Interviewing the Caribbean Volume 2 Issue 1

vi·o·lence

‘vī(ə)ləns

noun it seems a misnomer a grave error in judgment really how can it be a noun my name is a noun my island is a noun my house is a noun a noun is soft on the tongue it announces
but violence...
violence severs obliterates reduces

1. behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.

perhaps we were warring before they arrived perhaps we did not trust or respect one another perhaps we wanted to be in charge but then they came the Europeans they chained they flogged they stole us from all we knew all we loved all we hoped for and they huddled us in the hold of their ships and they carried us across water and they starved us and we bled and cried and shat and vomited and urinated and bled and died and recovered and died and hoped on each other until we arrived where we were prodded genitals fondled teeth counted arms and body tapped for strength womb assessed for reproduction bodies sold for free labor and forced sexual pleasure

synonyms: brutality, brute, force, ferocity, savagery, cruelty, sadism, barbarity, brutishness

everywhere europeans discovered people had been living and growing food and having societies that fed and clothed their people and they practiced their religion and had structures and institutions

everywhere europeans went they brought diseases they ripped apart people they smashed their temples and places of worship they called them evil and they turned their gods into black magic

superstition projected their own barbarity onto the people whose land and culture they stole after they annihilated many

strength of emotion or an unpleasant or destructive natural force.

“the violence of her own feelings” what about my feelings what about her feeling what about my people’s feelingsthe yearning of our feelings to be whole free to love ourselves

are we still talking noun when you cut out someone’s tongue from protesting their condition

are we still talking noun when you amputate someone’s toes for running from an oppressive system where there is no justice nor compensation for her tireless labor

are we still talking noun when someone who buys another human being rapes her for his own pleasure and when she bears a child sells the child without any consideration for her desire to mother

are we still talking noun when a man is beaten until his back looks like a railroad track for defending his honor for refusing to be insulted over and over again

are we still talk noun

is this about a noun
whose noun is nouning whom?

synonyms:intensity, severity, strength, force, vehemence, power, potency, fervency, ferocity, fury, fire. “the violence of his passion”

when my teeth were knocked out for speaking twi/berber/hausa/mandung/fulani/yoruba/oromo/amharic/ibo/ashanti/ewe/luo/dinka/maasaiit was not a noun

it was an action a verb extermination

when i poured water for my ancestors and put out food for my orishas and was punished denounced for practicing witchcraft

that was not a noun that was violation

when my childrenbrothersistersmotherfathercousin were sold away

from me that was not a noun that was trafficking

when i was told my skin was too darklipstoogenerousnosetoowidehairtootightlycurled

that was not a noun that was terrori’ve been living in terror since i entered the new world

terror has been my constant shadow and friend

terror has become my way of life

i’m terror i’ve become terror i terrorize

violence is my identity and the more i try to distance myself from it the more it spews from
my skin i’m really trying to expel it all from my gene pool so i can return to being a noun

i am this is my home these are my people

we care for one another we resolve our difference amicably

we live in peace as we remember who we are and accept that we are beautiful