Rainbow children over me: parabolic narratives for Sakia Gunn

Cross Currents, Summer, 2004 by Gayle R. Baldwin

When desire is excited by the erotic in the exchange between the story and the reader, this results in engagement, which is a dialogue beyond words, theories and dogmatic discourses. This is engagement with truth, shocking truth, because it knows you better than you know itself. The process of recognition, realization, desire, and engagement is dislocating. It dislodges the reader from his or her secure seat and sets him/her down in an unknown wilderness. From then on, it is in the hands of the reader to do something. He or she must either change or become more entrenched in the old religious discourses, but the narratives beg some movement. These parabolic characteristics can be found in many texts, not all of which are deliberately "religious," yet implicitly are discourses about the divine-human encounter.

Turning to the two poems included here and gauging their ability to be parabolic, the first thing that needs to be imagined is that for full effect, these words must be performed, as they were when I first saw and heard the words. The bodies spoke first, Piper, light-skinned, willowy with a melodic, hypnotic voice and quiet flowing movements; Travis, dark-skinned, powerfully built punched out his words like a boxer with his "in your face" rapster delivery. Yet even without the performance, these words have the power to open the heart and deliver a new spirituality. Each one opens the way for the parabolic process, for recognition, realization, desire and engagement.

Sakia Gunn, "Proud Passionate Ancestor"

Sakia's death was not pretty, nor was there any ritual that might contextualize her death so that it can be easily woven into an existing religious mythology. Unlike Matthew, who was hung, arms outstretched on the wooden cross of a lonely Wyoming fence, Sakia was abruptly stabbed in the heart on a dark urban Newark street. The murder cannot be sanitized, washed and hung like a piece of jewelry around the neck. There is no effort then in these poems to fix Sakia in any religious tradition. She was black, she was queer, she was butch, she was an "Ag" and, although only 15, stood up to a couple of black men and told them to "back off." Sakia does not fit the image of "God" that most Christians want to worship. She is not God made in the image of the male heterosexual who supposedly sacrificed himself for the sins of others. Sakia embodied "sin" as defined by others, and was murdered for bearing them. Just by being who she was, she was transgressing religious expectations.

When we look at Piper Anderson's "Rainbow Children," it is important first to see how she pictures the murder victim. As the poem opens, Sakia is called a "Rainbow child, Fierce with living/Still to be done" (1-3). But the effect of her death goes far beyond her living. Anderson asks, "Who knew that you held the power to bring truth to light/As over 2,000 rainbow children/Pool tears and chorus pain" (4-7)? Sakia brings truth and light, not to those who do not understand, or fail to help or remember; she takes care of those who do understand, who must hide their voices in a chorus. Some must remain anonymous. In the next section, the author valorizes these "rainbow children" and is soothed by their tears and questions that go unanswered. She is comforted not because she gets help or answers, but because of the new generation of courageous young gay, lesbian and transgender people who were raised "Having never known a thing about closets ... [who] Never look away or look done when they pass you on the street." (16-18) The poet expresses some shame that she did not have the same courage, but is strengthened by theirs.