HOMEGIRL SPEAKS UP AT WELLS COLLEGE

10.2.00 cursive letters like knives

i feel like a lilac today. i always admire the people with these beautifully linear graphic scenes on their webpages, and i sometimes have fantasies about being one of them. but the truth is that i am much too schizoid for that. i'd be changing the theme every day. this way, once in a blue moon i can redesign the front page while every entry is a new taste sensation. so phooey on you if you're a graphic designer and frown down your nose at my chaos colors! i'm a patchwork dress and i'm vivid! (just like my recently discovered punk name proclaims...)

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anyway. i'm inspired. my friend karen and i went to wells college on saturday to see this amazing coming-of-age play about latina women called homegirls on the prowl. and it ROCKED my world! it was poetry with anger and meaning and political significance and personal resonance. and it was so *real.* the best part was that i got to meet the writer (who turned into an actor for the night because someone was sick) who is a latina woman under thirty who is already shooting her first film and touring on and off with the play. and that little voice inside of me that says you know what happens to colored girls who try to write. they go crazy or they go unknown and unappreciated and they are of no importance.... had to shut up. because this woman was real and she was amazing. and she, too, read ntozake shange's words before they could possibly make any sense and felt something inside of her wake up, become aware of her power to make change with words.

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