The academic industrial complex and the prison industrial complex, as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney write in âThe University and the Undercommons:â âThe slogan on the Left, then, universities, not jails, marks a choice that may not be possible. In other words, perhaps more universities promote more jails. Perhaps it is necessary finally to see that the university contains incarceration as the product of its negligence.â How does the academic industrial complex perpetuate silenceâfrom undocumented students, those from the working class, silence of the âundercommons.â The prison industrial complex  keep people in, the university keeps people out. The university is not innocent.
Thus, when included, you are expected to maintain a joyful narrative of entry to higher education. The university silences where you come from, there is no space for contradiction, we are happy students, happy teachers, happy well acclimated workers. The university grows fat upon silence(s). Yet, the consciousness that Gloria AnzaldĂşa writes so much about, (and in this discussion of labor) reflexivity of class/backgrounds, from all positions of the university machine remains crucial. Thus, this paradoxical bind for subversive academics is necessary, to even begin to fathom reimagining the university.
Transformation of the university
requires
the language and tactics
of poetry.
Here my world is created   through books
How to unpack them
Make disappear    my girlhood horrors
Not so different from   my motherâs   and my own
I try to sprint away   into  worlds of
Paper and ink
I try to understand  but its all so confusing to me
Because it makes itself over   and over again
And because the more I know  the lonelier I become
The second time I went on a plane   the first time by myself
Was for poetry  Landing in Virginia
I knew all at once   My world was so very small   I desperately wanted to remake it
Maybe like God with his hands    Creating Adam and Eve
With dirt, sun, and creatures all around
A graduate student once told me, I wasnât cultured or interested
Because I didnât know who the Ayatollah was
Itâs not that I donât want to know, itâs just that I havenât traveled much
I regret telling him  Because I donât think he really could understand
That there is a lot I donât know
My father at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard
On a ship that would never move
A ship that broke his back
He showed me his hands
And taught me what it meant to be blue collar
He pulled at his workman shirt, and in broken English
Told me I must grow up to be white collar
To never work with my hands. Â To not have my back break
To sail on ships that move fast across the ocean
And into lands far away
My momâs hands are thick & calloused too, gruff from holding
Wigs and dollar bills in a store she works at in Watts
Sheâs worked at a dry cleaners and Luckyâs Supermarket
She says a job is just a job  and sometimes, she
Doesnât recognize her hands anymore.
She says, you shouldnât study so hard
Because her friend in Korea was at the top of her class
Then she married bad and now she cleans houses.
My hands are calloused from holding pens
My back aches from slightly hunching over daily
Taping on mechanical keys
I realize all together how much I am
Grateful for my books and how much I hate myself
My dreams are so thick that I canât hold them
In my palms. And I canât swallow them either.
But in them, my father is sailing and my mother is not working, and
they are very happy. Â Itâs quite simple.
Except the map leading to the end of a dream
Is not only impossible but sometimes unimagined.
You must marry well, my mother says, then
You wonât be like me. You wonât have to work at all.
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origamiaround
yousharknotpass
dailybridgerton
stormborns
snowghoul
