RP4: Reflections

Our discussions in class Thursday about our personal research question made me realize something. As my group members each attempted to identify their own obsessions and interests in order to create their own question, I was busy questioning the question. In order to know what my personal research question is, I have to know myself. Who am I? I found the discussion difficult in that there is a paradox that blocks us from receiving a simple answer. We need to know ourselves to establish a question, but how can we possibly know ourselves when we as individuals are constantly changing? We are under a constant barrage of media and educational topics, and the more we explore the more we expand ourselves. The self is indefinite, so how can we, so early in our lives, be expected to establish a question to pursue? It came to me that we can establish a question as long as we do not expect to receive a definite answer. Over time the question will change, as will the answer. It will adjust to our changing selves. It, like us, will be fluid.

Who am I? I feel like most of us in the class were, in one way or another, asking ourselves the same question. In the past few weeks, I have become so focused on Rabasa's concept of Elsewheres, and that every individual person is different, that I had forgotten that we as a collective humanity are still capable of having commonalities. All of us at this point are still on a mission of self-discovery. We are all learning more and more about topics that interest us in hopes that we might better understand ourselves. We share the common journey of self-discovery, searching for a sense of personal enlightenment. What are we here for? What can we do? It seems to me that we in this class are all searching for the answers to these questions. And although it may be frustrating when we cannot find a definite answer, it is only natural to work through that stress and continue on.

I wanted to write this to remind everyone in our class that even as we knock down social binaries, break through borders of race and culture, and establish that every individual is indeed an individual, that we are not alone. We are all on this journey of self-discovery together, and I have been very pleased to have shared my journey with you for the past 9 weeks. I look forward to seeing what answers we do find, and how our questions all change in the future. Thank you, and always remember you do not journey alone.

RP3: "How I Could Just Kill A Man"

The poem “They’re Always Telling Me I’m Too Angry” has been on my mind lately and when the song “How I could Just Kill a Man” came up, it definitely resonated with some lines of the poem. The line “I could easily kill several million random white folk just to feel a little balance on this poor earth” (Chrystos) stood out to me the first time I read the poem. I thought of it as too violent, too out there. As I read the rest of the poem and reread it several times, I didn’t have the same reaction to the line. I’m not necessarily agreeing with it, but I then had a better understanding of why that line is in the poem. I get why Chrystos said it, and it all has to do with the anger that the narrator has, but I thought it as, using the violence that the oppressors have used. Now that violence is not only from the oppressors to the oppressed, but even among the oppressed, “But I’ve known since I was little that no matter how many of us they kill it’s only ok for us to help them kill other brown folk or to cheat each other or hate each other.” The colonizers have taught us to turn on one another.

The song “How I Could Kill a Man” by the Hip Hop group Cypress Hill definitely made me think about it. I remember seeing the title of the song for the first time, and I didn’t even bother listening. This song came up again a few days ago and I automatically thought of Chrystos. The chorus for the song “ How I could Just Kill a Man” goes, “Here is something you can’t understand, How I could just kill a man.” For various reasons this violence is seen in various similar communities, which is violence within a community (or within people of color). The Chrystos poem has to do with the oppressed (predominately people of color) and it addresses that no one will ever know what another person experiences even if they try (and that goes for everyone), but it would be even more difficult to try to understand what an underrepresented person has gone through.

“How do you know where I'm at
when you haven't been where I've been, understand where I'm coming from.
While you're up on the hill in your big home
I'm out here risking my dome, just for a bucket or a faster ducket,
just to stay alive yo I got to say fuck it.
here is something you can't understand, how I could just kill a man.”
-“How I Could Just Kill A Man” by Cypress Hill