Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades

Author:Daphne Palasi Andreades [Andreades, Daphne Palasi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

HYPER / VISIBLE / IN / VISIBLE

BROWN GIRLS BROWN GIRLS BROWN girls who, in a nutshell, become big shots. Who sit atop stages in London, Sydney, Hong Kong, and in front of lecture halls at Princeton, NYU, and Oxford, who speak on panels and give interviews and lead conferences and are quoted as experts on the state of X,Y, and Z. Who utter sentences that begin The ways in which and The intersection of and It’s apparent this work is emblematic of blahblahblahblah. Oh lord! Excuse us, but could somebody please cut out our tongues? We touch the masks we’ve learned to wear, gaze into mirrors at our “better” selves. Lieberry. Sorry, sorry—Lie-brair-ree. We stutter: Lie-lie-lie-brary. Library. We are congratulated: What a splendid presentation you gave! An excellent performance! We mash our fingers to our straining smiles. Thank you! we chirp. It’s so wonderful to be good! It’s so wonderful to be good enough.

Afterward, in bathrooms replete with air fresheners that automatically spritz a cucumber-and-cantaloupe perfume at specified intervals, a scent that does not completely mask the underlying smell of piss and shit, we perch on toilets. We grasp the edges of our masks and find we cannot tear them from our faces.

We gain recognition for our work. How does it feel to have achieved SO MUCH as a Woman of Color in your field? What does Your Community think of your work? (Are you their hero, villain, savior?) What do you make of the state of [fill in the blank] in the U.S. with regard to your art, your research? Of racism, immigration, the newly elected president, formerly a businessman and reality TV star—Do you know he’s from Queens, too? We stiffen. We are determined to keep our responses apolitical, lest we offend. We are afraid to bite the hand that feeds us. Because we are the good immigrant daughters, the oh-so-hard-working ones, the paragons of the American Dream, aren’t we? (But for what? For whom?) Nobody asks about the work itself. We are so visible we have become invisible. Odd that in this moment we dreamt of, we are faceless.

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