Monthly Archives: March 2022

Reflections: My Evolving Identity

27 Sunday Mar 2022

Posted by in About Me, Human Behavior

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The Human Family (Photo compliments of Pixabay)

Our identity is such an integral part of who we are as individuals that we can take it for granted, without question. As a female of the primate species homo sapiens (wise man), I share the same identity with an estimated 3.905 billion female humans, representing 49.58 percent of the total human population on Planet Earth in 2021 (UN World Population Prospect 2019). The similarity of our identities end there. They are as diverse and complex as the technologically advanced societies we humans have created on Earth.

My identity was forged during a period of great geopolitical upheaval. The economic power of the British Empire had taken a direct hit during World War II, bringing my small world in then British Guiana under the control of the emergent dominance of the United States of America. Descendants of African slaves and indentured laborers from China, Madrid (Portugal), and India, we were inferior beings in the eyes of the dominant white male governing class. My skin color and social status as a member of the working-class became defining elements of my identity.

Following the birth of our independent nation of Guyana in 1966, we forged a new identity as a multiracial, multiethnic country of six peoples—African, Indian, Chinese, European, and Amerindian—united under the motto of “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.” Breaking free from old ways of being does not come easy. Just look at what is happening today to the members of our human family in Ukraine, a former Soviet Socialist Republic, as they seek to forge a new identity as a democratic nation, realigned to Western Europe.

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“Identity” – Poem by Afro-Brazilian Poet Ryane Leão

20 Sunday Mar 2022

Posted by in Brazil, Poetry

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Afro-Brazilian Poet Ryane Leão
Photo Credit: Poet’s Facebook Page

My Poetry Corner March 2022 features the poem “Identity” (Identidade) from the 2017 debut poetry collection Everything in Her Shines and Burns: Poems of Struggle and Love (Tudo Nela Brilha e Queima: Poemas de Luta e Amor) by Afro-Brazilian poet Ryane Leão. A lesbian and English language teacher, born in 1989 in Cuiabá, capital of the Center-West State of Mato Grosso, Ryane moved to São Paulo where she studied literature at the Federal University of São Paulo. Considered one of the most representative militants of Brazilian poetry today, Ryane’s poems speak mainly about female empowerment, social inequality, and the struggle against racism.

Influenced by her poetry-loving parents, Ryane grew up with a fascination for literature and began writing as a child. But she never saw herself in the stories of Brazil’s famous poets, mostly white males. That changed when she moved to São Paulo. With exposure to poetry by black women, she discovered another type of poetry that spoke to her life experience.

Her journey to penning her own stories were strewn with shards of glass, as shared in the following autobiographical poem:

how many times my mother sat on the edge of the bed
and helped me remove the shards of glass from my feet
and said few would deserve my love
that the world would hurt me because I was born
with too much heart
that I had to stop being so good
or I would have nothing left
beyond the shards
that she pulled out
with care and patience
planting flowers
in their place
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Climate Chaos: Humanity’s Predicament

06 Sunday Mar 2022

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

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NOAA Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide at Mauna Loa Observatory 1960-2020
Source Credit: NOAA

We the inhabitants of Earth are in trouble. Serious trouble. Our failure, so far, to end our addiction to fossil fuels and change our consumption habits may well lead to societal collapse within our own lifetime. Such is humanity’s predicament.

In their book, Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos (UK & USA 2021), Editors Jem Bendell and Rupert Read present “an agenda and framework for responding to the potential, probable or inevitable collapse of industrial consumer societies, due to the direct and indirect impacts of human-caused climate change and environmental degradation.” (Introduction, p.2)

By ‘societal collapse’ they refer to an uneven ending of the consumer systems that make our lifestyles possible. These are systems that we take for granted: sustenance, shelter, health, security, pleasure, identity, and meaning. The term ‘collapse’ implies a permanent and total breakdown of these systems. There is no going back to the way things were before the breakdown. The word ‘deep’ takes us deeper into the causes and numerous ways in which we respond to catastrophe as individuals, organizations, and societies.

The Covid-19 global pandemic provided a preview of the vulnerability of our normal ways of life. Beyond the initial health crises, the pandemic triggered an ongoing series of cascading effects on our local and national economies—increasing joblessness, homelessness, and food insecurity. The domestic political upheaval continues to divide us. The disruption in our consumer and industrial supply chains plague us still.

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