This is a letter to a past, present and future brown girl.
I love you. I love you and every follicle of hair on your body, removed or intact, waxed, plucked, shaved and threaded. This is a letter to tell you to do you in order to survive and to move a little freer in this world. I still love you the same. I love you with your hair, I love you hairless. I love you to your roots. This is for the brown girl who was called a monkey in the third grade.
I love you and every stretch mark that will eventually sculpt your brown body, hips, thighs, breasts. They are roots that will only grow as the consciousness of your brown womanhood grows.
This is a love letter for the 8-year-old brown girl slammed against the school wall by her teacher for accidentally kicking leaves into the building on a fall day. This is for middle school brown girl whose legs were “too long” for her male teacher’s gaze. This is for the brown girl who took catcalls and unwanted hands before she took algebra, who was sexualized in class, who was made culpable before she knew the language to describe her sexuality or ever wanted to know shame.
This is for the brown girls who are told they are too loud. This is for the brown girls who try to be white or who try to fit the mold that whiteness will hand to you. Know that it won’t fit you. It never will, because it can’t ever encompass your wholeness; it will never know your roots. Recognize that you are unknowable.
Brown girl, remember the heady aromas of chicken and cumin and garlic and onion that hit you the minute you walk into your Mama’s house. Learn how to replicate it; it will help you survive. It will nourish you to your roots. Never forget your grandfather who blasts rancheras from his garage while working and who feeds the birds, makes magic, who laughs with his whole body, who peels fruit and always offers it.
Always hold close the sound of Hindi over a crackly phone connection. Brown girl, let your nostrils be adorned with nose rings and the smell of sandalwood and smoke from everything and anything burning on the streets of Delhi. Remember that dancing heals you. These things are as familiar and natural as your own two hands. They are worlds familiar to you. Escape to them as others around you study them in lecture halls. Know there are people whose living depends on your worlds dying and being consumed on repeat.
Brown girl, know that your body carries a certain history that will extend beyond your lifetime and that stretches your entire ancestry. Let only people who understand this touch you; let those people love you. Let only the people who will fight for your body’s existence love you. Because they are the only ones who ever can. Brown woman, people will come for your whole body, your people, your mind and for your sanity and your peace. This will knock you to the ground, diaphragm first, and render you breathless, suffocating, trying to inhale again. Remember your roots. Breathe.
