#massleap

See BOH Slam Team Member Andrine Pierresaint reading her original poem “Boulders for Cheekbones” in response to Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped: A Memoir the featured text of this years ICA Reads. 

Watch Andrine perform below:

The first

First generation

Under the golden mountain

from a group of millions

coming from a land of billions

Fueled by hope and not gasoline

of a better life

Here in the great ol’ nation

That is the golden mountain

From west coast to east coast

We travel in search of our place

A hundred years past

And we still travel

Fueled by the hope

of millions before us

  One of billions

I am proud

Proud of the father

Who grew up a poor mainland farmer

And graduated Harvard

Eighteen years later

Not because of

Family or wealth

But because of hope

Proud of the nation

Who’s peoples heads strike the ground

Not because of violence

But because of respect and religion

Proud of the 家庭 (jia ting)

That I call China

Where brothers weren’t brothers

Because of blood

And girls could hold

Each others hands on the streets

And not be called a lesbian

Out of disrespect

Proud of the nation that grew

From dirt roads and wooden carts

Two hundred years ago

Pulled only by horses and hope

Of a better life

  Still proud

I see the results

Of our tears and works

On the railroads long ago

Here, under the Golden Mountains

The pride that I still feel

After a hundred years

Of negligence and shadows

The pride that I find

Hard to keep now

Because of the very Golden Mountains itself

Because apparently just because the currency

Of our yuan is 6.35 times less valuable than

A dollar does not make us any less man

Than anyone else on this planet

Just because

Our skin isnt

As white as the white man’s

Or dark as the black man’s

Does not mean we shouldn’t

Belong with neither

Just because we were born in

A country alien to us

Does not mean that the

Little speck of yellow

Can be whited out to make the

Blank page prettier

Just because we toll and slave

In the sweatshops

Does not make us dispensable

And does not make us less human

And deserve less rights

Than anyone else

Just because I am Chinese

Doesnt mean im not American

Just because I am American

Doesnt mean im not Chinese

I am both and I still

Feel