I Am Brown in Small-town America
© 2018 by Leila Martinez
My name precedes me everywhere I go and
I am assumed
and categorized
before I walk through the door.
I am brown skin, blue black hair and dark brown eyes.
I am suspicion.
This is what it means to be brown
in small-town America.
I am spoken to slowly.
I am a study of constructs.
I am wide eyed,
Slant eyes
“Mexican-passing” in sea of yellows, whites and blacks.
This is what it means to be brown
in small-town America.
I am background noise,
my culture’s voices diming silent and quickly.
I am assimilation.
I am generalization and catalogued,
A label,
an “other.”
I am brown in small-town America
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