Well, now I'm working on a prose book.
And I'll read a couple of sections.
I worked in the poets in the school program for 15 years.
And what I've been trying to write about
is to try and capture some of the complexity about being
Black, middle class, light skinned.
About having internalized a lot of the stuff about racism
and needing to say some of the stuff
that I've internalized to put it out there, even though I don't
like to talk about some of these issues
because it entails revealing.
Well, some of the ugly things-- you
know Shelby Steele says that when you talk about race,
there's no greater distance about any other subject.
More in race between the public self and the private self.
You get it.
There's this vast difference between what people
say and talk about out loud and the private stuff
that's going on in their heart.
And in fact, what I found is you've got a public self,
you've got a private self, and you've got a private self
because there's a lot of stuff you don't even
want to say to yourself.
And you've then you push it down even more private.
So I've been trying to get at the private private self
and write about some of that stuff.
And so I'm just going to read a couple of these things.
This is called "Lightning Bug."
These are the ones I'm going to read
to about children and about me observing children and working
with them.
"Lightning Bug."
"Last week I was teaching poetry to a group of eight-year-olds.
I asked the children to do a self-portrait with words.
One girl, a Black girl, Alicia, didn't like the way she looked.
I told her for everything she named
that she didn't like about herself,
I would name one thing I didn't like about myself.
She named teeth.
I named stomach.
She named fat.
I named feet.
She named hair.
She named skin.
This little girl in the second grade
thinks she is ugly because of her hair and skin.
She said the only pretty girl in the class
is Tracy, the white girl.
I sat down next to her and told her
how when I was in second grade, all the girls were
drawing pictures of white women, movie stars
and saying when they grow up, they wanted to look like them.
I asked her if she understood what I was saying.
She said I was trying to tell her she would never be white.
Another girl in the class told me
that if you were going to Black Muslim school,
you would think white people were ugly.
Yes, I said, but I wonder if it's
possible to break all mirrors.
I told Alicia that to me she is beautiful, her hair, her eyes,
her skin, her nose.
I told her the most beautiful thing
about her is the energy inside of her,
which is so full and bright.
It bursts out as if she has a lightning bug inside.
She wrote this poem.
My name is Alicia.
Mrs. Derricotte thinks I'm pretty.
She says I have a lightning bug inside me,
and that makes me smile.
Later, I wondered why lightning bug?
Was light inside the same as light outside?
Was dark inside the same as dark outside?
Had I substituted something even more insidious
because it is abstract?"
Language is amazing.
Isn't it?
You just have to be so aware, I think,
when you're working with language.