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Imperialisms

Vol. 3 (2022): Reverting the Gaze: Resisting Humanism & Hegemony in the West

Please Call Me by My True Name: A Journey for Understanding

DOI
https://doi.org/10.25071/2563-3694.110
Submitted
December 9, 2021
Published
2022-06-13

Abstract

Who are you? Our identities are constantly evolving. They are complex and complicated and beautiful, like the tangled branches of a vine that intertwines. This poem is a critical journey into identity and the historical pieces that produce the whole. It chronicles the uprooting of a people, physically dispossessed and, worst, psychologically traumatized by personas invented by the oppressor to justify their displacement. It tells the tale of uncomfortable truths and personal triumphs, bearing witness to the cognitive dissonance that feeds inhumanity and violence. As painful as it can be, journeying through the darkness to reclaim your truth can be a liberatory step for healing and self-love. With this in mind, below I offer a response to the unrelenting encounters of anti-Black racism, the hypocrisy and hegemony in dominant discourses, the constant self-proving and emotional violence one must navigate as a means of survival, all too familiar with Canada’s unique brand of subtle and polite racism. This poem represents an ancestral journey of personal rebirth, wherein I engage in a rediscovery of identity and the vestiges of various forms of oppression that reside within us, offering an ontological and epistemological journey into the self that provides a comprehensive understanding of who I am.