Identity

-by Yolanda Carrington

I want to be Ella Baker/I want to be Billy Bragg
I want to make a difference/I want to make a killing
Rage is my Brother/Revolution is my Grandfather
I claim them all---passion, anger, fear, and (noun please)

Whoever is passionate, loving, hateful, angry, violent, dull, conscious, apolitical, ignorant, intelligent, gifted,
precocious, androgynous, White as shit, Black as hell, girly as you please, manly as they come.

I am in all of them, and I am in all of you

Bama, White trash, rednecky, ghetto, thugged-out, soulful, spiritual, nihilistic, pompous, bourgeois, arrogant, elitist,
dorky, shy, corny, charismatic---I am and have been them all.

There is a bit of every human being in Yolanda Carrington.
But Yolanda Carrington is one woman.
A woman onto and for herself/A woman of deep humanity
A woman full of life/A woman full of shit
A woman too angry to think straight/A woman too afraid to speak

As brawny as any man/To be controlled by no man
A woman like all other women/Who is nothing like women at all
A working-class woman of middle-class values/A ghetto girl at home in Suburbia
A Black woman angry with White men/A Black woman who loves White men

A woman Raleigh-made, Carolina-born
Mother-raised, sister-supported
Learned of history and made of music
Part of society yet fiercely an individual.

Yolanda Carrington is a junior at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC. She's majoring in History. You can email her at ycarr58@yahoo.com