About

This is what I will tell you about myself…

I’m brown. I’m a non-Indigenous, ‘model minority’ person of colour, a second generation immigrant living on the land of the Wurundjeri people (also known as Melbourne, Australia) and recently on the land of the Ohlone people (Oakland, California).

I have been raised middle class by two Goan Indian parents, I went to university, and I speak English as a first language with an Australian accent.

I’m queer, female assigned at birth and identify as genderqueer/genderfluid, most often seen as a cisgender woman. I’m not light skinned but not dark skinned, somewhere between.

I currently have chronic pain and disability but have been able-bodied most of my life. I’m not neurotypical (sorry if you have to look it up, not sure how else to say it that I feel ok about at the moment). My preferred gender pronouns are they/them/their.

I’m not the first to say any of what’s on this blog. I’m informed by writing from many Black women writers including bell hooks and Audre Lorde, First Nations writer Jessica Yee, by Fabian Romero and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarashina and so many others, including via dozens of online journals and blogs by people of colour speaking from lived experience, including Eugenia Flynn. But I am ‘influenced’ the most by my interpersonal relationships and conversations with many, many generous QT/POC friends and acquaintances that I won’t name here incase they don’t want me to. Please see footnotes in various posts too.

on commenting on this blog…
I take long breaks from logging into this blog to read, approve and respond to comments for self-care and physical health reasons. If I don’t approve your comment, it might be for these reasons, or that it contained something I felt was offensive, took up more space than felt appropriate, that the question asked was already covered in the content of the blog or that I didn’t feel capable to give an opinion on.

The poems on this blog have been compiled into a chapbook zine called Harshbrowns: for racism hangovers and select poems and related posts have been compiled into another called Harshbwrowns: race rage. If you’d like a copy, they’re $3/$5 each plus postage from Australia (or US depending where I am). I’ve also compiled a zine of the writing on this blog, postcards from the ‘Imitation’ image and Good White Person certificates. I generally use the $ I get from selling this stuff to print more copies to give to people in person.

Available at
harshbrowns.bigcartel.com.

If you’re from a POC library, organisation or reading group contact me and I’ll get some to you free if I can.

I really appreciate it when people ask me before quoting or cut and paste re-blogging anything on here. Please do not attach my artist identity / ‘real name’ if you know it to these posts without my consent, nor comment about this blog on my artist identity fanpage or website. It happens, and I do it, I just like to choose how and when if I can.

Thanks for reading.

Ps the title of this blog is a joke.