Quotes from Bushra Rehman

Nothing was sacred, everything was sacred, everything changed, everything stayed the same.

For them, us first-gen Pakistani girls were a forest of green cards. We were groomed like Christmas trees, thinking we were in the beautiful woods, thinking we were growing, but we were just being readied to be cut down. They were coming for us.

Years later, in my sophomore year of college, my father and I finally had it out over my overnight stays with a boyfriend. Fueled with the seedlings of early feminist scholarship, I told my father that I was not a virgin and called him a dinosaur for thinking that any one man was worth so much that I would sacrifice myself and wait till I was married. "I'm here to have fun too, Dad," I said. I still cringe that the way he looked at me in disgust.

The rumors, not the truth, were enough to destroy a girl's reputation.

It all began to disappear, what my parents wanted from me, who they wanted me to be, the future they had so carefully planned.

Out on Ocean Avenue in Flatbus, where I was a poor Black girl, living in someone else's apartment in an all-white neighborhood, where my family was seen as "the help". And at eight in the morning, on that street with all of its white faces staring down at me or not seeing me at all, I walked with my head high and made it to the bus stop without flinching. It was my armor, too.

If feminism is in the water I drink, my mom's herstory is the dry land that pushes me to swallow.

I had a sudden irrational desire to hug her, but there was so much distance between us. My birth had been only the beginning of our separation, the first time I was cut loose. From that moment until now, I'd just been going farther and farther away, my body a lifeboat pushing into the ocean.

When I graduated from high school, my mom and aunt got uncharacteristically emotional, remarking that it looked like I was going to make it. I have inherited from these women a very pragmatic way of looking at the world, because they did whatever necessary to get the job done.

When it's called slavery, it's assumed white people are doing the enslaving.

Americans don't understand the first thing about love, Taslima's mother added. If they understood love, would they do all the terrible things they do in the world, bringing war everywhere?

But a new kind of life, one that she had longed to know as a child, opened up to our mother when we left. Over endless late-night phone conversations, she sympathized with our bureaucratic dilemmas, asked about our new friends and reminded us to eat well and sleep plenty.

I absolutely cannot ignore all that I have endured and achieved by settling for a passive life as Adam's Rib. Some may choose to call me a revel, but I am simply a woman searching for a happier life. One in which I am allowed to love myself, and not sacrifice that love in favor of society's values.

Strive to be kind to each other's whirlwind girl. Strive to remember that each one of us is precious and necessary, that drama and wars put out our light. Strive to remember that this is our one, short life, and the choices we make will determine what comes of it.

I heard him only encourage my brother to date Mexican girls. They would be so grateful to go out with a gringo.

I consider myself a woman who is working to understand how spoken and unspoken messages have shaped my experiences and political perspectives.

I thought that if I gave everything I had inside to the people I loved, I would perhaps be able to prove I wasn't a bad person. The truth was that I really wasn't a bad person. And I didn't need to dedicate my life to defining the kind of person that I was.

Who was going to tell these women that they didn't have to live this way? I was.

You have two things against you: you're black and you're a woman. Nothing is going to be easy.

A teacher once described the Haitians in her class as very obedient and polite. I said that's because their families will beat them if they get in trouble. Sensing my disapproval, she said it is good that they discipline their kids. Yes, but it can be taken too far when they instill fear of authority and beat the spirit out of their children.

We were two dark haired women who moved in overlapping circles of writers, queers, artists, and feminists.

We have also grown up with a body of literature created by women of color in the last thirty years-- Alice Walker's words about womanism, Gloria Anzaldua's theories about living in the borderlands and Audre Lorder's writing about silences and survival.

But family is only a safe zone until you kiss another woman, question the faith or go to the movies with a white boy.

When they hoped for a better future for us, they didn't realize they were giving up a chance to have good Hindu, good Nigerian good Mexican daughters.