1/When I was in Anna Deavere Smith’s class last semester we were tasked w/ writing a personal narrative. A week before my performance @KamalaHarris suspended her campaign which led to me rewriting my narrative to discuss the broken ‘The American Dream.’ Here is that performance:
2/"Today I stand before you, to humbly announce my candidacy to qualify for a position within the American Dream. I truly believe in this Country’s bounty.”
(part two of performing the narrative, the rest of the text to follow).
(part two of performing the narrative, the rest of the text to follow).
3/"On my father’s side, his grandfather was a sharecropper in Walls, Mississippi, and his grandparents were enslaved along the Mississippi Delta. On my mother’s side, her father and his mother arrived at the Port of New York on the USS Santa Teresa from Valparaiso, Chile."
4/"On the ships manifest next to my grand-grandmothers name when asked why she was coming to America with her small child, she wrote: vivir el sueño.
To live the dream."
To live the dream."
5/"She, my great-grandmother and her husband, my great grandfather are interred at Arlington Cemetery for his service in WWI upon the Naval ship the USS Tennessee. My mother fought for Civil Rights in the ‘60s and ‘70s."
6/"Now, I fight for Voting Rights because I firmly believe every eligible voter should have equal access to the ballot box without impediment. My family is the quintessential American family. This is such a consequential year."
7/"This Country’s dream has been festooned with corruption and like we’ve never seen before. I hope that you’ll find validity in my qualifications and solemnity in my character. God bless you and God Bless America."
[Lights off and lights back on]
[Lights off and lights back on]
8/"Today, I say with deep regret, I will be suspending my campaign to qualify for a position within the American Dream. I do not have the financial resources to continue, and with $200,000 worth of student debt. I didn’t have them to begin with."
9/"Wait, I’m sorry. I was speaking with a Southern accent because I was trying to appeal to your sense of Americana. And while 30% of voters did say it made more likable, I still shouldn’t have co-opted the accent. I’m sorry. I regret it."
10/"I’m afraid I may have diluted myself and some of you in the process about the State of our American Dream. On this campaign trail, I have spoken to you about grief, about my own profound personal losses."
11/"And one of the lessons that I learned in watching someone go through a protracted painful illness is I learned to identify anger, denial, and the psychological resilience that goes with it."
12/"And psychological resilience, it turns out, is an essential part of the American Dream. But after talking to my constituents, I can see that that resilience has been weaponized against those most marginalized..."
13/"...weaponized by the most pernicious words in the text of the American Dream:
'If you just work hard enough, you can achieve anything!'
When my mother died, she was very angry because she took those words to heart."
'If you just work hard enough, you can achieve anything!'
When my mother died, she was very angry because she took those words to heart."
14/"My mother worked at the behest of those words. Those words kept her working three jobs. Those words kept her from teaching her children Spanish because it wasn't American enough. Those words kept her working even while she was nauseous from chemotherapy and from radiation."
15/ "My father, his anger is buried so far down, it's like talking to someone who died years ago. My father told me in a rare moment of raw honesty that if he hadn't been a professional basketball player, this country would have disposed of him long ago."
16/"When my father's knees blew out, he was cut from the team. And then he told me that he felt like his life didn't have any value anymore and honestly because this country showed him that his life does not have any value outside of that team."
17/"The American Dream is, it's self-service, but it's in self-service of the white men who started this country. And I think we can change that. I think we can change the narrative of this country through policy."
18/"But that means that we have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about this Country. And I think that's possible. How American of me."
So thank you, @KamalaHarris, you inspired me to write and perform those words. #KHive
So thank you, @KamalaHarris, you inspired me to write and perform those words. #KHive
