Introducing San Francisco-based poet Carina Aguirre, and her poem written during the “Poetry and Poverty” course at the University of San Francisco.

 

A man came up to me

He said

Girl you the prettiest white girl I ever seen

It was wrong cause that’s all

he could see — leering at my sexuality.

It’s wrong to judge me

By my body type

Cause it’s all hype

It’s wrong to judge me by my pigment

Cause that’s just a figment, of society’s warped up stereotype

He had it all wrong

His vision of me

Isn’t who I am supposed to be

Because I’m brown — Mexican to be exact

That’s just a fact

But I’m more than that.

If you get down to it

those grapes in that wine you sippin’ on

Were picked by the hands of my fathers and mothers

Blood   sweat   raw  flesh

mixed in with those fresh

Fruits, picked for pennies a pound

poisoned with pesticides in the ground.

 

So respect my people by respecting me

those hands, those souls that feed

you with cheap labor, and die trying

to be here, in a country that still

will try to kill

their opportunity for a better life

so they won’t have poverity strife

 

So stand back cause I know who I am

And now I need to make it known

That I got a mind not just a body

I got a name and it ain’t hottie

C A R I N A is how you spell it

I am a woman – a proud Mexican

Believe it

Don’t trip

Get it down tight

Cause you’re wrong, and I know I’m right.

 -Carina Aguirre

 

 

 

 

“I still can’t believe we have a president who is mixed like me. It’s one thing that we have a black president but for me it’s even crazier because he’s mixed. I feel like I come from a smaller off shoot of black people because I am mixed. People say I’m African American but that doesn’t include the other half of me.”–Maya Rudolph from 2009 interview

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations is an exciting new exhibit at the Brooklyn Historical Society.  The exhibition is an oral history project of more than 100 voices of people of mixed heritage or who are part of the Mixed experience and have called Brooklyn home at some point in their lives.  There’s a wonderful interactive website as well that you can check out here.  Don’t miss this exhibition.  As former director of the Museum’s oral history project and the originator of the project Sady Sullivan says: “What will it be like to listen to stories about the social construction of race in 150 years?”–Heidi Durrow

We were so excited to co-host a special Q&A with filmmaker Lacey Schwartz with Be’chol Lashon, a non-profit organization that works around racial ethnic and cultural diversity in the Jewish community, for the amazing documentary film,Little White Lie.

The film made us laugh and cry and there were more than a few collective gasps.  Don’t miss this great documentary about a mixed chick who grew up believing she was white.  The film is in limited release in a few cities NOW.  Find more information here.–Heidi Durrow