Livinglikeriiver - Riiver

In honor of International Womens Day, here is a thread of women of color, queer women of color and trans women of color who deserve to be celebrated today for their accomplishments:

Up first: Sylvia Rivera who is a Latina trans activist, helped create STAR with Marsha P Johnson. She was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. She is a pioneer of trans rights!! ❤️

Bisexual Mexican artist Frida Kahlo spoke out about being disabled after a bus accident. Her self-portraits comment on the female form and utilize traditional Mexican themes and colors!

Kara Walker is a Black artist who creates these very powerful silhouettes highlighting race and scenerios of our past in slavery. She creates many other works as well, but those are my personal favorite. I’ve seen them in person!

Katherine Johnson who is represented in the movie “Hidden Figures”, calculated the precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969. She was a very talented mathematician. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Malala Yousafzai is a prominent figure in our world. Every day she fights to ensure all girls receive 12 years of free, safe, quality education. She is also the youngest Nobel Prize recipient. Even after the gunman incident, her voice never stayed quiet.

Rosa Parks of course. She was a leader in the local NAACP and the civil rights movement, iconically refused to give up her seat. Her willingness to disobey the rule helped to spark the Montgomery boycott and other efforts to end segregation in America.

Marsha P. (“Pay it No Mind”) Johnson was another pioneer in the trans movement. She helped created STAR with Sylvia Rivera. She was a drag queen, sex worker, and while her gender identity remains questioned in discourse, a lot of trans people claim her as one of their own.

Cecilia Chung, an Asian trans woman living with HIV, has spent her life fighting to end discrimination, stigma and violence across marginalized communities first as the former chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

Of course Michelle Obama!! She has focused on social issues like education and healthy living. She was deeply committed to the well-being of our nation and to the future of its people, especially its children.

One more: Patsy Takemoto Mink devoted her life to advocating for gender equality and educational reform. She is the first woman of color and the first Asian-American woman elected to the House of Representatives. Title IX owes its existence largely to her efforts. So thank you to all of these amazing, intelligent, passionate, beautiful, inspiring women throughout history who are fucking badass. I just had to shed some appreciation to them for changing the world and resonating with me to continue follow in my great aunt’s activism for people of color.

Happy International Women’s Day to ALL my sisters and I’m with you in solidarity and power!

“Whoever invented smoothies is literally a god to me like thanks bich for enabling me to drink like 5 bananas this is what i live for.”

—

“Suddenly I needed my heart in a hurry. I offered it to you, cold and dripping, incompletely thawed. You didn’t even wash its blood from your fingertips. As it numbed them, you asked me to kiss your hands.”

— Carolyn Kizer, excerpt of “What the Bones Know” in Cool, Calm and Collected

“Oh, darling….You will be good to me, won’t you?…You will, won’t you?…Because we’re going to have a strange life.” - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“I will never understand why every organ in your body get support and sympathy when it is ill, except for your brain.”

(Chen Chen, Chapter VIII / Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray / Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger / Holly Black, The Cruel Prince / Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God / Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest)

Random Conversation Starters

“So it’s not like I actually want a snake, but more like I want a snake jus tbecause I don’t seem like the type of person that would have one.”

“Excuse you, I am great at being a third wheel.”

“What if he thinks of you as more than a friend?”

“We’re pretty sure she’s dead at this point but then she sits up and demands that we bring her a man.”

“Do you … do you ever think about what kind of weird roommate stories you would tell but you can’t think of any and you realize that it’s because you’re the weird roommate?”

“I don’t particularly care for cake.”

“So I was looking at conspiracy theories on the internet because, well, you know, and it turns out the middle ages might not even exist! I’m in the middle of reading a paper on it.”

“Who would I have a hickey from??”

“Y’all better hope I never pass out and need an IV. I will freak out if I wake up with something sticking in my arm.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa – someone’s in here!”

“You have to ask him because if I ask him, then he’d be going as my friend but if you ask him then he’d be going as your friend.”

“I’m only a little awkward sometimes.”

“Okay, but how do I tell him I like him without telling him I like him??”

“I don’t know how to describe it, but I just feel like your soul is like UUUUGGGHHHHHHHHHH.”

“Hi, yeah, I don’t like you. I mean I do, but just as friend. Will you please just chill so we can hang out again? Thanks.”

“You can try it but realistically speaking probably not.”

“It is not a hickey! It’s one of those airbrush tattoo things. I realize now that the placement and color may have been a mistake.”

“Well, first I’d have to wax my arm.”

“Mom, don’t worry, I have never done the sex or had the drugs or made the fun.”

“He told me I looked like a unicorn today and it made my heart so happy.”

“Don’t worry. I only cried a little.”

“No, I don’t wanna be her stupid boyfriend! But I don’t want anyone else to either.”

“It was then that I realized my mistake.”

“I’m not naming my child triangle!”

“The other one’s even harrier!”

“Technically it wasn’t on fire.”

“Listen - no listen. I want you to understand this. I do not care.”

“Wait, were you just like, flirting with me?”

“What the heck is a nougat?”

“Only thirty percent of all my jokes are dad jokes. The rest are memes and dark humor.”

“Which Dairy Queen story do you wanna hear first?”

“I’d better be getting a godchild out of this.”

“That’s not the only door you’ve broken.”

“I’ve averaged 1 & 1/2 meals for the past 3 days.”

“That’s the worst idea I’ve ever head. Let’s do it.”

“You guys are so cute. It’s disgusting.”

She was just a mere photograph

In black and white

Only 17 and not a clue in life

He two years older

He showed her colours like gold and white

So she explored them with him

But she was gullible and blind

Trouble tied to his name

Little did she know he was just in it for the game

She had beauty and grace

But this wasn’t his first rodeo race

Lacking in self love

She thought she’d find in him

Ignoring flags of red

Because love isn’t a sin

Soon to learn the cold hard truth

That love is not always as it seems

He had a plan all along

To leave her crying on her knees

Asleep in the night

Oblivious he was gone

One shot from a gun

One cruel hit and run

He took all the money he could possibly carry from the store

Before placing the gun next to her

He wiped his fingerprints off

She wakes with fear in her eyes

To sounds of sirens and flashing lights

She wasn’t the first to pay for his mistakes

Because after all

This wasn’t his first rodeo race

-tamara-catherine

Red satin draped over porcelain skin

She is smoking his cigarettes

Just to taste his lips

Baking his favorite cherry pie

Spraying on his cologne

Waiting so patiently

For him to come home

...

(he never came home)

༄ 𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐤

“What you are to me, I could not hope to explain, or ever repay.”

— Tyler Knott Gregson