Carolyn Holbrook - We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World

Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura, Editors

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis

London

This collection was created in collaboration with More Than a Single Story, an organization in the Twin Cities that presents panel discussions and public conversations where writers of color and Indigenous writers discuss issues of importance to them, in their own voices and in their own words. To learn more, visit www.morethanasinglestory.com.

The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges the generous assistance provided for the publication of this book by the Margaret S. Harding Memorial Endowment, honoring the first director of the University of Minnesota Press.

George Floyd Was Killed in My Neighborhood by Safy-Hallan Farah was first published in Vanity Fair, June 11, 2020. A previous version of How Will They Take Us Away / How Will We Stand by Bao Phi was published in diaCRITICS, June 2, 2020 (diacritics.org). All the Stars Aflame by Shannon Gibney was published in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune, June 7, 2020. A Tangent to a Story about the Smith & Wesson .38, or, Attempts to Be Fully Assimilated into the White American Project Have Failed Miserably, in the Form of a Self-Questionnaire by Sun Yung Shin was previously published in granted to a foreign citizen, Unstately, volume 2 of 3, curator Godfre Leung, Artspeak, 2020, Vancouver, Canada. Financial Trauma by Tess Montgomery is a combination of two articles written for Minnesota Womens Press and a public conversation, also for Minnesota Womens Press, and was published on tpt.org. The poem The Pachuco Himself Considers the Audacity of Language by Michael Torres was originally published in Ninth Letter. The Trauma Virus by Resmaa Menakem was adapted from Resmaa Menakem, Our Grandchildrens Souls: Protecting Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Descendants from the Racialized Trauma Virus (Central Recovery Press, 2021).

Copyright 2021 by Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura

Individual essays and poems copyright 2021 by their respective authors

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press

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Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520

http://www.upress.umn.edu

ISBN 978-1-4529-6647-2 (ebook)

Library of Congress ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021028058.

The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

This book is dedicated to the memories of George Floyd, Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, Dolal Idd, Brandon Laducer, Fong Lee, Duy Ngo, Daunte Wright, and all other beloved BIPOC men, women, and children whose lives were lost to police violence in the State of Minnesota and beyond.

Special dedication to Darnella Frazier, the seventeen-year-old whose courageous recording of the murder of George Floyd changed the world.

David Mura

Carolyn Holbrook

Ed Bok Lee

Alexs Pate

Safy-Hallan Farah

Ahmad Qais Munhazim

Michael Torres

Kao Kalia Yang

Pamela R. Fletcher Bush

Mona Susan Power

Anika Fajardo

Mary Moore Easter

Tess Montgomery

Kathryn Haddad

Erin Sharkey

Douglas Kearney

Tish Jones

Resmaa Menakem

Bao Phi

Marcie Rendon

Michael Torres

David Mura

Suleiman Adan

Diane Wilson

Sun Yung Shin

Samantha Sencer-Mura

Melissa Olson

Sherrie Fernandez-Williams

Arleta Little

Said Shaiye

Carolyn Holbrook

Kevin Yang

Ezekiel Joubert III

Ricardo Levins Morales

Shannon Gibney

Louise Erdrich

David Mura

For readers, this anthology of Minnesota writers of color and Indigenous writers will serve as many things. A presentation of the growing diversity of Minnesota and of the many voices great within us. A series of lenses on the American experience. A bouquet of wordsmiths and thinkers, memoirists and novelists, poets and activists. A panoply of witnesses to the year 2020, one of the strangest and most unsettling in our history. Inspired by the More Than a Single Story series of public panel discussions, this anthology is an exploration of what so many people of color and Indigenous communities have experienced in their own lives; its also an encouragement for each of us, no matter our race or ethnicity, to speak out, to tell our own stories, to own our power.

Editing this anthology has been one of the literary pleasures of my life. Carolyn and I have known many of the writers in this anthology for quite some time. Some we came up with; others we have watched move from young emerging writers to established artists who will shape this states literary and cultural future for years to come. The skill and eloquence of all these voices speak to the literary necessity of this anthology.

But this necessity feels even more urgent in a time of such deep unrest and discord, in a country at odds with itself in unprecedented ways. There has been the Covid-19 pandemic and its resultant economic hardships; there have been the divisions of the 2020 elections that culminated in a seditious attack on the U.S. Capitol. Locally, there was the murder of George Floyd, which sparked protests over the killing of unarmed black men and women and calls for racial justice across the nation and the globe.

In such a time, the stories of people of color and Indigenous people, their reactions to the state of the nation, not only provide valued witnesses to our present but also speak to our future. So often in our daily lives, especially outside our own communities, we bipoc may hold back from speaking what we are truly thinking and feeling; here these writers are giving you their full unvarnished truths. Many write profoundly and prophetically about the quest for racial equality. At the same time, the writers in this anthology are singular individuals and talents; each is telling their unique story with their unique voice about their unique experience in ways that challenge and enrich us.

Family, cultural heritage, the racial landscape of Americathese themes are constantly woven together in these essays. Recounting the sometimes wayward handing down of cultural traditions, several pieces explore the complications of ethnicity, nationality, and family in delightful and surprising ways. Other pieces recount what so many children of color go through in this country, moving from the rich cultural traditions and conflicting ties of their families to the often hostile environments in school and in their neighborhoods. The writers help us understand their childhood difficulties trying to figure out their ethnic or racial identity, trying to understand why certain people react to them in such negative ways, trying to articulate their own feelings of alienation, isolation, and at times racial self-hatred. Other writers bring a broader political context to their identities and stories, through their experiences as an LGBTQ+ person or as a Korean adoptee or mixed-race individual; several pieces, particularly those by Native American writers, explore the historical and ideological roots of racism and social inequalities and how those roots are manifested in present-day America and what we might do to address these problems.