleven”-Diggs. I read “who you calling a jynx”(after mista popo) as  one of Diggs brilliant  poems written  with different language and culture, but I am unfamiliar with anime and the characters so I never knew of the racism in the presentation of these characters within the lines. I also see now, thanks to your post, that Diggs may also be writing into/out/ about the system of racism and sexism hence  jynx  who is caricaturized as a purple/ black woman who has big breast and butt and is feisty and hypersexualized in how her character is drawn.