"the diaspora."
Congratulations to our Young Authors’ Councilmember, Faaya, in grade 12 for your Scholastic Art & Writing Award!
We are so proud of Faaya for submitting her poem, “the diaspora.” which received an Honorable Mention in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the Minnesota Writing Project. This is Faaya’s third year as a YAC member, and we are so honored to get to amplify her brilliance.
Read the full piece below:
one.
we are the children
of the unspoken diaspora
and the tongues our mothers cut out
to feed us their language
that has been long forgotten.
here, there is no such thing as racism and diaspora
only, ethnic cleansing and tribal wars.
burning villages
and burning homes
and burning people
and a history that has never been our story.
where the muhammads and noorias
have never stepped foot outside this country
but have lost their fathers to the diaspora
our names are the synonyms of bloodshed.
yet, it is not diaspora
when we didn’t even notice that we are disappearing.
from the blue nile to the great rift valley
our blood is why the river flows and the plants grow.
how could we be a part of the middle passage
when we were slaves on our own land.
this is a place
where prisons and diaspora are no longer two separate lines.
no chain is stronger than the one tying us to this land.
the red terror is diaspora
diaspora is the red terror.
our language and our people are disappearing
our neighbors tell us the story
of the man and his wife
and the goats that never existed.
what they mean
is to stop dreaming of things that’ll never exist
as if we too aren’t going to be lost to the diaspora.
and where will we even go when there is a war in every country but our own.
we are supposed to be the children of freedom
in a corrupted country
with a corrupted government and a corrupted military
yet they say, the government can’t be corrupted
when it’s our people running the system
and the military
and the guns that slaughtered our students
and murdered our free speech.
by calling ourselves by their name
we are turning our backs on the blood spilled in our names.
mount entoto watches us as we die for this land.
there's a war going on in our country
and they play their national anthem to cover up the fact that we are disappearing.
and they stand there and wonder why we are disappearing
like the diaspora wasn't their creation.
there is a reason our parents never looked back.
protesting is resisting and resisting means being arrested.
prison and diaspora are no longer two separate lines.
where foreign countries look more like home
then this place ever did.
with their green cards and american dreams,
why wouldn’t they leave us?
but, we are not the children
of forgotten dreams and burning villages
of highlands waiting for our return.
we are the children of this land.
and we would rather die
then let them change our story of rape and genocide
of villages burning to the ground
leaving daughters fatherless and sons motherless.
no river or lake can wash away the scars written into our flesh.
from the blue nile to the great rift valley
to highlands waiting for our return
our people are disappearing
our parents are disappearing
our language is disappearing
we are disappearing.
two.
we are the parents
of the unspoken diaspora
and the blood we spilled
for the children we’ll never see.
here, there is no such thing as gun control and civil rights
only, racism and diaspora
bloody streets
and bloody guns and bloody faces
and a history that has never been our story.
where we spend our nights poring over textbooks
to learn a language that can’t even pronounce us correctly.
our tongues are forgetting the language our fathers beat into our heads.
from new york city to los angeles
our blood flows through these streets.
the roots of this country
are built off our assimilation and genocide
our civil wars fueled by their fears.
and they would rather murder a hundred of us than leave our motherland.
we were stabbed in the back
by our own government
our own media
our own military.
we are the parents
of brothers and sisters
who were arrested for protesting arbitrary arrests.
of american dreams
broken english
and an unspoken suicide rate.
the police are hunting us down
both in these streets and in our schools.
what was the point of leaving
if we’re going to die anyway.
where prisons and diaspora are no longer two separate lines.
no chain could have kept us from leaving that land.
our fathers’ names tell the story
of generations of white-washing and stolen land.
and we would rather die
in a foreign country
then stay there.
would rather die
then admit that
the danakil depression is the only time depression is okay.
even bakri sapalo was buried in a different country.
where the great plains remind us of genocide and mass murders.
broken english that can’t even save us from our extinction.
no ocean or river can wash away our stories.
we are disappearing, dying
and our media does not care.
our government does not care.
our military does not care.
yet, we still call ourselves by their name,
even though our blood has been spilled in our names.
prisons and diaspora are no longer two separate lines.
the atlantic ocean whispers
promises of green cards and american dreams
but never told us that no language will pronounce us correctly
except for the one that is disappearing.
our mother tongue has been buried in the diaspora.
both here and in ethiopia
we are the parents of depression.
the parents of a suicide rate
wrapping and wrapping around our throats
slowly choking and drowning us.
africans do not belong in the water.
we do not belong in the water.
yet our children are drowning in our disappearance.
remembering how fate and destiny are far too intertwined.
the diaspora will leave no one alive.
we are the parents of a disappearing language.
of children who know nothing besides war and diaspora.
of highlands waiting
wondering when we will go back to the land we once called home.
from new york city to los angeles
to the great plains begging for our death
our people are disappearing
our children are disappearing
our language is disappearing
we are disappearing.