Watch Us Rise

by Renée Watson

  I lean forward. “What do you mean ‘incite discord’? It’s not our fault people showed up to the dance dressed up in offensive costumes.”

  “Well, now, perhaps you are not fully responsible for it, but your blog is stepping outside the lines of the parameters set for school blogs,” Principal Hayes says. “I mean, take a look at the other Amsterdam Heights blogs—they mention upcoming events, they share club photos from field trips. You two are being instigators—”

  Chelsea interrupts. “You mean we’re encouraging discussion and dialogue.”

  “No, I mean you’re curating a space that encourages people to be disrespectful. Why didn’t you report the inappropriate comments on the blog to your advisor?”

  Chelsea answers, “We just—I wasn’t checking the comments. I had no idea people were responding that way. But still—we couldn’t have known all of this would happen.”

  I add, “Principal Hayes, we can change the settings. We can make it so no one can leave comments.”

  Principal Hayes considers this. He leans back in his chair, turns from side to side.

  Then he stops and says, “Girls, the comments are not the only issue. It’s some of the actual posts I have a problem with.” He looks at me.

  My chest rises, and my palms get sweaty. “What was wrong with my post?”

  “You said derogatory things about a teacher. Students showed up to the dance in direct response to your post. We can’t have you two inciting these kinds of incidents. This school cannot be seen as a place—”

  “Are you telling me that because I gave information—truthful information—about a personal experience I had and because I shared the history behind why that experience was so painful, I am in trouble?” Now my voice is rising, and Chelsea is the one nudging me in my side.

  “I am telling you that my expectation is for you to be respectful of this school and its staff and monitor student comments. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” we say in unison again.

  “Consider this your warning. If there’s another incident because of your blog, I’ll shut it all down. You’re dismissed,” he says.

  Chelsea opens her mouth to argue, but I stop her. On our way down the hall to the cafeteria, she says, “I just want him to admit that we didn’t instigate anything.”

  “It’s fine, Chels. It’s only a warning. I wanted to leave it at that before he changed his mind.”

  “Humph,” Chelsea says. “If he thinks our blog is starting something at this school, wait till he sees what we post next.”

  “Um, Chelsea, let’s—let’s not push it. We have to be smart. Strategic. Let’s post something less controversial but still in line with our club’s mission.”

  Chelsea doesn’t respond, so I know this means she is not liking my idea.

  “We need to switch it up a bit anyway. We can’t do the same thing every time.”

  “We don’t always post the same thing,” Chelsea says.

  “I know. I meant, I’m just saying maybe we can take the focus off us for a few posts. Share something about other feminists.”

  Chelsea gives a hesitant “okay.”

  “Trust me,” I tell her. “I’ve got some ideas.”

  WRITE LIKE A GIRL BLOG

  Posted by Jasmine Gray

  Feminist Spotlight: Sarah Jones

  Because there are contemporary artists creating work about what’s going on in today’s society.

  Because there is power in inventing

  and reinventing yourself.

  Because the experiences of immigrants

  need to be documented, honored.

  Because women need a space to share their truths,

  a space to be seen.

  Because Sarah Jones is a Tony Award–winning playwright that everyone should know.

  Today’s post features Sarah Jones, a biracial performer best known for creating multicharacter one-person shows that tell stories about sex trafficking, immigration, and human rights. Sarah Jones was born in 1973 and was educated at the United Nations International School and Bryn Mawr College. Here’s a quote from her TED Talk. Get to know her work and be inspired.

  “To what extent do we self-construct, do we self-invent? How do we self-identify, and how mutable is that identity? Like, what if one could be anyone at any time? Well, my characters, like the ones in my shows, allow me to play with the spaces between those questions.”

  —Sarah Jones

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  sophiamays liked this

  magicalme liked this

  wondergirl reposted this

  firenexttime commented: OMG. How many voices did she do in that TED Talk? Amazing.

  writelikeagirl commented: Right? If you close your eyes, you really think there are different people talking.

  brandilux commented: Heard your principal almost shut your blog down. Glad you two are still at it.

  hearmeroar commented: I love that you’re highlighting contemporary artists. Not all poets and writers are dead white men. Yes!

  harlemgirl14 commented: My mom took me to see her show at the Nuyorican Poets Café. SO GOOD.

  robincanton commented: Art that matters, that makes a difference. Love this.

  peaceandlove commented: Just when I thought your blog couldn’t get better.

  principalhayes liked this

  WRITE LIKE A GIRL BLOG

  Posted by Jasmine Gray

  Feminist Spotlight: Natalie Diaz

  Because language is power.

  Because language desires to survive.

  Because nothing is singular.

  Because Natalie Diaz is an award-winning poet

  that everyone should know.

  Today’s post features Natalie Diaz. Natalie Diaz was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community. She has a BA from Old Dominion University, where she was awarded a full athletic scholarship. She played professional basketball in Europe and Asia before returning to Old Dominion, where she earned an MFA. She is the author of the poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec. Diaz has worked with the last speakers of Mojave and directed a language revitalization program.

  Here’s a quote by Natalie Diaz. Get to know her work and be inspired.

  “I don’t believe anything in me is singular. I need to be more than singular. I need to find myself in others, not as a mirror image, but as a wild thing, a thing that is in a forest beyond my self and your self. Maybe because I grew up on a reservation, or in a large family, or always on a team, or as less than 1% of the American population. Or maybe because I believe that the energy in me is the same energy in every other living thing. If I could remember this more, I might hurt people less. I might love people better.”

  —Natalie Diaz

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  hearmeroar liked this

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  magicalme liked this

  sophiamays commented: This blog is the best! Learning so much about people I never heard of.

  wondergirl reposted this

  firenexttime commented: I want to get her poetry book ASAP. Love this!

  robincanton liked this

  harlemgirl14 commented: Read some of her poems online. She might be my new favorite poet.

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  WRITE LIKE A GIRL BLOG

  Posted by Jasmine Gray

  Feminist Spotlight: Reena Saini Kallat

  Because no one should be forgotten.

  Because ocean is body, body is ocean.

  Because art is memorial, art is witness.

  Because Reena Saini Kallat is an innovative visual artist that everyone should know.

  Today’s post features Reena Saini Kallat. Reena Saini Kallat was born in Delhi, India, and graduated from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, with a BFA in painting. Her art explores the rol
e that memory plays, in not only what we choose to remember but also how we think of the past. Her series using salt as a medium explores the tenuous yet intrinsic relationship between the body and the oceans, highlighting the fragility and unpredictability of existence. Kallat has worked with officially recorded and registered names of people and objects that are lost or have disappeared without a trace, only to get listed as anonymous and forgotten statistics.

  Here’s a quote by Reena Saini Kallat. Get to know her work and be inspired.

  “Our ideas and understanding of the world are definitely shaped by who we are, and where we may be located on the planet, so I am certainly aware of how my experience of being a woman contributes and informs the work I make—even though through the work I try and explore ideas that look beyond nationality and other stereotypes.”

  —Reena Saini Kallat, Culture Trip, 2015

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  peaceandlove commented: I love the line “Because art is memorial, art is witness.” Agree!

  kingslegacy liked this

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  brandilux commented: thanks for including women of color on your blog. #inclusive #diversity

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  robincanton commented: Agree with brandilux! #representationmatters

  principalhayes commented: Great post, girls!

  Chelsea, dinner’s ready,” Mia shouts down the hall. “Mom made your favorite—spaghetti and meatballs. You’re so spoiled,” she continues as I walk into the kitchen, which is only about five steps from my bedroom, so I have no idea why she’s even shouting.

  “Well, at least that’s one thing that’s going in my favor,” I reply, and slide into my seat at the front of the table, which is right next to the oven and an arm’s-length away from the fridge, so I could basically fry an egg and pour myself a glass of milk all at the same time. Our apartment is on the small side, and when something happens to one of us, everyone seems to know.

  “Don’t be so dramatic,” my mom says, shoving me to the side to pull a loaf of garlic bread out of the oven.

  “Why does everyone keep saying that? It’s like women aren’t allowed to have any emotions,” I say. My mother closes her eyes and looks like she’s trying to meditate, something she does a lot lately.

  “Chelsea, not everyone is out to get you,” she says, opening her eyes and starting to serve everyone.

  “Principal Hayes is trying to shut us down, Mom. Completely and totally shut us down. Do you understand that?” I ask.

  “Shut who down?” my father asks, closing the door behind him and slipping his shoes to the side. He’s clearly sweating as he takes his jacket off. He throws his satchel, full of student papers, into the closet. He’s a professor of education at City College, and this time of year is rough with grading lesson plans and helping students get better at teaching. “Jesus, it still feels like Indian summer out there. How’s that even possible at the beginning of November?”

  Mia and I give each other a look. “Dad, you can’t say Indian summer.”

  He moves past us to wash his hands, while giving my mom a kiss. It would be pretty idyllic if only the principal of our school wasn’t trying to silence the voices of women, and my dad didn’t just walk in the house spewing some old-fashioned, racist term.

  “According to our People’s History class, there’re a bunch of terms and sayings that have super-racist origins. Like, the etymology of Indian summer was based on the idea that Indians were deceitful—as in—as crazy as summer in November. So even though you think it might be harmless, you just made a statement based on a historically stereotypical and racist statement,” Mia says, leaning back in her chair and smiling at me.

  “Well said,” I say, already looking forward to taking that class my senior year. “You could just say, ‘Jesus, it feels like global warming out there,’ and then you’d really seem like you were socially conscious.”

  “And it would also make you seem like you know a thing or two about science,” Mia adds. I love when she gets all social justice-y. “You two are the ones who sent us to the revolutionary high school.”

  “I stand corrected and will officially never use that term again. Can I blame my stupidity on being old?” he asks. We shake our heads.

  “Excuse me, could we refrain from saying Jesus in that way? Please,” my mom adds, glaring for a moment at my dad.

  Jesus, I say in my mind, but I stop myself from rolling my eyes. “By the way, I wouldn’t say our school is so revolutionary,” I add, “especially since the school, or should I say the principal, decided that our women’s rights blog was too derogatory and was inciting incidents of unrest.”

  “Incidents of unrest?” my father asks. “What do you mean?”

  “She means that they’ve been writing some awesome poems and posts about women’s rights, racist teachers, and the basic takedown of systems of oppression. And truthfully, some people, no matter how woke—and I hate that term—”

  “Right? I mean, I feel like if you say, ‘I’m so woke,’ it’s sort of like saying the opposite. Like I’m so with it and in the know, and whatever,” I add.

  “They think they are, but they’re really just same old, same old. They can’t get with the system, and they definitely can’t get with it when a woman is behind it,” Mia finishes.

  “Can we please pray before we eat,” my mother asks, clearly annoyed. “While I appreciate you all sharing your days with us, I’d like to eat, myself. It has been a long day for me.” My mom is a social worker, and it seems like all her days are full of other people’s problems, so when it gets to us, she’s already had enough. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” she begins, and she ends by asking God to watch over us and guide us in the right directions in the weeks to come.

  I try not to say anything, I really do. I know my mom was raised super Catholic, and that she truly believes a healthy dose of Jesus (coupled heavily with guilt) in our lives is beneficial and makes perfect sense, I just don’t know if I can get behind it. It’s not that I don’t believe there’s some type of higher being, but I just don’t know who or what that higher being is, and besides, I’m so fed up with everything and everyone that I can’t take it anymore.

  “Mom, what if God’s a woman?” I ask, piling my plate high with meatballs.

  My father eyes me from across the table. “Don’t start, Chelsea,” he says. Mia nudges me. She’s heard this conversation before, and it never ends well.

  “It’s completely fine if your God is a woman, Chels. Pass the spaghetti, please.”

  She’s not gonna fight with me, so I try again. “But I mean, why does your God have to always be a man? If God is a spirit, then why can’t that spirit be embodied by a woman? And since a woman is the one that gives life, and not the father, which is what the Bible always tries to make us believe, then I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t say, ‘Our Mother, who art in heaven,’ especially since you’re a woman, and . . .”

  “Enough,” my mother shouts, slamming her water glass on the table. “I understand you’re upset about your little club, but you do not have the right to pick a fight with all of us tonight.”

  “My little club? It’s not a little club. It’s the Hotbed of Cultural Women’s Issues—the Nerve Center of the World, the Command Post of Politics Pertaining to the Pussy,” I shout. I can see my father trying not to smile, and it makes me even angrier. “I know you all think it’s some little joke that Jasmine and I are running, but it’s not. It’s a big deal, and it means something to us.”

  “Chelsea, I hear you, but you can’t just go around starting fires, you can’t act like a child every time . . .”

  “A child? I’m not acting like a child, Mom. Have you read any of our posts? Do you even know what we’re fighting for? It’s the same issues you couldn’t get over, because you w
ere so obsessed with beauty and looking a certain way, and you ended up putting that on me, so that even when I was trying to not care about being pretty—because that’s what you told me to do—it’s all I could ever think about.”

  “Don’t start this again, Chelsea,” my father chimes in, adding nothing else to the conversation.

  “And you,” I motion to my dad, standing up now. “You’re both so concerned with us speaking our voices and standing up against injustices, but now, now that I’m really doing it, you’re telling me I’m acting like a child. Well, I’m just getting started. And we’re not going away,” I finish. I stab another meatball with my fork and shove it into my mouth before I head to my room. I figure the kitchen will be closed after the way I’ve acted tonight, and I don’t wanna have to run into my mom or dad again. I slam my door and start on a new poem.

  Grown Up

  No frilly dresses

  or shoes that pinch. No candy,

  lemonade, cartoons.

  See me grown—my own

  attitudes, opinions, thoughts

  all mine, don’t disturb.

  Who you think I am?

  The woman I’m becoming

  I’m already her.

  Yes, adult enough

  running up against 18

  won’t you see the whole

  me, a history

  I’m crafting in front of you.

  Writing down my dreams.

  A map to lead you,

  directions for who I am

  free out in the world.

  Fall is my favorite season. The crisp air is refreshing after four months of unbearable heat. I love watching the changing leaves and wearing sweaters that are warm enough to wear as a coat because it’s not really cold yet—not winter kind of cold. I throw on an oversize green sweater and head out to meet Isaac at the Schomburg Center. We’re going to view the Emory Douglas collection that’s on display. Dad has officially resigned, so there are no more special private viewings. The closer I get to the center, the slower I walk. I didn’t think going would be emotional, but with each step I take it hits me that Dad will not be in his office when I get there. My heart starts pounding once I get to the corner of 135th and Malcolm X Boulevard. Will Dad’s colleagues give me those sad “I know your dad is dying” eyes? I keep getting them at school from teachers, and it just makes me want to look down at the floor—anywhere other than in someone’s eyes.