Women Contributing to Black History: Syd Tha Kyd

Have you ever seen the embodiment a low frequency wave, powdered in cacao, with a smile that shoots out sunrays, and a laugh that reminds you of a carefree child running through the park? If you ever need an example of what that embodiment is, look no further than Syd Tha Kyd from The Internet.

Understanding your Privilege at a PWI when you are nonwhite

Behind my privilege of what is truly the white experience, I got too comfortable. Being removed from America for the last 2.5 months has only aided to the false perception of the good life, that of a little Latina from Dyckman can make it, that it's all alright. 

I never forgot my roots, that I'm legit so far below the poverty line and that affirmative action at one of the top schools did more than save me. That I am so far below the poverty line I sold cupcakes for two years at school. This is that New York City state of mind hustle. 

But I genuinely allowed myself to believe that the rest of America was like New York City. That in my privilege bubble of a private education at a PWI I was safe, that that was enough of a clap back against spiteful critics. 

My love for travel, my goal to travel the entirety of our country has been given a reality check; I will not be treated fairly because of the color of my skin or my Spanish last name. I can encounter someone willing to bring me to my death. 

And I fear for my cousins who are half Indian, because maybe some backwards person will treat them unfairly because of their last name, that when they are older they would be demonized to be "terrorists" because an Indian name to uneducated people might as well be a Muslim last name, and "by default" a terrorist. 

I fear the well being of all of my friends, as to be honest, none of them are exclusively a white American. 

I have been brain washed with a fat 72k scholarship and an acceptance to travel abroad to think that I actually mattered to the rest of the country. 

I was naive to think I had to speak up for the whites that aren't a "threat" because the ones I've known have been somewhat kind and understanding. That they too may experience sexism and poverty. However, no matter how many kind a white person will be to me, they will never be worst off than me. 

I can't believe there are people out here that are more about dollars than about chance. They won't feel my pain. 

Gyptian's song "Nobody no cry when poor people die," is true to it's most extreme extent.

I solemnly declare to stand up for all of my marginalized people. We will not be alone. We will be the eyes and ears and protectors of each other. 

Black lives matter. 

Native lives matter. 

Muslim rights matter. 

Trans rights matter. 

LGBTQ rights matter. 

Immigrant lives matter. 

First generation lives matter. 

Homeless lives matter. 

Latino rights matter. 

Women lives matters. 

Marginalized lives matter. 

Trump is not my president. 

gangs?

my whole life i heard "soo-woo" out my window

it was something i didn’t know

but it was frequent, like the crow calls

from birds perched outside my home

men pitched it high and low

so i started calling too

out my humble dyckman abode

something "birds" surely do

didn’t know what a gang was, 

but i sure knew what they do

scare, murk and kill niggas

even for a two by two

but no one taught me the difference

between family and a gang

so in my notebooks i scrachted in “ABT”

said it’s cause that’s my sister’s dad

not affiliated with ANY gangs. I'm reflecting on how i would hear soowoo so often, every man's call distinct. it began to sound like a song, something birds do on perched trees as they call after each other. i mention crows because i heard them a lot outside my window when i lived in Ellwood st.

i moved out of dyckman when i was 13, i never learned that soowoo was affiliated with a gang until much later.

"abt"= all about thayer. i didnt know it was a "gang", i just thought it was a trendy graffiti thing, so i grafittied my own notebooks because my sister's dad is from thayer, just a few blocks away from me.


if you google "abt graffiti thayer" portraits  of Abbott Handerson Thayer come up , lolololol 
google searches are so eurocentric, gtfoooo

How to Succeed in Poverty Without Really Trying (published in CONTRARIWISE)

Why would anyone choose to work and pay for an apartment, especially in larger cities like New York. You can lead a middle-class lifestyle just as easily if you’re dirt poor. You know, the kind of poor where your mattress is a bench on Central Park and your salad consists of the fallen leaves from the trees with their own special salad dressing: dog pee and dirt in place of poppy seeds, vinegar and oil.

Why do poor people struggle so much when they literally get things handed to them? Granted, they are handed to them not on a silver platter, but rather on a tray of pity and reluctance (or compassion). Poor people have the world in their hands! No, literally, they have the planet Earth in their hands as they desperately grab onto the grass.

In this piece I offer you a concise, to-the-point explanation of how to succeed in poverty without really trying, a sequel to Broadway’s How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. (Mind you, that reference eludes me, as I don’t even know what the musical is about, but the title is relevant, so let’s just be one of those people, you know, the ones who use stark references to seem like they know what they’re talking about).

hunting season

I close myself off when I need help the most. I close myself off from the ones who love and believe in me the most. I close myself off because I believe that I deserve nothing but the bare minimum. I close myself off because I do not know how to accept and receive that love, help and support. I close myself off because I've learned how to self-care and self- preserve otherwise. 

My struggles do not exist in a vacuum, but rather, are part of a larger narrative and collection of experiences. 

Being a person of color often feels similar to that voyeuristic element and participation that occurs in museums; the sense of always being on display. Of having to perform. An open field to be looked at, critiqued picked and pulled apart. Hunting season for the white gaze. 

We self- edit and self-regulate ourselves. 

Emotionally gut wrenching and visceral.  

dancing smoke

Thick smoke fills the apartment full of roaches, and I imagine it dancing. 

I spin under it as it envelops me,
and I so desperately want to become it, easily disappearing in the air. 

In the smoke I’ve made a friend, 

One who keeps me company while my mother holds her cigarette in her hands

Every time she smokes, my friend returns, 

and I trail after it...as I desperately trail after her. 

We danced together, the smoke and I. 

Gray clouds that I floated on. 

She concentrated on every inhale, every blow, 

So I started to flush them down the toilet, hoping that would bring me some attention, but it didn't work. 

My friend came back, and I said I was sorry, said my mother loved her more than her daughter’s own folly. 

The smoke took a disliking towards me, 

and the air made me choke, 

and I sucked on my pacifier, 

hoping to revoke, 

all the memories of our friendship, 

as a means to cope. 

Until my mom burned her cigarette on my arm...

Sure it was unintentional, a quick lagging in her arm 

but I grew resentful and stopped chasing after her. 

With me not after her, there was no smoke to comfort me, and I was truly alone. 

And when I became 16, I still danced alone, no father to admire how much I had grown. 

ON BEING MIXED RACE- Based on my experience in America, the DominicanRepublic and Paris.

Being mix race is a very interesting "concept," especially as a Dominican. Before NYU I identified solely as Dominican. I identified as Dominican before I even identified as mix-race and way before I had to acknowledged that being mixed race entailed being both white and black. 

It’s not that Dominicans are denying that they are black, is just that as mix race country, who has experienced quite a lot of oppression (from Spanish colonizers, to when Haiti seized control for a brief period, to the Trujillo dictatorship), we do not think of it as “white and black” the way it is thought about in America, who has a particularly distinct concept of blackness and whiteness (obviously, with Jim Crowe laws, “Sep. but equal," KKK, war on drugs etc etc etc etc). 

Being a white Dominican is not at all the same thing as being white in America, so if you told a white Dominican they are white they will just say, no I’m Dominican. If you told a black Dominican that they are black, they will just say no, I’m Dominican. It’s about ethnicity NOT about “race.” Understand this before you get heated up because America sees "race" and not ethnicity. 

la petite femme

La petite femme.

En fait, elle n’est pas petit,

Seulement dans sa peau

Elle veut être petite,

Car elle veut une homme plus grand qu’elle à venir,

à venir dans sa peau,

de vivre dans sa peau.

être une seule âme, un esprit, mais deux corps

daddy's little girl

Broken women are looking for a god 

and men are looking for broken women

He takes her, goes in,

she relunquishes herself to him. 

Virginity: masked with big, nice, round titties

Virginity: masked with big thighs, the size of cities

<<She's cumming>>

                        //She came//

She comforts herself because it's to a church she came. 

And at the end of his torso is where she kneels and prays. 

the little island descendant that could

She drowned in a blue dress

The fabric hugging every curve; every inch with every turn

It was as if she was going deep under the Caribbean sea

The waves hugging every curve; every inch with every turn

And she came up,

Her beautiful Dominican island in her hand

And she showed the world

That even people like her can