Resistance

My resistance used to smack
you right in the face
demanding to be considered
demanding to be heard.
It won me few fans and even
fewer converts.

But now resistance
is more subversive
is sometimes silent
in the way I teach my classes to think
rather than to bubble
the correct multiple choice answer.

Instead of resisting by sitting
on a steaming street before a district high rise
it is the way we discuss literature
and ask questions that relate to
our current world and
our place within it.

My resistance is in the choices
I give my daughter
about the clothes she wears
or the books we read at night
and letting her be her own girl
because that is feminism.

It is in my decision to read
women and people of color
to boycott certain brands
to acknowledge all of my privilege
and attempt to do right
with my fresh water, education, and free time.

It is a poem written in clean clothes
in a home with electricity and central air
in the wealthiest of countries
in the language of power
about all the ways
I’m privileged to resist.

By Noriko Nakada

Biography:

Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles where she grinds out creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. She has two book length memoirs available and has been published in Specter Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times.