why i hated white women and sometimes didn’t like you
Poetry by Kate Pashby
— after Ana Castillo’s The Mixquiahuala Letters, “Letter Thirteen”
Would you believe me if i told you
that white women like you have always been more desirable
than brown women like me?
The darker the skin
the more disadvantaged.
Every man i ever dated had never dated a brown girl before
or had only ever crushed on blondes
so i always felt like the Other Woman
some exotic girl picked up on an international business trip
who would eventually get left behind when he went back home
to his unseasoned wife.
i have white ancestors and light-skinned cousins, it’s true but i never felt like them
never looked like them
never was admired like them
never felt comfortable with our white grandpa’s
racist chain emails either but
i’m getting off the subject of why
i hated white women.
My first week in Mexico City
i spent in the private room of a hostel
and when i went to breakfast, the owner’s son Omar
(a handsome young man a few years older than me)
brought me a plate and returned to the kitchen
to play games on his phone
but when a pale woman with a French accent came to breakfast
he sat at the table and spoke to her
for over twenty minutes
and suddenly i knew what it was to be
snubbed in my own ancestral homeland
and it stung.
so please forgive me when i say
that i thought loving a woman like you
would be an act of self-hatred
when in reality
i felt such joy when we spoke
& sorrow when you left
that i knew being with you
was an act of self-love.