Edwidge, I'm Crying

So many emotions came up for me while reading Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat that I decided that poetry, rather than prose, was a more effective medium to get my points across. Ironically, Danticat is one of my favorite authors. Her writing makes so real for me a type of subject that can seem to not effect me as much as I think it should, which is how I felt when I read Taking Haiti by Mary Renda. The emotional disconnect might have also had to do with the perspective that Taking Haiti was told from, that of US Marines, who while their story deserves to be told, as all humans stories should be, I felt hungrier to hear the side of the story from Haitian citizens, whose stories are more marginalized. Indeed, Danticat asserts at the end of the first chapter of her memoir, "Have You Enjoyed Your Life?", "I am writing this only because they [my uncle and my father] can't. (26)"

Edwidge, I'm Crying

Congratulations, Edwidge
Your Brother, I'm Dying managed
to do what Taking Haiti could not

Make me cry

And anytime i find myself crying i
in a defensive self-reflection ask
why am i crying

reading about Uncle Joseph's death
made me weep. He said
"live long enough and you will see everything"
They had killed him
i was convinced

there are many ways to kill someone
they all boil down to the root of
not caring whether they live
or how they live

and that's how Krome killed Uncle Joseph
and how the neighborhood gangsters killed him
and how the paramedic killed him
they did not care if they lived
they did not care how lived

why am i crying
because i've been reared to review the elders
i have romantic notions that the old
especially the old and good, like Uncle Joseph
should be rewarded for surviving so long
that instead of harship in old age
be given some touch of paradise on earth, rather
it seemed the world on worked to motivate Uncle Joseph
to die sooner

and so i was angry
at my birth country
and reminded
of why i don't feel i belong
who is trying to kill me
(who does not really care if i live)
(who does not really care how I live)

even when i watched Babel
i was frustrated

whenever a story is told
i wonder
this is the story you felt needed telling
this is how you chose to tell it
what is missing

tears, reality, truth
the first two i can do without
truth is most important
and everyone's truth deserves telling
and hopefully from their point of view
but if not their point of view
at least from those who do not wish to kill them
but instead from those who cared if they lived
from those who cared how they lived

(Note: Please bear with this first very rough draft poem. I almost didn't post it, but I didn't know what else to do)

Post Script/Poem: Babel was mostly enjoyable to watch, but I had reservations about how the stories of the Korean characters and how the stories of the Moroccan characters were told. I felt aspects of it were unnecessarily sexual, but then I wondered if this was just my being overly sensitive as a marginalized human being (as in, of course they would oversexualize they stories of the Middle Eastarn and Asian characters). Then, I tried to see what nobler purpose these aspects of the story held, what message it was trying to convey. I'm still trying to figure it out.