This Poet Nailed What It's Like to Be a Latina Woman on Campus

Impact

Poet Janel Pineda wants her white peers to know what it's really like to be a Latina woman on campus every day. 

She said Latina women face discrimination, violence, cultural appropriation and objectification every day.

Pineda's poem "To Be a Latina Woman on Campus" was inspired by student-led race and diversity movements on her college campus. 

"As movements on issues of race and diversity emerged [at] colleges across the country, I took part by giving voice to my own experiences as a Latina woman on a college campus," Pineda told Huffington Post. "Latinx narratives are often silenced, even among dialogues on race and diversity, and I wanted to assert that Latinx experiences matter and are important to talk about."

Here are highlights from the poem:

For the people on this campus who dismiss Latina narratives: 

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It is walking into a classroom on the first day of classes and praying another student of color walks in.

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Weeks later, it is seeing my culture reflected as costume, reduced to insults, identity shredded into piñata scraps and slurs. 

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It is being called a "chupacabra" on D walk, by white men who sexualize Latina bodies and then dismiss them as beasts. 

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It is white women claiming no difference in our struggles, like Starbucks stereotypes could ever compare to jokes about green cards and the backs my family nearly broke to get here. 

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It is men of color being willing to talk about race but never about gender because God forbid there is anyone more oppressed than they. 

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It is some women of color deeming this skin too light to be oppressed. Like Oppression Olympics is a game I can never have a say in. 

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To be a Latina women on a college campus is coming from a culture that never prepared me to fight this on my own. 

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It is having been taught to hide away, to sink myself into shadows so the malditos machos can have their way. It is being afraid of speaking up.

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It is being slut-shamed, hate-crimed, assaulted, attacked and abused. It is all these things and no one taking me seriously when I try to fight back.

Read more: This Slam Poet Has a Powerful Message About Racial Fetishism

h/t Flama