I’m helping to teach a course this semester for pre-service secondary writing teachers. On the first day of class, we all wrote “I come from” poems. This is an activity that comes from Linda Christensen’s fantastic book Teaching for Joy and Justice. Here’s the poem I wrote.
Where I Come From
I come from the thumb of the mitten
knuckled under by desperation, the ‘out of a job yet?
keep buying foreign’ sticker slapped to the slanted back of a ford.
I come from the shame of sweet lilac, of watching the scoop
of a girl’s calf, the scoop of a shirt, the scoop and lift of faces turning away.
I come from normal, from keep it down, from the deep yellow shame of pack it away.
I packed it away. I got a job. I bought American until I wanted something
in my life to last and that’s when things got really fun.
I come from learning to unpack boxes and theories and complications,
from learning to feel a woman’s glance and return it. I come from a place
that binds and packs and calls it freedom, calls it normal, calls it turn it up.
