by Magdalena Paige Augustine
We are falling into little pieces over Pale Megaphone Girls we fail to know. Fail to know us as well, so ignorance equates in a one-sided self-assurance, but it is the same ignorance that can be related to, well, a wall’s acknowledgment of oneself when oneself bangs their head against it, and one's self anguished analysis of said wall. They are thriving. #SchoolClimateStrike and #MeToo, and maybe My Cousins and I are a casualty in this fight, stuck in a place known by most but unspoken by most: between Third Ward and University of...
Shall we fight for such an imminent honey drowned future by joining Pale Megaphone Girl running outside our window, who won’t stop yelling “get ‘em bitches or die trying”? Or well, fall into an acidic tasting pool of simple survival in hopes of not getting shot, and believe me, My Cousins and I do not need to riot to get the bloody shoot-out ending. These Girls, they do the impossible feats and we stand small and attempt pride at all, holding our little victories but failing due to following count of bigger men.
Often, My Cousins and I begin to move towards the Pale Megaphone Girl’s riot in the street, dropping pens and paper along with families lost future of reliability all traded in for our own lost past of angst and sexuality. But then, we wonder if Pale Megaphone Girl is who she wholly says she is, which is: seventeen and angry... can she feel the pain of other people's world, maybe even some she hasn’t seen? We feel, no.
Well, but I, also seventeen and angry can feel the pain of My Father, Black, poor, drowning, seventeen, and understanding survival and pain are directly related. He would rather have us stare at a wall as cracks form, float and let the chlorine wade over our closed mouth and wide eyes, study by bleak cracked light and plug ears with cotton as Pale Megaphone Girl's riot screams. He fails to understand Pale Megaphone Girl as she fails to understand the plight of My Cousin, My Father, and I. Instead, He states our generation’s purpose: “To carry on legacy rather than create new life is what makes good for you girls.”
Not excellent, good, good is good enough.
We think must forget. No, not forget, misplace and find. Understand My Father’s purpose for us is only half of a story, and place it somewhere lost but never forgotten. We find some verbs, “fight”, and adjectives, “persistent”, in the Pale Megaphone Girl’s riot and create our own sentences, declarations of change. My Cousins and I declare that we will be known, we will be heard, we will thrive, we will no longer fall to pieces. Rather, we fix cracks and collect debris, and shout out to the world. In fact we become louder than anyone else, My Father included, could imagine.
About the Author
My name is Magdalena Paige Augustine, but most of the people know call me Mags. I am 17 years old and have lived in Houston, Texas my whole life. I like to call myself a "writer for a change" with my website, youngpeopleon.com, as well as other cool sites and movements.
I wrote Pale Megaphone Girls, My Father, My Cousins, and I. at this point in my life as an outlet for all the emotions I have as a woman of color and activist. Being a WOC in itself is a trait that though beautiful and you should never want to trade in, makes the path of life more oppressive and difficult than any other people on the planet. In Pale Megaphone Girls, I speak about the tearing confusion I and other WOC activist I know have felt when trying to advocate and fight for change in the same way that non-POC woman do, but having the feeling to pull back our fight and simply attempt to succeed in a way that makes the many people who have sacrificed themselves for our being happy, something non-POC woman do not have an understanding of. Usually, this success entails simply finishing a degree and making higher wages–not fighting and lobbying. Success by a more successful survival, that is all. In the end, though, woman of color must be the strongest we can and fight for an even better world than our ancestors could even dream of.