Soul Womxn
The Song That Started it All
Art by Mo Beats
This song produced by my good friend Mewael “Mo Beats” Michael, was the first song I ever wrote without our collective Elephant Rebellion. In a time when I was still figuring out and learning to name, identify, dress, and express my gender ~ this beat freed a song in me that connected to violence as a person assigned female at birth and for the hixtorical violence placed on queer, trans, and spiritual people of all cultures.
I wrote this song at the end of 2014 after my dear friend, who I met through the first UndocuWriting Program and who I reconnected with through the Voices of the Nation Arts (VONA) workshops, Alexa Vazquez shared with us her grief at the death of her friend and hermana Zoraida Reyes. Zoraida was an activist, artist, and loving family member and friend. Her passing greatly impacted the undocumented community that both did and didn’t know her. I dedicated the release of this song at Incite Colors of Violence in March 2015 to her with partial proceeds for the release going to Incite.
I thank DC for his drums, Chris James for his strings (bass & guitar), Mo for his beat, and for all the queer and transcestors that were with me in creating and journeying with this music. May we honor feminine divine in your name and glory.
Coming Out as Undocumented, Queer/Pansexual, & Genderfluid/Transgender
In so many ways, I feel protective of my transisters/brothers/siblings because I am (re/un) learning how my gender and how much more fluid and changing it is. I felt defensive and hurt each time a trans death happened not just because these are my family, but because they are me and I am them.
While I feel no need to sound an alarm about it or to even bring a lot of attention to this post since centering Black voices and Black lives is what is most necessary at this time. I publish this blog and share this message because I believe that so much of the violence we are experiencing now has everything to do with patriarchy, oppressive religions/nations/militaries/ways of being backed by patriarchal pursuits, greed, methodology, and beliefs. We are living in such an insecure, petty, and unnecessary time full of indulgences and meaningless pursuits for material.
Transness, queerness and all that’s in between and beyond introduce and welcome us to a world that is beyond a love we can see. It is a sacred spiritual love of virtues, compassion, forgiveness, messiness, and transformation. It is one that takes its time and effort to communicate and co-create. I believe voicing and returning the power to our communities is part of this great change we are entering.
It’s wild because I keep having to come out in so many ways from undocumented, queer, to even Pacific Islander and Pilipinx because most people don’t seem to be able to tell “what” I am. I have always known and felt that about myself and I’ve been in these in-betweens, so it makes sense that I am just a blend of it all attracted and reflecting a blend of it all.
Excerpt from the blog De Colores Review on the exhibit my friend Alexa Vazquez took me to on March 5, 2017 , “Storyteller and visual artist Sarah Rafael García offers six “Fairy Tales for Trust and Justice,” all of them set in Santa Ana, a city in southern California that borders “the happiest place on Earth.” But that place is “never happy” for the brown people who live and work there, who live in fear of the landlords, the police, and ICE. In the first story, “The Carousel’s Lullaby,” we see the stakes, as teenager Saul remembers the carousel where he reunited with his parents after their separate migrations across the border, where he and his younger brother spent so many joyful weekends until Señor Billy Spurgeon, the real estate developer, tore it down to make way for shops and restaurants for rich Anglos. One night, Saul sneaks out to hear the ghost of the carousel, and never comes home—one more unarmed person of color killed by police.
In “Zoraida and Marisol,” perhaps the most heart-wrenching of an emotionally powerful collection, transwoman Zoraida remembers her struggle for survival and to be herself while trying from the next world to save her younger friend Marisol:
I am an enchanted woman named Zoraida.
But of course you already know my name. You knew me when I was alive.
In this life, I reign from far, far above the castles and queens. I travel by whispers, wished upon the North Star and hushed weeps. Just like you called upon me in midst of bloody murmurs, wishing for death to ease the pain. Some call me death, others the Godmother of life.
In my last life I too thought it was my fate to die as a woman on a night like tonight. But death came just too soon, leaving me trapped between others’ lives and my own.”
Seeing Zoraida’s impact on the Santa Ana, Southern California, and Undocumented World & Universe, continues to inspire and deepen my fire for bridging communities and uplifting transness, queerness, and the expansive love that going against the grain of heteronormativity opens us up to.
To learn more about the lyric meanings enter this portal.
I pray that we rebalance the feminine divine line soon <3 I believe we will and I will offer of myself to ensure it.