Kiana

I am relearning how to be a person in the world. It’s different when you have been locked up for one year, without the company of young people your age. It’s weird when, for a year, you have been with adults who only care about more time, money, and affection.

I am relearning how to walk in my body. It’s different now that I am going to school every day and being looked at by people my age; people who, like me, are enormously conscious of how they look and are perceived.

Claiming sovereignty over the mind and body is hard, especially when you have been trampled on by the world for being too loud, too volatile, too “extreme for an Asian girl.” At school, I get stared at for rebutting a male professor’s thoughts on rape. Why is it that when a young woman steps up to speak, she is covertly ridiculed by the audience, by fellow women even, by people who are her age, by people who may have experienced injustice in their own lives? I find it so unfair that men are lauded for speaking and doing academic studies on issues about which they have not an inkling of firsthand experience.

I can’t wait to see this world tremble as rightful voices claim the podium to speak. I can’t wait to be there, a spectator in a sea of people. I can’t wait for us to claim the conversation that is rightfully ours. ♦