This American Meal
My Japanese mother told my Italian fatherMy Colombian skin was brown like sweet sugar brown like the moldable dirt the sun flowers NEED to growbut unbreakable like the strong table that holds this American meal this American meal, filled with tears, is made of a thousand dead buffalo, a million beautiful black bodies. a couple of thousand world immigrants. it holds the sons of the war.and the fear I feel when I walk on the street too late for a lady to be seen by the moon.I was able to write this poem with the collaboration of Oriana Hawley, Oona Benally, and Victoria Manning. The inspiration for this work was our school mini-mester, a week-long class in which we chose to focus on social justice through music. While the others wrote music, I wrote this poem (I have always had an easier time with words); these were then integrated into a larger musical/poetic piece. Oona is a member of a Native American tribe, I am an immigrant, and Victoria is a black woman; because of this, and my learning throughout this year in class, I decided to focus on American history and how it relates to each and all of us. The meal came out of the fact that I love to eat :)
-Ana Maria Griffin Morimoto