Textbook Victimization

By Laura Ivers

I’ve been raped, beaten, tattered and torn.

You’d think with all of this

my spirit would be knocked down

all broken and forlorn.

But I’m still standin.’

Still lovin’. Still tryin’.

Still carin’.

The textbooks say

I’m suppose to have problems

X, Y, and Z.

But I say them textbooks;

they just plain don’t know me.

My spirit, it just refuses to bend

to the dictates of all their erudite whims.

My spirit can’t be caged by

no statistical analysis,

of the percentage of people that

supposedly succumb to the problems of

X, Y, and Z.

I just say: That ain’t me.

I’d rather be still standin.’

Still carin’.  Still lovin’.

So don’t lock me in

to all the dictates of those

textbook erudite whims.

*   *   *   *   *

I  used my poetry to handle memories that were surfacing from my childhood.  At this time I started reading the poetry of Langston Hughes . . . and then everything just sort of fell into place. The abuse which took place in my family seemed to mirror our racist society at large and so I began to play with these themes within my writing.  I wanted to unveil the hidden structures that runs throughout the three sisters of oppression:  Racism,  Sexism, and Classism.

I sought to unveil not out of a sense of revenge, but rather as a call to action . . . to heal over this dreadful past.  While I was doing my healing work, racism got hooked up in my mind as the perpetrator.  It felt like it was literally raping my soul.  And then there was the coming to terms with my own Whiteness . . . for what my culture had done.  Writing these poems was the only way that I knew how to ask for forgiveness; and it was the only way that I knew how to effectively express my sense of outrage.

Poetry became my balm of salvation, my experience of Amazing Grace.