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What interests me most, in this opinionate blog, is the final line: "My mother had not been able to figure out how to keep up a correspondence with a man imprisoned for life. Thirty years later, neither could I." See
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Meetings with a Murderer. January 29, 2014.

While typing up the poetry (what an experience!) I felt compelled to write my own short piece. I'm sure you'll notice my influence: 

While they are locked up I

            Look up

            Type up

            Check up

            Eat up

It is so FUCKED UP

The yellow papers scream

I try to answer back

Flying fingers on white keyboard

The only language I speak. 

NOTE: I fixed some clear typos but mostly left as-is. I was also unsure about one or two of the names. 

The first (for Kelsey) is a link to the talk I heard @ Haverford yesterday: a presentation by the anthropologist Tom Boellstorff on "Disability, Online Culture, and Collaboration." It was Tom who gave me the great line (so apt for our work here) that "embodiment is always emplacement," who discussed the "pluralization of worlding" in on-line spaces, offering a needed separation--especially for those who are disabled--from bodily limitations. He described the digital world as importantly "discrete" from the off-line world, but as also "indexical"--pointing towards it ("a bullet hole is an index of a bullet; smoke is an index of a fire; tree rings index how much rain has happened each year; indexicals take us beyond words, and beyond the human...."). The functions of the on-line world challenge all sorts of deep cultural assumptions about what's "immaterial," what "matters." This was all great stuff, and I'm happy to share more with anyone who's interested....

The Posse Foundation Scholarship is NOT a minority or low income scholarship. It is a merit scholarship awarded to students who demonstrate leadership in all different ways. I am a Posse Scholar at Bryn Mawr College from Houston. My POSSE and I did not receive this scholarship because we're minorities or low income, we became Posse Scholars because of our hard work and leadership skills. 

Please share your support through the Bryn Mawr Community and also those back home to spread the word of what Posse really is.

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/16/262789593/white-house-seeks-ways-to-get-poor-kids-through-college

When I was in high school, I took a class that culminated in a group project in which each group had to teach the class about a subculture. One group chose gangs as their topic. They started by showing pictures of different groups of people and asking the class to raise their hand if they though that the picture could be classified as a gang. No one raised their hand when they showed pictures of children playing and happy families, but when they showed a picture of a group of Hispanic men, almost everyone raised their hand. One of the girls in the presentation group then informed us that it was a picture of her dad and uncles at a family picnic.  The whole class went silent. The girl was the only Hispanic member of the predominately white class, and I immediately felt guilty. She showed us our internal prejudices, and it was one of the first times I realized my own prejudices and my white privilege. We did not classify any of the pictures of white people as gangs, but immediately assumed the Hispanic group was a gang. Whenever I think about diversity, multiculturalism, privilege, or prejudice, I always think about this moment and how it made these issues relevant for me for the first time. 

The high school that I went to fostered a pretty competitive atmosphere that lasted for a majority of the time I spent there, but during senior year, when college acceptances were pouring in (or not), it reached a point of certain unsavoriness. As students of color began receiving seats in prestigious colleges, many comments were being made about the "unfair advantages of affirmative action," and many were scornful of the opportunities these students had been given. After reading Sue, I understand that this was a pretty bad microaggression and that it was undermining the ability of students of color to perform highly in academics, but it went rather unchecked at the time; I've always been interested in the topic of affirmative action, and that experience is something I've always kept in the back of my mind.

Switzerland is known to be a neutral country and home to numerous international organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank and Red Cross. As a result, one would assume people living in this country to be open-minded, diverse and non-discriminatory. However, one of my experiences living in Switzerland as an international student challenged my assumptions and demonstrated otherwise. It was frightening enough adjusting to the new temperature, language, people and food. I always had the belief that western teachers were friendly, creative and open to new suggestions. I left Malaysia in seek of a new life, perhaps a hope for a burst of inspiration that would expand my exposure of the world. The International Baccalaureate program allows me to pick a foreign language as one of my six subjects. It was either German or French. I picked French since I was living in the French-speaking part of Switzerland and I thought that the language was easier than German. I remembered entering French class on my first day of school. I was the second student that entered the classroom. The classroom was located in sous-sol, known as basement in English. I remembered how badly-lit and bone-chilling the setting was. When the teacher saw me, she greeted me with a smile and said bonjour. I smile and replied bonjour et merci. In Malaysia, I was always taught the importance of the teacher as an authoritative figure and it was necessary that I remain polite at all times.

I have always struggled answering questions like "where are you from?" "where's home?" "are you Korean?" "what's your name?" because I don't really have one direct answer for any of these questions. I was born in Seoul, South Korea but my family relocated to Yangon, Myanmar when I was a mere 2 months old. I have lived there for 10 years and spoke Burmese, English, and Korean at home and went to an American international school where I briefly learned Spanish and French (and forgot) and went by 3 different names. I then moved to Hanoi, Vietnam and lived there for about 6 years where I was surrounded by remnants of French and Russian colonialism which lingered in the architechture, language, and food. I also went to an international school where I was friends with sons and daughters of UN diplomats who shared similar nomadic backgrounds as I did and never really knew which country to cheer for during the Olympics or the World Cup. I finally moved back 'home' to Seoul, South Korea to finish my last few years of high school before coming to the U.S for the first time. It was until I came to Bryn Mawr where I had to sit down and think about where I was from and how I identified myself. I was always surrounded by friends who, like me, understood that we have a blend of cultures and we called ourselves 'Third Culture Kids'. We knew to expect to hear a string of different countries someone has lived in when you asked them where they were from.