This
is a book about being trapped in the Meanwhile. Walking through
seemingly perpetual journeys between borders, genders, nationalities
and social status. As a product of mixing races, yet not mixed race.
Inhabiting a large body of before with no clear sense of an
after. Set to a time of one’s own, decades lost and found in
the way, at the mercy of socio-political circumstances, legal
procedures and test results. Cyclically prone to fail and start
again.
These
poems are inspired by liminality and rites of passage we cannot come
back from. They look at the new millennium, where the rituals of
adulthood, of becoming, of making sense as a role model citizen and
perceived pillar of society, are based on capitalist milestones of
maturity and self-realisation which seem impossible to those stuck in
the Meanwhile.
These
respectability parameters are the ones accepted for those who are
locked within the narrative of ‘the good migrant’, ‘the
successful queer’, ‘the child prodigy’, ‘the perfect body’
and ‘the beautiful mind’; as if the only way to escape judgement
and earn dignity as human beings within the margins is to fit into
the media and government-approved stories of acceptance and
assimilation at the right time, place and age.
Through
these pages, we embrace the Meanwhile, and we embrace ourselves to
get ready for whatever comes next.