Check out this new Black History Month Poem "I am my mother’s story"
A strong statement from the talented poet.
As much as we love Black History Month poems, and black poets in general, it's about time that we hear what this generation has to say. We're excited to present a poem by Rita L Ngarambe entitled "I am my mother’s story" . In this piece, Rita examines the tradition of the month and the quick and fleeting nature that we are taught our history. Check out the video here, or read it below.https://youtu.be/RNsfzbfn4dk
I am my mother’s story . What is really black history month? What is the reason why you and I get to have a month of our own “black history month they say“ Look at it this way. We are a people who are here, present 12 months a year 52 weeks 365 days, 8760 hours and 525600minutes counted for in a year , each day you get to cry, laugh smile, each and every hour one becomes homeless, falls in love and loses and we win again.One gives birth and the other dies, in those days you get to live, we become alive and lifeless, you get to be alive, every yesterday becomes history. yet here it goes again , “happy black history month “ Allow me to ask you this , Does your your blackness come with an expiration date on February 1st good for use before the 28th?That you’d you get to be disposed all out in the next month of March?Is your ancestry interrupted history of Africa only accounted for in the 550 years of plantation and being used as a white man’s tool worth only a month?!. If not Then why is black history month really even a thing? Why is it that you learn about the weather at school,the economical justice and injustice the whole prejudice of exploitation and capitalism alongside geography but never your mother’s story. instead given a glimpse every once a year, forced to take a peek of her wounds but never what’s left of her, her health the clean parts of hers, both the necks that were kneeled on and those still Pushing through the pavement to be here alive with you and I. Why is black history month really ?!And why is it that we get to tell the stories of the ones who followed the north star to free and liberate our people only when we are on accounted down? Perhaps am saying all this as a sign of an invitation to get you to roll with me, welcome me to the table celebration of life, of healing and resilience, a life long-lived, and blood forever shed as a price for our smiles and laughters, Let’s not mention the reparations yet ,the accounted for seats that were rightfully ours, but never granted to us or our children, Let’s hold up this declaration proclamation of emancipation and call it freedom , call it one step walk toWords spiritual declaration , call it liberty earned ,..called! in the land of the still enslaved black women and men who are yet not free from a system that is build and constructed to break them,the fierce ,unbroken who are in a march towards their own freedom , demanding it , getting it .Grabbing the honours from Harvard not to go back and to work in the master’s city plantation !Not to own one themselves .but to free those that they left behind . Let black history month be you and I visiting our motherland investing and celebrating our culture that they have so much made us forget that it even exists , Let this black history month be theirs for the sake of the guilty ones ,those who sinned against the holy ones and deprived them Of their God just to give them a wooden one, who re-channelled the enlightenment of our purposes and greatness to replace it with the temporary pleasure of materialism. When we know and have always known what truly matters that Our lives matter , they have all along mattered and we have to make what matters matter the most and it’s our lives. We know to be for true .