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A Pure Medley
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Favianna Rodriguez
In a class on culturally responsive teaching at Ithaca College, my professor, Jeff Claus, asked us to create poems of introduction. He was modeling how to use two of Linda Christensen's poetry lessons: “Where I'm From: Inviting Students' Lives into the Classroom” (from Reading, Writing, and Rising Up) and “For My People: Celebrating Community Through Poetry” (from Teaching for Joy and Justice). My poem was inspired by Margaret Walker's “For My People.”
A Pure Medley
This is not about the debated clash of civilizations
But about the vibrant, continuous bleeding of cultures
This is for the Americanized, assimilated immigrants' children
The evolving, eclectic generation
Who never purposely left behind an identity
Who never purposely decided to plow forward and
Who never purposely stopped reflecting back
This is for those who inhale the desire to recount histories
And exhale the desire to discount them
This is not for my grandparents, or even for my mother or formy father, Jorge
This is for my sister and for my brother, George
Who eat lumpia and kare-kare, and pollo saltado and arepa in the same week
Who say Ay naku po and Ay ay ay, and Tita and Tía
Who tan and freckle, drawing constellations on exposed flesh
Attempting to connect fleeting shooting stars
Who sit side by side and are mistaken for
Not brother and sister, or even cousins
But friends
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