you look just like your mother,
they told me and I looked
from her thick ringlets of dark hair
with eyes like ink and skin like coffee
to my father’s fair hair
with eyes shut to the struggles he married into
his skin the shade of privilege
and I wished I looked more like him
your lunch smells like dog food,
they told me and I looked
from my warm, welcoming bowl
of Indonesian rendang daging sapi
savory beef stew saturated
with the same spices they
stole
and imperialized upon with my people’s sweat,
to their dry, pre-packaged boxes
of unseasoned crackers, dull deli meat
maybe canned fruit if they were lucky
and I wished I didn’t have to eat lunch at school
you must have gone there with the Peace Corps,
they conclude and the hairs on my neck
rise with the desire to defend my motherland
what they see as a decrepit third world country
engulfed in poverty and problems
inhospitable to its own kin, a nation on its knees
begging for Western intervention
and I wished I was back on an island shore
not their gentrified Bali beach destination
but complete with scattered waste, ramshackle rafts, and callous fishermen
far from their pre-constructed box that
I am still working to crawl out of
you ought to feel oppressed by your culture,
they pity and I crave to dissent
and try to explain as I have to the masses
that my country, not yours, has had a female president
that it is my mother’s choice to wear a hijab
just as it is mine not to
but I bite my tongue for ignorance is a wall;
one that cannot be knocked down with my breath
and so I save my words.
Mutiara is a psychology undergraduate at Brandeis University. She enjoys writing about her experiences as a minority in the hopes of reaching an audience that typically feels underrepresented by mainstream media and works of writing. With her work she hopes to evoke an urge to initiate a large-scale dialogue about societal issues and injustices.