On Writing

Writing is an extremely scary act for me as an immigrant black woman working in tech. To write is to expose my soul to the world and to name my pain in a way that might be misunderstood. And that is terrifying.

Throughout the 16 years since I’ve immigrated to the United States, it has been clear that my success is contingent on my silence. To be black is a punishable offense. To be a black woman means that my worth will be questioned on an almost daily basis. Finding a job will be minefield of condescending interviewers and toxic workplaces. Going to a restaurant can be a barrage of micro-aggressions. However, naming this pain is radical.

To grieve the loss of my brothers and sisters at the hands of American callousness becomes socially unacceptable. People often retort that my grief is unwarranted because I’m not really “black”. They act as if my education is an inoculation against a system so well designed to reinforce the current inequalities. My silence serves as an implicit agreement that I’m not really “black”.

My voicelessness allows me to “pass” for as colorless in a pre-dominantly white spaces. My silence no longer feels like a choice I can make. As Audre Lorde’s poetry was an act of survival, writing has become an act of necessity for me. It is an act of defiance. So today, I’m making this public commitment to name my pain in a way I’ve never done before.