WeWontBeSilent
I am 32 years old right now, a breath away from 33. I will be the same age Roxana HernΓ‘ndez RodrΓguez was when she died. This is not history. This is my generation running out of birthdays.
In this book, I explore the beauty and pain of age, of women's lives cut too short and the men that held the scissors. I am writing from inside the years that they never got to complete. The simple truth is that most women in this book were just... women. Living their lives, raising their children, doing their jobs, sleeping in their homes, playing video games with their families. All brought to a short and sudden stop.
Yes, this book is poetry, but it also is pain transcribed into words. Pain that needs to be documented meticulously, the way we used to describe exactly how we got our boo-boo's so our mommys could kiss it better. Only the children affected by the losses in this book won't grow up with their mommies.
These women have enough on their shoulders without being labeled as good or bad, as hero or villain, as innocent or criminal. They all have one commonality: they were in America when they were killed. Most were born here, but all died here.
Land of the Free, and the Home of her Grave
In my book, this means I have grouped them together, and given each a lament, songs for American women, American even in death. They were the victims of men, one and all. But it's more than a man, or several, or more. You see, it's a system. And it will take a lot more than mere reform.
At the end of the day, it has happened again and again. Time after time, the United States of America proves there are for more than 32 women, so I saved a poem for Her, #33, Tomb of the Unknown Woman.
The United States of America murdered these 32 women, and still stands...
Undimmed By Her Tears.