Writting Violence + Fueling Protest

I found this writing prompt very interesting due to the importance of sharing personal stories and historical data that can be used to create movements of protest and resistance. One of the aspects of sharing explicit violent scenes is the critique of such writing through onlookers that may find the sharing of certain poems or other expressions of art uncomfortable. Others can look at the same piece of art or read a poem and find themselves deeply connected to it. Either way people can get fueled to want and create change based on reading and seeing people who have been alienated throughout history for either their sexual orientation or their ethnic identity.

One of the most striking poems to me was America's Pastime written by Jason Carney. Carney who is a white- American poet is able to recreate histories most atrocious acts toward African Americans. He discusses the disassociation that most white American's have toward the blatant attacks and enslavement of black people. Carney has a very particular way of writing a poem, while expressing his point across in his first paragraph he uses a disassociated line that captures in graphic detail the horrific attacks of the black body by Sunday families. The words he uses to represent white identity like sunday, which most white people seen themselves as good christians, is able to captivate the binary personalities of whites who killed but who went to church.

In this particular line "How many ways you got to kill a man to take his dignity" just gave me chills. First is not just about the kill, the bodily injury that causes death. But it involves much more, it is the mental death of the man. The breaking him apart, torturing his mind his heart, and removing what dignity is left. All of these different forms of violence that have been used and are still being used to continuously impose superiority on groups of minorities inside of the United States.

While I read this poem I took into consideration where Jason Carney is coming from, as a white male poet writing about injustices that his own people have committed. I think that based on his positionality he is able to touch a different group than a person of color writing about their experience.

There are many forms of violence, violence does not just signify an action that creates physical pain. Violence can also be attributed to the mental suffering of your person and your identity.

In the poem Say My Name, written by Idris Goodwin, he mentions the disconnection he had while growing up with his black power name. It is this disconnection that people can't pronounce, that people don't want to pronounce. People who don't want to understand, ignore therefore this significant piece of you is being ignored.

As a child you are being thought that you shouldn't love that part of you. You shouldn't love your name.

A part of violence, is self hate. I don't think Idris Goodwin hated himself, but he didn't like his name, so much so that he wanted to change it. He wanted to fit in with "names in a phonebook- strong regular names." The desire to not want something that makes you culturally unique and that symbolically represents your identity were and continue to be forms of dominance that teach you that only the dominant names, dominant cultures should be considered beautiful.
By the end of the poem he heard his name being pronounced in the middle east and found it to be pronounced with such a beautiful bounce just the way his mom pronounces it.