Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Provo Women's Day
8 March, 2017 



The following is a transcriptof my speech for Provo's Celebration of International Women's Day, 2017.

 Courtney (@CJaneKendrick ) invited me to speak at the Lecture Series that kicked off 2017's Provo Women's Day. I was honored to be able to share my experiences as a woman of color, living in Provo as a student. I was scheduled to speak alongside women who are doing great things in the community, and I encourage you to research their organizations and projects (http://www.provowomensday.com/lecture-series.html). Provo is a weird and wonderful place; beyond the boundaries of the university campus is a community that has taught me about tremendous love and immense patience-- even if there's a long way we still have to go. A link to a video recording of the lecture series hosted by Provo City in the Council Chambers can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNrk-1t3FyY


I thought a lot about what I wanted to say today, and I decided I don’t want to lecture you or throw discourse at you. I don’t want to give you an expansive overview of my history or list off all the mean things kids used to call me growing up. I’m not going to share an encyclopedia entry or dictionary definitions of racism, sexism, or intersectionality. And I’m sorry about this in particular, but I’m not going to give you any advice about how to be a better ally to people of color, because I know that’s what some of you might have been hoping to hear.  
I’m just going to tell you some stories.

I’ve spent the last four years studying storytelling. I’ve written dozens of essays picking apart, mapping out, deconstructing, examining, and experimenting with plot and character. Everyday, I get to broadcast stories from people from all over the world and I’ve gotten to learn from people who are the gatekeepers of the oral tradition in their respective families and communities. I’ve been lucky to engage with storytelling every day, and to be able make my bread and butter out of the study of narrative. This spring, I will have lived in Provo for five absurd and frustrating and astonishing years and more important to me than the diploma I’ll be getting, are the stories that I’ll take with me.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to be able to share some them with you today. Because telling stories is really all I know how to do (it often gets me into trouble and sometimes gets me out of it). And most importantly, I’m grateful to share my story because women of color don’t typically get to share their story in their own words (unless it’s written by someone else or they’ve cast Scarlett Johansson).

This is mine.

I remember the exact moment when my identity stopped belonging to me and me alone. I remember very vividly when the gap between who I am and who society sees began to open wide.

I was 7-years-old.

In my second grade classroom, there was a tent set up in the corner to read in during free time. I remember unzipping the flap and seeing three other girls already reading in the tent. When I put my first foot in, Reilly H., a blonde ballerina who always wore her hair in braids and really knew no better than any of us, looked me right in the eye and said “no brown girls allowed.” She promptly zipped up the flap and I left to cry in the bathroom. (She also told me I was too fat. I spent a lot of my elementary school years crying in the bathroom).

I was 7-years-old.

I didn’t know about black or brown or white or yellow back then. I didn’t know about intersectional feminism, or racism or institutionalized discrimination or micro-aggressions or minority stress or the crime rates against women of color-- particularly trans women of color who it should be our priority to protect right now--

In that moment, I only knew that my skin was brown and for some reason, that that meant I wasn’t allowed to be certain places or do certain things without the Reillys of the world reaching out to close the door on the me because the world decided long ago that we have to measure each other’s worth by what we can see. More often than not, if you’re like me and your skin isn’t white, it’s hard for them to see the rest of you.

When I was writing this speech, I went through every name, every stereotype, every derogatory slur, and every micro-aggression that I had ever heard. I am Filipina-American and I am very proud of that-- I love my family and I love my heritage. I love my body and my history. I even love this country, despite the awful mess we make often make of it. I am a hopeful person. Reilly was a just little girl just like me, and she didn’t know what she meant when she said those words but there’s no excuse for you and I not to know better and be better now. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve heard reiterations of “no brown girls allowed” in an impossible number of ways, directly and indirectly, from individuals and institutions who actively harm people of color to even my nicest neighbors and friends who inadvertently assert their entitlement through well-meaning words. Sometimes, the most hurtful things come from “nice people.” We shouldn’t be patting ourselves on the back for being nice-- being nice should be the default. Being kind is active. I would rather be kind than nice.

I am a whole person! Just like any one of you, I am an entire painting but often all people ever see is this one brushstroke!

Sometimes, I feel like I’m wearing an invisibility cloak-- a cloak that allows privileged people to to see around me and to see past me. I didn’t bring a presentation or a Powerpoint today, because to tell you the truth, my body is my own object lesson in institutionalized racism and discrimination. Part of my experience as a woman of color, is experiencing a lot of issues with body over the years regarding what it really looks like and what I’m told it should look like. I am 23-years-old but the grade school bullying was never left behind-- it was just transformed into impossible beauty standards that make me super paranoid about what I show and don’t show. I used to be teased about dark skin, my squinty eyes, my fat lips lips, and my messy hair growing up. But now, all those things that were funny about me back then are incredibly fashionable now: people ask me how I get so tan (I was born), they ask me how I do my hair (I wake up), and the first time someone told me my eyes were pretty I didn’t believe them because people used to tease me about my squinty eyes until I graduated high school. In second grade, other girls wouldn’t braid my hair.  Three years ago, I went to a wedding in Alpine and strangers came up and couldn’t stop touching it. (I didn’t come here with any advice for you on how to be a better ally to people of color, but perhaps a great place to start is to never ever touch another person’s hair without asking. Ever.) When it comes to my body, I often would rather be invisible than be seen only in part.

In college, traversing the intricacies of being seen and heard means that some days I’m silent for my sanity, and other days I’m screaming for it. As a woman, my tone and my confidence are scrutinized acutely, and as a woman of color, I find that I’m often being made to educate both peer and professor about institutionalized discrimination, not necessarily because I’ve made a study of it, but because it’s easy to point me out in the classroom. The people of color in your communities and classrooms are not walking encyclopedias on racism and discrimination, and it would be wise, and a real act of love, to not treat us as though we are. I would love to answer your questions, but my office hours are not 24/7.

When a prominent documentary scholar visited my school for a lecture, he tenderly asked me, “How do you deal with the apparently lack of diversity at your school?” I couldn’t help but laugh. The answer is, I don’t deal with it very well and I was relieved that finally someone asked me. When a professor told me that I should have taken the opportunity to teach my classmates about racism when I was faced with hurtful Asian-American stereotypes during another person’s presentation, I cried. When people ask me where I’m from and I know they want to ask why I’m not white, I laugh and I say a different place each time depending on how much the person annoys me. For the most part, I’m fine that my presence in Provo makes it a more diverse & multicultural place but I know a handful of many Filipino-American students I’ve met during my five years at a university that boasts a population of over 30,000 and that is a desperate loneliness I would never wish upon anyone. I can’t describe the comfort of looking into the face of someone who looks like you.

I feel a tremendous longing to belong somewhere safe and still. Being the daughter of immigrant parents sometimes makes the concept of “home” impossible to understand: if home is where the heart is, then home, like my heart, is constantly torn between how I am and how I should be. Many of my friends have an insatiable wanderlust and believe that they must find themselves in foreign places; but to be perfectly honestly I have only ever felt foreign and I have always longed for the familiar.

I know I’m not alone in this world, and I don’t want you to think that I only experience sorrow. I know that I have family and friends and supporters who mutually love and empathize with me. I experience all the joys and struggles of the human experience, and often I experience many of them at once and am overwhelmed by the nuance of it all. I’m aware of the missteps, mistakes, and hurdles we must confront to progress. And I do see great changes being made by great people, with soft and loud voices alike, and I know that diversity and multiculturalism make us better people, individually and collectively.

I’ve tried to articulate today how it feels for me to navigate the hypervisibility and invisibility I experience being a woman of color because today is a day about visibility. A very close friend of mine often reminds me that to love is to be seen. To me, today is about love: a love of self, a love of identity, a love of community, a love of humanity. Today is about celebrating and multiplying love among multiplicities where white patriarchy would have us divide it into something lesser than you or I deserve.


I have some conflicted feelings about the gender binary, but women, especially transwomen, femme folks, and other gender & sexual minorities deserve increased visibility in a world that demands the submissiveness of the marginalized. Intersectionality is essential. Our fight for equality must include and prioritize the most vulnerable among us especially transgender individuals, gender non-conforming individuals, people of color, disabled folks, religious minorities, LGBTQ+ folks, refugees, and the impoverished, the imprisoned, the tired among us. 

Here is the list of the other speakers and their topics: 
Michaelann Bradley - Everyday Strong: Mental Wellness for our Provo Female Populations and How You Can Help
Jocelyn Wikle - Why We See Differences in Work & Pay Between Men & Women
Meredith Lam - Provo's Native American Community: How Outreach is Increasing & Raising AwarenessStephanie Larsen - Encircle Together: The Story of How a House Inspired a Community
Alison Faulkner Robertson - How to Start an Empire in Provo
Here is link to a thread that lists various female-run businesses in Provo that deserve your support: https://twitter.com/tre4/status/839505816931577856

Here is a link to LGBTQ+ Resources from Equality Utah. One of the topics that was addressed was the fact that suicide is the leading cause of death among youth in Utah, particularly among LGBTQ+ youth here in the state. https://www.equalityutah.org/resources/lgbt-resource-guide 

Here are some other resources in Utah that are promoting diversity & multiculturalism, and the safety and connection of marginalized people: 
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