4.
Your voice. Listen to your voice. I’m going to ask you to read this next part out loud. If you’d like, record yourself. With just audio or even just video. Everyone hates hearing themselves, but I find that the voice tells you more than the words sometimes. Read my words, but hear your voice. Hear it out loud as it comes out of your throat. Hear it through headphones when you play back the recording. Now that you know what to do, scroll down and read it out loud, if you don’t mind.
Help Me Get Ready: Monologue
You’re face, my face, our face
Its all the same now
Black, white, brown,
Yellow, red, tan
My foundation, caked into my skin
Removing texture, color
My contour, blended into a new structure
Removing nature, shape
You’re basically white
They used to say
You’re basically white
They used to say
Blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and blending and,
Until there is no more history
I rid myself of my brownness
And yes, you demand cultural authenticity
To share with you my knowledge, my heritage
So you can take it from me?
Appropriate it?
Bastardize it and disregard its meanings and intensions?
You will
But not without erasing it first
Without covering it up
Reva Kashikar 