Janice made reference to this one.
And I appreciate Janice's very, very thoughtful introduction.
And this is my story.
And it is a true story.
As those of you who know them, people and our nation,
you know that we are split between two countries.
For us, it is always one continuous home.
But an international border split us.
And it didn't used to be a problem.
The problem happened after 9/11.
And it has gotten worse since about moving back and forth
between the two, well, back and forth in our homeland
basically.
And so I have this problem now.
I can't go back and forth, because so many of us
who were born at home have no documentation of our birth.
And so that has been the problem.
And the issue comes up only when I get an invitation
to travel outside the country.
And I don't have a lot of desire to travel outside the country.
But I just think, well, maybe if I went, that would be fine.
And I think without having that documentation,
I think it's fine.
I could probably leave.
I just can't come back.
So that's the trick.
So at different points, I have looked
into the possibility of getting some of the documentation I'm
supposed to have.
But every time I start on it, I stop and I just tell myself,
I say to myself, and I believe this--
I don't need papers to really tell me who I am
and where I should be.
So this is that story of my thinking about this
and relying on the memories of other people
and trying to account for myself.
And this is the one that's called "Birth Witness."
"My mother gave birth to me in an old wooden row
house in the cotton fields.
She remembers it was windy, around 1:00 in the afternoon.
The tin roof rattled a piece uplifted from the wooden frame,
quivered and flapped as she gave birth.
She knew it was March a windy afternoon in the cotton
fields of Arizona.
She also used to say I was baptized standing up.
'It doesn't count,' the woman behind the glass window tells
me, 'if you are not baptized the same year you were born.
The baptismal certificate cannot be used to verify your birth.
You need affidavits,' she said.
'You older siblings, you have some don't you?
They have to be old enough to have a memory of your birth.
Can they vouch for you?'
Who was there to witness my birth?
Who was there with my mother?
Was it my big sister?
Would my mother have allowed a teenager
watch her giving birth?
Was it my father?
I can imagine my father assisting her with her babies.
My aunt, who was there when I breathed my first breath,
took in those dried particles from the dry cotton
fields, who knew then that I would
need witnesses of my birth.
The stars were there in the sky.
The wind was there.
The sun was there, the pollen of spring
was floating and sensed me being born.
They are silent witnesses.
They do not know of affidavits.
They simply know.
'You need records,' she said.
'Are there doctors receipts from when you were a baby?
Didn't your parents have a family Bible, you know,
where births are recorded?
Were there letters, announcements of your birth?'
I don't bother to explain my parents are
illiterate in the English language.
What I really want to tell her is
they speak a language much too civil for writing.
It is a language useful for pulling memory
from the depths of the Earth.
It is useful for praying with Earth in the sky.
It is useful for singing songs that pull down the clouds.
It is useful for calling rain.
It is useful for speeches and incantations
that pull sickness from the minds and bodies of believers.
It is a language too civil for writing.
It is too civil for writing minor things like my birth.
This is what I really want to tell her.
But I don't.
Instead, I take the form she hands me.
I begin to account for myself."
I still have those papers.
[AUDIENCE APPLAUDS]