cassandra's curse

on intersectionality and being a scorned woman of color

Each dream ends the same way: I am clawing my throat in search of sound, desperate for another to hear my pleas for help or to heed the warnings on what I know is coming. Not once while having this recurring nightmare have I succeeded in uttering a whisper. This is the curse of my womanhood— to know the prophecies the gods foretold and like Cassandra of Troy, to not be heard. But unlike Cassandra, my vocal cords were torn from my throat with revulsing palms at infancy, leaving me cursed in seeking the missing muscle tissues. What is it that makes me so different from everyone else? What did I do to deserve this?

My extensive knowledge of middle eastern languages is mildly impressive but doesn’t compare to even one of the romantic languages of europe. My food is unique, but not healthy enough in comparison to the dominion of packaged caesar salads with GMO-pumped chicks’ meat. It’s so interesting that I’m going back home for the summer, but it would be too dangerous for them to visit. 

My mistake was being born into the wrong name, the wrong face, the wrong nose. I learned this from middle school expeditions to the zoo involving comparisons to the animals, using white-sounding pseudonyms on the internet, and dreading conversations starting with so where are you from? Having your vocal cords ripped out is being considered an ugly child to reaching puberty for men to thirst over your unconventional beauty— as they call it when what they really mean is having non-white features. But you are not long-term marriage material. You are merely a temporary fantasy in his coming-of-age story. 

Lana del Rey’s The Other Woman details the experience of being a mistress. To me, the chorus is about being the othered woman: not having his love to keep because, ultimately, he will pick a pleasant white woman to settle down with, and you will become another narrative he tells to his first-born son of his intrepid youth. One of my previous professors describes this as the “oriental curse” created by the remnants of white colonialism in Western Asia. You are a fascinating fetish of exoticism until they cast you as a monster that threatens their white cultural hegemony. There are no vocal cords to inform them you are human, not object. 

I am tired of being angry for wanting to exist. I am tired of being framed as the villain for my emotional being, for not being able to censor my anger. I’m tired of wanting to be seen as a person. I’m tired of having to explain how generations of mistrust and abuse create ethnic anger, but we’re expected to suppress it, to show our emotions in civilized ways— or rather, not to show them at all. 

But that’s just part of being a woman like me, right? We will always suffer the consequences, and their ways will prevail. I’m told to forgive; they will learn from their mistakes and be ashamed one day. One day. How long do I have to hold on to this hurt for the one day to arrive? To receive the apology I deserve more than they deserve forgiveness? 

There’s this line by boygenius: I came prepared for absolution, if you'd only ask / So I take some offense when you say, "No regrets." It is resentment-and-stubbornness-are-my-two-favorite-flavors hard to forgive without an apology. Especially to hear the words “I have no regrets” when all they did was repeatedly stab at your entire being and the others who hold your culture and face. Why do they deserve forgiveness?

They don’t. Don’t forgive them. Let them feel superior for “being the bigger person” by getting over it because they will get over it. Why? It’s harder to look down at the scars than to discard the attempted-murder weapon which created them. It’s easy when your whole livelihood isn’t threatened over and over again, and you carry the hurt of the ancestors that faced the same cruelty. It’s easy to hide behind the mantel of one’s privilege. 

But you are still alive, and as long as you breathe, they have failed! You are, you are, you are. 

In the words of Phoebe Bridgers, “The doctor put her hands over my liver / She told me my resentment's getting smaller.” It’s not necessarily forgiveness that heals the liver, but the time that gives you opportunities to use the pain to craft art. At the end of the day, all of this was about you and not them. There’s no point explaining to someone who will never understand and, even worse, does not care to. It is for your liver, not for them. 

Sometimes writing works better than searching for missing muscle tissues. Let your liver heal with time and hoard your words for the right audience, one that will hear your voice. Grow out your hair. Brush your eyebrows. Watch Shameless in the bath. And remember, this is about you. It always has been. Sometimes vocal cords grow back with time.