WEBVTT
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Hello loved ones.
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This is sister doctor Alexis Pauline Gumbs,
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founder of the School of Our Lorde,
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and this is week 3 of our 21 week
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Resurrection Sunday series
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in honour of the persistent, unstoppable, survival
of the spirit of black lesbian poet warrior mother
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Audre Lorde.
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So this week, the poem that we're going to look at
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is called The Brown Menace, or,
Poem To The Survival of Roaches,
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which was published in Audre Lorde's collections,
New York City Headshop and Museum in 1974.
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And this poem is amazing to me in many ways.
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For me, it's one of the places where
we see Audre Lorde talking about
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survival on terms that go beyond
the human species.
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And...oh I have so much to say about this poem...
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but... why don't you check it out for yourself?
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"The Brown Menace,
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or Poem To The Survival of Roaches.
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Call me
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your deepest urge
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toward survival
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call me
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and my brothers and sisters
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in the sharp smell of your refusal
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call me
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roach and presumptuous
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nightmare on your white pillow
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your itch to destroy
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the indestructible
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part of yourself.
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Call me your own determination
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in the most detestable shape
you can become
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friend of your image
within me
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I am you
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in your most deeply cherished nightmare
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scuttling through the painted cracks
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you create to admit me
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into your kitchens
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into your fearful midnights
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into your values at noon
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into your most secret places
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with hate
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you learn to honor me
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by imitation
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as I alter -
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through your greedy preoccupations
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through your kitchen wars
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and your poisonous refusal -
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to survive.
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To survive.
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Survive."
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So this poem is incredible, confrontational,
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really takes on white supremacy's project
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to exterminate people of colour, very specifically,
"The Brown Menace".
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So right now in our contemporary society,
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what immigration policy looks like,
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what the war on drugs,
i.e. the war on the poor, looks like,
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is the same project of extermination,
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and we can see it in, um, 1978,
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Michel Foucault would talk about it in terms of
what's now called "biopolitics",
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I wanna remind you all this poem came out in 1974,
before he coined that term.
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And, this is an incredibly confrontational way
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to say that when you seek to
marginalize a portion of your own species,
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you seek to destroy the
indestructible part of yourself;
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you seek to not survive.
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And at the same time,
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this poem is amazing because it does
this deeply interpersonal work
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of how that which we want to destroy
when we see it in other people
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is really something we're working through
in ourselves.
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By using the figure of the roach in this case,
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Audre Lorde brings out that visceral feeling.
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The roach being the "most detestable shape",
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that most hated yet most resilient creature
that we think of or know about on this planet.
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That species that will outlive us, no matter what
we do to ourselves on this planet.
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And this poem itself has survived.
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I see legacies of it in the performances
of La Chica Boom,
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who does Juan Cucaracha shows,
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talking about what does it mean to take on
that status of the most hated creature.
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Cherrie Moraga shouted out this poem
at this event in Oakland several years back,
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and she talked about what it means to say
"call me roach",
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really to take on in identification and solidarity,
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that figure that is the most feared
by society.
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So I love this poem for all of that.
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And the assignment, the challenge for you,
should you choose to accept it,
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is to think about that person
who gives you that feeling.
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A person who you are disgusted with.
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It may be a person that you know
in your community or your life;
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it may be a political figure.
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...For a long time it was Clarence Thomas.
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And think about what is the lesson
for your evolution,
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that is tied to that feeling you have
for that other person;
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that other, other other, person,
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who you would want to say is nothing like you,
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but actually may - in your ability to see them -
hold the key to an indestructible part of yourself
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an evolution that you can demand from yourself
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at this moment because you can see them.
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That's your assignment.
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And, I want to read one of the poems...
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I worked with this poem 26 different times
for all the letters of the alphabet today,
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and I wanted to dedicate to us,
this Poem For The Letter S.
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"S" is for Sunday and survival,
and here it is:
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The Poem For The Letter S is
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survival
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survival
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sisters sharp smell shape scuttling secret
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survive
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survive
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survive.
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So that is this week's Resurrection Sunday
ritual for us.
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If you want to get in touch with me
and find one of your alphabetized poems
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to aid you, like a vitamin, as you seek to look at
that indestructible part of yourself,
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that you don't want to look at,
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but that you're seeing in other people [ LAUGHS ]
who disgust you,
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please hit me up,
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you can check out the School of Our Lorde webpage
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to find our how you can get involved.
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And have such an amazing week!