Dear white women who have worked with me on academic DEI initiatives, you are not the allies you think you are

By Naa Asheley Afua Adowaa Ashitey

Because I have already ripped 11 layers of tape off my mouth.

By the 12th, the point where my voice becomes hollow

and my soul lies on the edge of the bridge,

the exhale that I am finally able to take is stopped by your damsel wails.

I watch the nods you all share, the fallacies and corrupted beliefs that lead

you to justify a bullet entering my heart and stripping me of my ability to breathe.

All because the infinite reasons

you have postulated in your head that deem my existence as a

Threat

to your pink, pussy hat feminism.

Because I’m so sure you would’ve been able to burst through the glass celling

without the cracks I already made,

wearing your new, gilded crown of revolution and

liberation” .


Naa Asheley Afua Adowaa Ashitey (She/Her/Hers) is a writer and aspiring physician-scientist from Chicago, currently living in San Francisco. Her works have been published in Soul Talk Magazine, Blacklight Magazine, Euphony Journal, The /tƐmz/ Review, Sage Cigarettes Magazine and The Xylom. She will be starting her MD-PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Summer 2024. More at www.NaaAshitey.com

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