The Politics of Queerness in an Ethnic Conflict Zone: Part 6

 “I love to eat, that’s why I’m so fat. You’re pretty, not fat like I am! You should eat more,” they said, trying to insert some light humor and chuckling while dipping a piece of naan into their tea as we waited for the Big Plate Chicken (dapanji) to be ready.

Looking down, their eyes filled with tears again and their voice wavered. “I like living at home with my parents. I would stay here and take care of them, and just be single my whole life. That I could bear. I could accept it; I could stand it. To take care of them in their old age would be a great honor, and I could live out my days alone, working as a photographer in my hometown until my death. If I could choose, that’s the destiny I would pick. But my parents will not stop pressuring me to get married. And I fear dishonoring them.

“But I cannot bear to get married, and I cannot bear to stay with my parents any longer under the pressure and their unending disgust for me. Even though I want to stay—I like Xinjiang, I like my hometown, I want to be among my own people—I have no choice but to go abroad. The only way my parents can accept me is if I run away. So that’s my plan.”

A rock sat in my stomach and all I could do was nod and keep eating the chicken in front of me. 

In 2017, a year after Patigul and I had the conversation above, the Chinese state confiscated Uyghurs’ passports. Patigul’s shimmer of hope to go abroad dwindled. Patigul decided to try moving to the city of Urumchi instead, as I had suggested earlier.

Patigul was messaging me all the time and I didn’t know how to help. I hoped that meeting with two Uyghur lesbians, Salamet and Guzelnur, would help Patigul find some other sources of support. We found an empty bar in a Han neighborhood one afternoon, ordered tea and spoke in hushed tones in Uyghur—chances were pretty good that anybody else wouldn’t be able to understand us this way. 

“It’s really hard to find an apartment in Urumchi if you’re Uyghur, you know that right?” Salamet told Patigul. “For us Uyghurs who were born in Urumchi and own a home, it’s still okay, but right now with the...situation... It’s hard for Uyghurs from the countryside to rent in the city. Really, really hard. The government isn’t allowing Uyghurs to rent houses at all. The situation is really tight right now. It’s almost impossible to find a house.”

An Islamophobic and racist paranoia gripped the city of Urumchi in 2017. A video of Uyghurs who had joined ISIS in Syria went viral. Uyghurs attacked the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan. In response, the entire region panicked. 

In an effort to appease the local Han population, control the Uyghurs as a cheap labor source, and maintain “safety” and “security” in the region, the government embarked on a mass incarceration campaign that landed over one million Uyghurs in concentration camps in the countryside that year. Rounding them up in the city, sending them back to the countryside, and refusing to rent homes to any Uyghurs in the city was a key part of the plan. The government's goal was to keep Uyghurs under strict lockdown, maintain space in the city to be more available to the Han, and restrict Uyghurs in the countryside for easy incarceration. Patigul was just one of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs who were affected by this policy of state terror and economic development.  

“What about on a university campus?” Patigul asked, turning to me. She hoped to enroll in English classes.

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “But there’s no guarantee.” 

“Because my parents are forcing me to get married. I need to get out of there,” Patigul said, starting to sound panicked. 

“Can you do anything else though?” Salamet asked. “Because it’s almost impossible to go abroad right now. You know because of the political situation. Nobody has passports. It’s going to be really, really hard for you to get out. And it’s going to be next to impossible for you to find an apartment in Urumchi that will take Uyghurs.”

“I can’t stay here, I can’t live at home,” Patigul insisted. 

“I might have to marry a gay man,” Guzelnur explained. “I don’t know. My younger cousins are all married and everyone keeps asking me when I’m going to get married. I just keep saying, ‘I will, I will,’ but the truth is that I don’t know.”

When we tried to suggest that Patigul try marrying a gay man, Patigul shook her head no. 

Patigul was trapped. They had no desire to marry a gay man, and who can blame them for not wanting to enter into a life of falsehood and secrecy? However, because of the political situation, they were not able to go abroad nor move to the city. Patigul experienced state strangulation as well as cultural strangulation from strict Uyghur norms and moral righteousness around heteronormative standards. 

Like Patigul, many queer Uyghurs find themselves ostracized by their own families. Patigul is trapped in the middle of multiple outside forces that are stripping them of their freedom and autonomy. Patigul does not have sovereignty over their own body. They are being forced into marriage not only with someone they doesn’t know or love, but also with a gender that they cannot bear to accept. If they were to get married, they would have to live with that bodily and emotional trauma for the rest of their life. 

Losing sovereignty over one’s own body is part of the reproduction of state and colonial violence. People’s interaction with the state and colonial violence overlapped with trauma in the family. Patigul experiences being forced into marriage and plans to run away as the only escape from the violence on their own body. But racist policies in their own country as well as in the US mean that there is no hope for escape. State and colonial violence is reproduced in the family and on the body for the most vulnerable populations. The situation for Uyghurs only got worse as 2017 continued, when people disappeared into internment camps. 

That day at the Han bar was the last time I saw Patigul. We exchanged a few messages after that, but soon it became too dangerous for them to have any contact with me, a foreigner, as police were arresting anyone with foreign connections. 

LGBTQ+ Uyghurs experience significant stress and oppression from a limited definition of social membership that excluded them. Acceptance into the Uyghur community was based on the imagined moral superiority of “pure” (sap) Uyghur bodies. Whether based on virginity or heterosexuality, membership into the Uyghur community was exclusive and strict. Members policed non-conforming bodies. Straight and gay Uyghurs could be ostracized from family and friends, fired from their jobs, and kicked out of their homes if their body and bodily practices were different from the moral code. For simply loving who they want to love, they were criminalized.

But the exclusive definitions of Uyghur purity was especially oppressive for queer Uyghurs because when they found themselves kicked out of their own community, they turned to only find more discrimination from the Han community. Not for being gay this time. They faced discrimination from the Han simply for the ethnic identity that they were born into that was stamped on their ID card, for speaking their mother tongue, for looking different. For their ethnicity alone, they were criminalized. 

From both communities, they found hatred simply for being themselves. 

Queer Uyghurs thus find themselves ostracized from many aspects of society: textbook double minority oppression. Double or triple minority oppression is when a person is a member of multiple minority or underrepresented groups, a minority within minorities. For example, a queer black woman in a STEM field would experience triple minority oppression. The intersectionality literature has tackled this issue. 

Layers of disadvantage for sexual and racial minorities suffering several marginalized statuses are well documented in the literature. For example, Rosenburg (2017) documents the criminalizing and policing of minority youth in white spaces of homosexual “care.” Many Black authors have written memoirs, personal essays, and poetry about the intersection of minority racial identities and queerness. Queer Black Americans live at the intersection of racism and homophobia. I draw a parallel with queer Uyghurs whose lives intersect with ethnic discrimination from the Han Chinese straight and queer communities. Patigul’s story illustrates the double minority oppression that queer Uyghurs experience in Xinjiang, where their only hope was to escape their homeland completely, but they cannot due to discriminatory practices that restrict movement. 

The Politics of Queerness in an Ethnic Conflict Zone: Part 5

Patigul was a transmasculine Uyghur I met through some other queer Uyghur friends on WeChat. Patigul was wide and stocky with a short and simple bowl haircut and husky voice. They wore sneakers and men’s clothes. They never put on make-up. For Uyghurs, this was a big deal because most Uyghur AFABs adorned make-up daily and excessively.  

I use they/them pronouns for Patigul. Although in Uyghur the third person pronoun (u) is not gendered, I feel this is the best translation to describe Patigul because in English this pronoun choice best describes their genderqueer and non-binary presentation. 

When coming to meet me at the restaurant, they gave the phone to the cab driver so that I could give the driver directions to the restaurant. This was common practice at the time before smartphones were widespread and the restaurant we were meeting at didn’t have an address. On the phone with me, the Han cab driver referred to Patigul as “xiaohuozi,” a slang term meaning “guy” or “dude” and only used for men or boys in Chinese. 

“I get misgendered all the time,” Patigul explained to me later. “I don’t really fit in to either category.” 

We sat across from each other at the restaurant holding cups of tea to warm our hands. We were in a Uyghur restaurant and we spoke in Uyghur, so Patigul was worried someone would overhear us talking. 

Staring at me without blinking, they leaned across the table and maintained strong eye contact, their lower lip quivering. They stayed silent for several moments. We just stared at each other, breathing and not knowing what to say. I could see they were about to cry. All I could do was keep maintaining eye contact and hold their pain for a moment. I felt like collapsing under the weight of it. 

They continued in a low voice, not mentioning their queerness, but talking about a subject many Uyghurs in their twenties are concerned about: marriage. 

“My parents are freaking out because I’m not married yet, and I don’t think either they or I can stand it anymore,” they sighed. “My parents are so scared I’m going to miss my childbearing years. They’re forcing me to get married.” Their eyes suddenly grew darker, and they looked down to gaze into their tea. Without looking at me, they continued. 

“I can’t do it. I have got to get out of here. I have no choice but to leave. I mean, I want to leave China.” They looked up at me again, tears pooling in their eyes.

I sighed. Wanting to leave China was a refrain I heard on an almost daily basis from my Uyghur friends. Who wouldn't want to leave a country where you lived with daily humiliation and disregard for your culture and humanity based solely on your ethnicity alone? 

My shoulders caved in upon hearing this sentiment from Patigul. I knew it was nearly impossible for Patigul to get a passport. China was not too keen on giving out passports to its minority peoples, especially Uyghurs and Tibetans, fearing that they would deflect, come back as spies, or come back with tales of the freedom they witnessed in other countries. Even if Patigul was able to get a passport, as some Uyghurs did at that time (the year was 2015, before the major crackdowns of 2017-present began), the odds of Patigul successfully getting a visa to the US was even smaller. And even then, having the monetary resources to live in the US with even a shred of comfort would be next to impossible. 

The chains of colonization and imperialism penetrated the odds stacked against Patigul in finding even a shred of hope for freedom. 

Knowing that Patigul would most likely never be able to actually leave the country, I encouraged them to try to find a safe and happy life in China. 

I tried to comfort them and offer some hope. I said that maybe things will get better in the future. I said that maybe it is our role to be on the frontier of changing society, even if that means sacrificing ourselves for the freedom of future generations. 

It was shortly after Qurban Heyt, the holiday two months after Ramadan where Muslims celebrate when Abraham sacrificed his own son (called Eid al-Adha in Arabic). I used the Uyghur word “qurban” to describe a similar type of sacrifice. The sacrifice I was asking them to make was to risk hate and discrimination by being out, but slowly changing society around us in our refusal to conform. I encouraged Patigul to move to the city, get an apartment, and live their life as they wanted and as open as possible, while keeping in as little contact with their parents as possible. 

Patigul sat staring into the tea, their eyes blinking rapidly and face twitching as their breathing quickened. They shook their head back and forth.  

“Foreign lands (chet’el) and this place are so different. Here, we can’t even talk about our situations openly in a restaurant let alone be open and marry like you can,” they countered back. 

I had transplanted foreign romantic ideas to a context still suffering the weight of colonization. I had utopian visions of building a path to the frontier of change that imagined a new life for queer people. I brought the perspective of a privileged white person. I did not take into account that the freedom to protest and live against the grain—to be “abnormal”, to be queer—is not always feasible. Although they dreamed of moving abroad, in reality Patigul didn’t really have the resources to live on their own in the city as I suggested. 

Patigul is trapped by the limitations of society—money and their job. They are trapped by their religious and heteronormative family. They are trapped by the Islamophobia of the Chinese police state. They are trapped by the racism of the US that limits visas to Chinese people. They are trapped by the xenophobia of the US that limits asylum seekers and refugees. They are trapped by the global norms that limit freedom of movement of the poor in Global South in order to limit their access to the resources of the Global North.  

They don’t get the privilege of forging new societies or lives. But, in fact, they are braver than those of us with legal protections and alternative opportunities to escape home. People like Patigul are the true brave ones as they navigate hell on earth with two choices: being forced to marry or being forced to become a refugee. Indeed, many queer refugees do come to the United States seeking asylum from the oppression of their own families and countries abroad. 

The Politics of Queerness in an Ethnic Conflict Zone: Part 4

 A couple months after the day in the park with Merhaba, a male Uyghur friend Hemrahjan and I decided to go to the local amusement park and walk around. It was the first day of Eid, which is the first day after Ramadan and a major holiday in Muslim communities. 

As we were exiting the park, we saw two young men in their early twenties walking by in identical outfits: tight black pants and pink shirts with a hood. We had been seeing people—young and old, men and women—walking around all day wearing identical outfits. Wearing identical outfits was a local tradition for close friends and family on the first day of Eid. 

“Would men in America wear matching outfits like that?” Hemrahjan asked, pointing his nose in the direction of the men with pink shirts.   

“Not really, men don’t really do that too much in my country,” I answered. 

“I think it’s really weird for men to wear the same outfit.” 

“Oh, really? Why?” 

“I just think it’s wrong. It makes them look kind of gay.” 

“But it’s so common. There are a lot of men wearing matching outfits today,” I countered. 

“Well. I think they look gay. There are also a lot of messages written in the men’s bathrooms in Urumchi, saying ‘Add this number for this gay chat group,’ or, ‘call this number if you’re gay.’ But there isn’t any of that in my rural hometown,” he said. 

“Do you think that might be a reflection of your hometown’s prejudice that kept gay men there silent or afraid?”

“I think homosexuality is a bad influence from the city, or from Han culture maybe. Why else would those messages on the bathroom stalls be so common in Urumchi, but nonexistent in my Uyghur-majority hometown?” He was drawing causation from correlation. He didn’t see that the nonexistent messages didn’t mean that gay men didn’t exist, but rather that they were made silent by the culture. 

One reason Uyghurs are discriminatory against queer people might be due to their isolation. Ever since Xinjiang was incorporated into China in 1955, Xinjiang has been relegated to China’s periphery. Before that, Xinjiang sat at the central crossroads of Turkish, Indian, Chinese, Persian, and Russian trade. 

Keeping Uyghurs subjugated as “minorities” and “peripheral” peoples instead of the center of economics and trade as they once had been and as they could be, they are deemed Other, Less Than, Inferior, and Peripheral, which encourages their marginalization and isolation. As a result, Xinjiang and its people have a lack of access to the outside world, which means a limited perspective and lack of exposure and awareness of other cultures and peoples, include queer culture and people. 

Xinjiang is also isolated partially because of tight state restrictions on internet and book censorship. When Uyghurs do have access to the outside world, often with the Han community, they have access to representation of queer people and are more likely to come out and be open with their sexual expression. This leads some to believe there is a causation relationship with Han people, urban life, and queer identities.

“I don’t like it when Uyghur men do stuff like dress the same,” he continued. “It freaks me out. Feeling weird about gay expression is just a kind of obsession I have.”

I felt as though I had been slapped in the face. Hemrahjan was one of my closest friends. His feminine-of-center gender expression had always made me feel comfortable with him. For a long time, I had thought maybe he was queer like me. His words hurt. 

Was it possible that this was an expression of internalized homophobia? I couldn’t help but think, trying to justify his biting judgments. 

Hemrahjan judged other men for dressing the same and for writing messages on bathroom stalls. In doing so, he policed other Uyghur men’s bodies. In the backdrop of a military police state, policing was not limited to the state, but enforced on bodies by the Uyghur community. 

Why are many Uyghurs prejudiced against queer people? You may ask. I have one theory. Uyghurs are surrounded by a Han Chinese discourse through school textbooks, newspapers, the media, pop culture, and political propaganda. One part of this discourse states that religion is a backward and uncivilized practice. The state discourse declares that Uyghurs should forego Islam for the leadership of the Communist Party in order to embrace scientific thinking and modernized development. Uyghurs are under constant surveillance and threat of arrest for believing in and practicing Islam. 

In response, they have developed reasons for why they believe practicing religion is necessary and justified. They view Han people, many of whom are atheists, as lacking a moral compass and capable of doing great evil because of it. Many Uyghurs believe that as Muslims they inherently have moral superiority over Han people. For many Uyghurs, being heterosexual, cisgender, modest, and staying chaste before marriage is a part of this imagined moral superiority over the Han vis-à-vis their Islamic faith and the tenets of that faith tradition. 

Straight Uyghurs may find comfort in this idea of moral superiority. Subjugated populations often do. It’s the reverse of majority privilege. They may find refuge in a cultural distinction from an ever-increasing Han presence. With the encroaching state security presence, especially state security that threatened to eliminate their religion and language, straight Uyghurs escaped into their Islamic beliefs and held fast to the belief that a better life awaited them in death.

While Hemrahjan declared his disgust over these expressions of possible queerness, it was clear to me from his description of the “very common” messages on bathroom stalls in men’s bathrooms that the queer community was nevertheless alive and well in Urumchi. 

The Politics of Queerness in an Ethnic Conflict Zone: Part 3

One day, several months after the wine night on the rooftop, a female Uyghur friend Merhaba and I went to a public gathering held in a park near downtown. We approached the large cement square, which was enclosed on all ends with a metal fence. The gated entrances were guarded and patrolled by security officers with helmets and anti-riot gear. Inside the wire fence enclosure, Uyghur music blasted on the speakers. Uyghur and Han people danced Uyghur dance inside the fence. 

Merhaba whispered in my ear before we entered the gates.

“I should first tell you that a lot of the people who come to places like this to dance are girls who have been broken* if you know what I mean,” she said giggling. The term “broken” was often used to describe unmarried girls who were not virgins. The word used in this context was a euphemism for promiscuous or divorced women. 

When we entered the gates, a Uyghur male dancer immediately caught my eye. The dancer was performing the part traditionally reserved for women in Uyghur dance. The person was leading a dance troop of Han women. 

“You see that man,” she said. “The one dancing like a woman? He is both a man and a woman at the same time. We call that hem jinisy. That’s what I meant when I told you that the people who come here are not good people. They are like that.” 

But I couldn’t take my eyes off of them** because I was intrigued. There were Uyghurs in the city who were non-conforming in their gender, like me. 

If they can do it, I can do it, I thought to myself. But comments about homosexuality continued in my daily conversations. 

*buzulghan qiz bala, sometimes also said as “buzulup qalghan” to indicate something accidental or unwanted.

**I'm using "them" in this context as a non-binary or gender-neutral third person pronoun, not as the plural third person.

The Politics of Queerness in an Ethnic Conflict Zone: Part 2

As the years progressed (I lived in the same neighborhood from 2014-2017), I built closer and closer friendships. Women talked with me openly about their romantic lives. Perhaps because of their stereotyped image of a “liberated” American woman that they had gained from television and movies, they seemed to feel comfortable with me. Finding me an understanding and accepting confidante, they divulged secrets to me—about cheating, about having sex before marriage, and about rebellious taboos (like dating Han men). The community had created a conservative, heteronormative façade just like I had. Underneath was the humanity that we all share.

I soon found out that others craved a taste of rebellious freedom and desire to be themselves that I shared. With sly smiles and eyes dancing naughtily, people pulled out cigarettes and alcohol at a party one night. We sat on the balcony at my apartment and breathed in the intoxicating calm of cigarette smoke and nicotine, while the alcohol warmed our stomachs and chests. We gazed at the moon low and large in the sky. Whispered secrets passed from their lips and hung into the air before floating away: 

“Nobody will marry me because I’m not a virgin.”

“I cheated on my husband.” 

“I slept with my best friend’s boyfriend.”    

We ended that night our hearts a little raw from opening up with the help of drugged intoxication. But we continued to build our friendships on vulnerability.

Another summer night in 2015, the air warm and the breeze cool, three Uyghur friends and I climbed up onto the roof of my apartment complex. We looked out at the twinkling lights of the skyline and pretended we were in New York City. We sat on a blanket and passed around plastic cups filled with tart red wine. The happy tunes of a trumpet blasted from my phone’s speakers playing Uyghur pop songs. We swayed to the music and giggled with inebriation.

“Have you ever slept with a girl?” one friend asked me directly. The others looked at me expectantly, giggling softly. Perhaps my masculine-of-center appearance meant that they suspected this about me already.

Despite being with close friends, I pretended that I didn’t understand the question and changed the subject. I was still in the closet. My fear of being ostracized from my only source of support while abroad kept me silent. 

Religion and ethnicity were a staple of everyday life for Uyghurs as an ethnic minority group in China. Eating Halal and wearing the headscarf—or, at least covering arms and legs—was considered foundational social etiquette. Uyghur men and women insisted that the appropriate modest customs protected their chastity until marriage, a key part of the moral foundations of the community. 

As their community was under threat of cultural genocide, holding onto whatever traditions they could was important for them. Controlling women’s bodies became the focal point of cultural preservation because women’s bodies were one of the last tangible realities that they could still hold on to and control. Many in the community--men and women alike--grasped and held on as hard and as tight as they could.

The Politics of Queerness in an Ethnic Conflict Zone: Part 1

I have written before about being Han Chinese and queer in China. What about being Uyghur and queer in China? Certainly that must be different, you might think, knowing I was in an ethnic minority and Muslim region. Indeed. Indeed it sure was.  

Eger siz girim qilip yasingiz, teximu chirayliq bop qalidikensiz! Siz oghul bala bilen qaraghanda opoxshesh.

If only you wore make-up and got dressed up, you would be so much prettier! You look exactly like a boy. 

Comments like these filled my ears on a daily basis, comments that were strange to me partially because they were spoken in a new foreign language that I was learning, Uyghur. 

Uyghur is the language of the Turkic minority peoples living in Xinjiang, the region of Far West China bordering Kazakhstan where I was conducting doctoral dissertation fieldwork. 

I was immersing myself in a Muslim community for the first time. I was still learning the basics of what it meant to eat Halal and fast during Ramadan. I soon learned what people were saying. Like never before in my life, my gender was a cornerstone in most social interactions. 

I soon began to build close friendships with Uyghurs around me patient enough to listen to my stumbling grammar and awkward accent. I slowly became fluent in the Uyghur language as I continued to hear more comments that were strange at first, and then became normal. 

I was told: “Because you’re a girl, don’t walk around with your legs uncovered.” 

I learned: “The word ‘strong’ (kuchluk) is only used to describe men.”

I tried to fit in. I covered my legs with black tights underneath long, loose skirts. I covered my feelings for girls under words, switching out boyfriend when I meant girlfriend. 

I didn’t hide the fact that I might not get married. They reacted with howls of giggling.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” people always told me in response. 

I covered my past with secrecy and silence. For example, when things like my virginity suddenly became a topic of conversation, I lied and just pretended that I was. I had quickly learned that casually mentioning things like going on vacation with my boyfriend at the time, or sharing my plans to move in with him, was not okay because it signaled close intimacy before marriage. Friends instructed me sternly, “You shouldn’t tell people that. It’s okay with me, but it’s best if you keep that to yourself.” 

People assumed I was a virgin when I told them I had never been married. When hanging out with married women friends, they would allude to sex and turn to me to say, “You’ll understand when you get married,” and collapse into laughter. I learned not to correct them. 

For Uyghur people, staying a virgin until marriage was an important part of modesty and femininity. Families checked the sheets for blood on their daughter-in-law’s wedding night. 

Hymen reconstruction surgery, or else buying vials of blood to sprinkle on the sheets, was not uncommon. These were two well-known and widely advertised ways to get around this façade of virginity and feminine “purity."

I was hiding in secrecy and shame a lot during my first several months in Xinjiang. 

My bisexuality was something I had denied for a long time. I had kept it closeted for so long—from my friends, family, and myself—that at first I found it easier to keep that part of myself a secret while in the field, at least for a time. 

My non-conforming gender, however, was not so easy to hide. I like keeping my hair short. I train boxing and jiujitsu and other sports. I dress like a boy and wear boy’s underwear. Uyghur people in Xinjiang made comments all the time.

“You look exactly like a boy,” they echoed on an almost daily basis.

I desperately wanted to blend in. 

“If I’m going to do research in Xinjiang about the Uyghur people, I need to present like them as chaste and feminine,” I thought to myself at the beginning.

I conformed to dressing like Uyghur women. I even grew my hair out to my shoulders for a time. I wore earrings and covered my chest with colorful scarves. I wore makeup. 

And it worked. I found acceptance in the Uyghur community. I got compliments all the time about how beautiful I was. I didn’t feel beautiful though. I felt ugly on the inside and the outside, like eating a sour grape and pretending that it was sweet. And I could feel my mouth frowning more often than it was smiling as I felt that I had to continue eating the sour grapes. I felt like a fake and a fraud for presenting myself in a way that didn’t reflect who I really was.

Why do I write?

I write to share stories. 

Injustice and pain is plaguing our world. I want to understand why, what effect it has, and how we can begin to walk towards a more equitable and inclusive world. I write to share stories that illuminate the pain and offer some hope to extinguish it. 

I want to understand the world better and help others understand the world better. I believe from a better understanding of the world, we can build a better future. I believe there exists a better alternative in leadership and economy to what we have now. But we cannot just sit in our own little bubble and pretend that no injustices are happening as a direct result of our capitalist-driven greed and hunger for power. Our race for bigger and bigger, for more and more is called "consumerism" and "imperialism." The race is driven by ignorance of the way our actions affect others. I hope that by illuminating the stories of the people who are oppressed by the regimes of greed and power, we will understand and see the ways that all actions have a ripple effect. 

I write because ignorance is restrictive. The more knowledge that exists about alternative ways of living and being, then the more we can broaden our horizons about the possibilities that endure for all of us. It’s like researching the cosmos. At one point we thought the earth was flat. Now that we know about the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, the universe, and the multiverse, we as a collective humanity are able to expand our minds to thinking about alternative life forms on other planets and in other galaxies. In a similar way, by broadening our knowledge and our horizons about the ways that underrepresented minorities experience and think about the world, we can build better political and social systems that can support a diverse population in a more holistic way, ultimately benefitting everyone. 

I also write to have a conversation with others and to connect with others. I write to help cultivate empathy in the reader. I write to help others feel less alone in their lives, stories and experiences. I write to help others realize that we are all connected in our humanity. 

The stories I write about are stories of pain and inequality. They are stories of injustice. What’s the point of telling a story about the pain and injustice of the world? 

"Nobody wants to hear about all that depressing stuff," some people might think. 

I feel ya, bro. Sometimes I want to escape into a fairyland of rainbows and butterflies, too. But can we spend our whole lives escaping? What about the next generation? Are we going to willingly let them inherit a world in shambles? Or, are we going to educate ourselves so we can start to build a different world?

My parents used to always say to me, “Life’s not fair.” This statement is SO true. But there are levels to that shit. 

Just like there are levels of pain. The doctor may ask, “How much does it hurt on a scale of 1-10?” Some injustice is a 1. Some injustice is a 10.  

Just like there are levels of infinity: “There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.” -from John Green, The Fault in Our Stars. 

Recognizing that others' pain is bigger than your pain doesn't mean that your pain is not real. Our pain is real too. But some pain is bigger than others. And the pain inflicted by colonization and poverty is more painful to the most vulnerable than some of us can ever imagine. I hope my stories can help us imagine it better. 

I write to contribute to our shared, collective consciousness so that we may all grow and evolve as a species. I write to celebrate and honor my spirit and the spirits of the people around me, so that all of our stories may be told. 

When I honor the gifts of love and creativity, I hope that others may too be inspired to share their art and creativity. In the process of sharing our love, art and creativity with one another, may we feel connected to each other and our shared humanity. 

A little bit of poetry

Pillow 
Soft support
You don't miss me until I'm gone
I'm a good cuddler too.

Mug
Hold me
Touch me
I'll keep you warm.

Jacket
Zip zip zip
I'll make you dip
Don't try to tip.

Cards
Congratulations! they say
Now you're finished with school
Life and freedom can now begin.

Scarf
Patterns and colors
There is no point
I'm just nice to look at.

Map
I make everything seem neat and orderly
The reality is chaos and war
We need to get rid of all these boxes with labels.

Computer
Love and hate
Convenience and slavery
Necessary and toxic.

Towel
Wet and dry
Cold and warm
Naked and covered.

Camera
Capture a moment
Smile and remember this feeling
Try to make the temporary permanent.

Stuffed animal
Cuddles and company
I will never leave you behind
You've been with me through so much.