About
This blog is somewhat about resisting being defined by your physicality. This is what I will tell you about myself…
I’m brown. I’m a non-Indigenous person of colour living on stolen Wurundjeri land in the area also know as Melbourne, Australia.
I’m middle class, university educated, currently able-bodied, and speak English as my first language, with a so-called Australian accent.
I’m queer, have been socialised female and identify as genderqueer. My preferred gender pronouns are they/them/their.
on commenting on this blog…
I take long breaks from logging into this blog to read, approve and respond to comments for self-care reasons. If I don’t approve your comment, it might be for this reason, or that it contained something I felt was offensive, took up more space than felt appropriate, or a question asked was already covered in the content of the blog or that I didn’t feel capable to give an opinion on.
on re-posting posts and poems..
Please ask permission before copying and pasting poems / posts elsewhere. Link to it as you like, crediting me as ‘harshbrowns’, let me know if you like but PLEASE, I prefer being asked permission before linking this blog with my visual artist name.
Thank you for making those clear and direct points. Im a white american from San fransisco, and i have been really taken aback about how few white folx have sound politix around race in australia. Even in “activist” circles, where one would really hope to find intelligent discussion about racial oppression, half of them have dreads. Its really refreshing to hear someone list basic symptoms of unpacked white supremast thinking.
No one wants to be close to someone who hasnt looked at their own opressive bullshit, and how that gets played out.
Though its not th job of people of color to educate white folx around racism, im inspired by the clarity of your points and am going to hand it out to my friends..
Hi, I’ve been wanting to drop you a note for a while now having seen your work around the place. A while ago I picked up your publication at RISE and I re-read it regularly. I just wanted to reach out and let you know that your poems and thoughts rock! Thanks for the great read.
hey, thanks for reading! sorry i took so long to respond on here. see you soon again I hope x
Dearest Harshbrowns,
I absolutely LOVED your poem “in response to the question ‘where are you from’”. I honestly read it and re-read it ten times in a row. I just wanted to crawl up inside all of that truth. It was pure perfection.
I was wondering if it would be okay if I performed it, giving you COMPLETE CREDIT for your beautiful words, at a QueerPOC-sponsored spoken word event on my campus? I would really love to share it with my peers and an audience whose experience will hopefully really resonate with your poem. I think it would be really informative especially for allies and non-POC folks in attendance.
Please let me know.
Thanks so much!!
Glad you liked it. Go ahead and read it. What campus are you at? I’ll let you know if I’m visiting next year. Thanks for asking permission.