lebanesepoppyseed:

SIGN IT!!!

fucking sign it.

(Source : luckythinks91)

Stank-eyed bruja has something to say, ya’ll

lebanesepoppyseed:

The very reason why I took on the stank-eyed bruja moniker was because of shit like the Florence and the Machine video and the racist hell that broke from there on.

I wrote about this before, so here’s a bit of a refresher course (or an introduction for those of you who don’t know).

Afro-indigenous spirituality and culture is and was and spat on by the inhabitants of the Dominican Republic. It was seen as lowly and blasphemous by the Spanish who took over the island. Having Christianized the people, they of course came to see it the same way. As a child, because of my big unruly hair, dark eyes, and dark skin, I was called a “bruja” by my family members. My blackness was a reminder of that “pagan savagery” of those religions from back home. It is embedded into Dominican culture. Given the history of Afro religiousness and white supremacy, it is also embedded in American culture. There was that little white girl in my second grade class who forbid me from watching her play with building blocks because, according to her, I would cast a spell to make them fall. (I, of course, took that as a challenge).

I took on the name because I rejected the racialized condescension towards that aspect of my history. Because I regret and mourn that my maternal great grandmother, a medicine woman, died without passing off her knowledge that is becoming more and more scarce on the island, I regret and mourn the slow death of Afro and Indigenous spirituality and culture, a death promised by such prevailing harmful toxic tropes as we saw in the Florence and Machine video. Because my maternal grandfather was an exorcist and my family was very Christian, and I grew up with being told that my rebelliousness and my unruly nature was ungodly, of a woman possessed, animal.

This shit is my life. This isn’t some cute little cause I decided to take up or a course I took in my college. This is my lived experience. Fuck everyone who wants to spit on that.

As always, Sin Dios y Sin Santa Maria,

The Stank-eyed Bruja

please continue to kick all the ass that you can.

that is all.