the bridge poem

Donna Kate Ruskin


I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me

Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to the my friends' parents. .

Then I've got to explain myself

To everybody
I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it
I'm sick of it

I'm sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip
I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness

I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long

I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves

I am sick
Of having to remind you to breath
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self.
Forget it

Stretch or drown
Evolve or die

The bridge I must be
Is the Bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful.

big business

I think our month should include accounts of Asian economic success. Takaki goes into some detail about Japanese business entreprenuer Masajiro Furuya and the following are excerpts from Chapter 5 the section on ethnic solidarity, the Japanese settling of America. It's hard to display this sort of historical information in an exciting way. Maybe a skit in a performance we put on during the month that describes the kind of communities immigrant Japanese would find in the states and how Furuya and his company facilitated the settling of America for his kind, and paved the way for future ethnic enterprises.

From Takaki:

Japanese ethnic enterprise in America also included large-scale businesses. Masajiro Furya was considered a top businessman among Japanese on the Pacific Coast. Borin in 1863, Furuya received a teacher's credential and served in the military for three years. In 1890 he arrived in Seattle, where he worked as a tailor; two years later, he opened a tailor shop and grocery store. His business expanded rapidy as more and more Japanese immigrants came to the Northwest. His grocery store became a department store where Japeanese customers could find ethnic foods such as sake and tofu as well as Japanese art. Furuya established branch stores in Portland and Tacoma, a post office, a labor supply agency, and the Japanese Commercial Bank...

Furuya was able to pay his Japanese workers ow wages, for they were unable to find employment in white owned companies...The Furuya Company was part of a grwoing service economy that paralleled increasing Japanese participation in agriculture.