Testimonies hold great power, and there is no better feeling than the ability to tell my stories in the ways that are true to my life, my heart and my perspective. In activist and anti-oppression circles, the term “silencing” appears frequently, referring to a particular type of manipulation and subjugation. A person’s words, for whatever reason, are not honored. They are not honored because the person’s existence illuminates an undesirable truth the hearers do not want to face, or their words lead to a place that cannot be accessed fully by travel or imaginative exploration.
Sometimes, I’ve silenced myself and many of my sisters have done the same. They have borne witness to me and to others telling of egregious wrongs that they have experienced or have observed… yet they do not speak too loudly. They won’t speak out for fear of losing something: losing a relative, losing control of their lives, or losing their stories. To them, it’s not a myth that their stories will be repeated without their names to guide them. Anyone can pick up a textbook and read case studies about H, a 26-year-old African-American woman from X with cerebral palsy, or see pictures of happy smiling children online referred to as “happy smiling children in the Y mountains/Z desert/Q farmland.” These people — their bodies, their plight, their stories — are Other. No names in the street, in the book, in the mind, and people only recently have been asking why they are nameless.
Think of Alice Walker’s search for Zora Neale Hurston and discovering her unmarked grave in Florida, and the resulting revival of Hurston’s great anthropological works and stories about the Southeastern United States.
Think of Rebecca Skloot’s search for Henrietta Lacks and how her immortal cells save lives and generate billions of dollars for the medical industry; yet her surviving family members can’t afford health insurance.
Think of the stories behind these 17 words: Prosecutors in Los Angeles have not won a murder conviction in a police shooting case since 1983. Think of Oscar Grant’s trial and what the jurors now carry with them. I think back to a section of Audre Lorde’s “Power,” a poem she wrote in response to the acquittal of a Queens cop whose murder of a 10-year-old boy was recorded:
Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing
has been set free
by 11 white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one black woman who said
“They convinced me” meaning
they had dragged her 4’10” black woman’s frame
over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval
until she let go the first real power she ever had
and lined her own womb with cement
to make a graveyard for our children.
I think pessimistically, “At least he was convicted of something. At least he’ll serve some time.” Justice still feels cold and leaves a bitter, coppery taste on my tongue. The cast of characters are similar and the same bodies are still and cold.
Seek out the stories behind the news alerts; count the years behind the breaking bulletins. Learn the patterns. Cherish the names.
Tell their stories; tell your stories. Be ready if they say, “Where were you when you heard about Mehserle?” “Where were you when the world let down another one of our dead?” When confronting miscarriages of justice, errors in history, and blank pages in books, arm yourself with names and dates. Amadou Diallo. Kathryn Johnston. Sean Bell. Aiyana Stanley-Jones. Hold their truths to be self-evident until all are created equal, until every person’s life carries the same weight as Yeardley Love or Natalee Holloway or even Michael Jackson.
This is the first year I have agreed to write here on Feministe, and I feared using this platform to tell my story. I feared no one wanting to hear what I said. I didn’t want to be drowned out by past infighting and abandonment. Then I reread Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” and I thought. Audre Lorde, a woman who preached the power of poetry and speaking truths to power. Audre Lorde, a woman who spoke truth to power until her last breath. So it is better to speak/remembering/we were never meant to survive. Every silence, every statistic, every appearance of an asterisk hits me as violently as the worst epithet. Do not erase the stories. It is better to speak, even if we cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice.
No one chooses to be exploited. Media are forces, are vehicles of expressing who you are. Of reinforcing who you will become.
Tell stories by choice. Tell stories of life as it should be. It is radical to speak.