Identity: This is a creative response to Navigating Spaces by Grace Taylor.
I explore the idea of cultural confusion that comes with being of two different races and trying to find that comfort of being in between.
Brown Blood Whit Skin
I had never really known how it was that I had come to be,
I thought myself a puzzle, someone had taken four pieces
of four different jigsaws and tried their best to fit them with one another.
'Where I'm from everyone exists within differences, nameless'.
Colonialism, some puzzle pieces were larger then others so they took up all the space
coming from afar to take an entire race.
Marginal-ism, some were so much stronger then the others,
so they pushed everyone else away.
Egotism, some thought themselves smarter so they sat tall,
All coming together in a place that was too small.
I am Samoan, Chinese, American and German.
I am the product of colonialism.
If the history of my island were to have a face,
it would look like mine.
Huge brown eyes standing shallow amongst the white of my skin,
like my insides are trying to get out,
spread themselves smooth over my fare complexion.
'Where I'm from, I am the brownest of the white and the whitest of the brown'.
I fight inside that messy in-between
of being proud and being confused.
Of being home but standing outside.
To embrace the thick air that my Samoan blood revels in,
or to feel the sting of frost that my European pigments adore.
'Uncertain in my uncertainty, beautiful in my uncomfortable, all for you on display.
Where I'm from, a relatives twelve years in the meeting, the furthest from me, yet the the identity most assigned to me that colonised my other half. Irony smiles'.
I have many nations residing in my single body,
though there is no place for me in any one of them.
There is a solid place for me in all of them.
You can't separate your fingers from your hand,
or your toes from your feet without being disabled in some way.
As you can't separate one culture from the other within you,for the latter will suffer.
You can't try to belong to only one, if you truly belong to many.
You must embrace them all.
You were born with perfectly formed hands and feet, be thankful.
You born with an interesting blend of flavours, sour spicy salty and sweet.
Be thankful.
'Where I'm from I am always half, but half for me means full. I am a race within a race'.
Where I live now, mirrors who I am inside.
This land is of the world, but the world is also in this land.
A kaleidoscope of colour and countless structures of varying facial features.
Beautiful.
Different tongues spoken, different greetings, different embraces.
But all live together in a long great land.
Whole
God of nations at thy feet, I look into the ground and see my face.
Autearoa, this is where we all come together.
Where all my cultures run through the streets like they run through my veins.
One.
'Where I am from, the language of indigenous licks every ear. And culture is not a tourist attraction,
it-just-is. Where I'e from breaths the largest population of pacific people away from their home land, yet we can trace bloodlines two generations back... Where I am from is always my future, because I am not one, I am of a people'.
I am Samaon, Chinese, American and German, but I was born in New Zealand.
This is where I come from and where I am from.
'Where I'm from you've gotta know where you're from. Because no-one else will'.
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