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To my white mother:

weird-slytherin-girl-ist-geil:

sasu-thirst:

weird-slytherin-girl-ist-geil:

When I was 10 months old, you brought a Punjabi Indian and Cantonese Chinese girl to America. You raised her as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

When I was 5, you took me to a party hosted by Chinese people. When you found out it was a holiday, you told me we had to leave because it was a celebration of a false religious holiday. When I cried, you yelled about pleasing Jehovah and not worshipping the devil. We never went to any cultural events again and you acted like my cultures didn’t exist.

When I was 13, you made me throw away the bindis my friend gave me and told me Jehovah was proud of me for throwing away a symbol of false religion and standing up for him.

When I was 14, the elders in your congregation told me I couldn’t wear sarees and Punjabi suits. You packed them away instead of standing up for me. Even though the elders later revoked their decision after the circuit overseer* told them to, I still remember how you went along with them. You scrubbed the mehndi off my arm for an hour because a congregation elder told you I couldn’t participate in preaching activities because it looked like a tattoo.

When I was 15, you let me wear sarees to an assembly*, where dozens of white people stopped and took pictures with me as if I was a zoo exhibit. You told me to smile and be polite.

When I was 17, we moved to a more racially diverse area where the people didn’t care about my clothing and mehndi and you let me wear them again.

Last week, you decided to start learning Hindi with me, forgetting the legacy you left me.

Last week, you decided you could use me as a path to convert people. You decided my heritage is convenient for you.

Yesterday you told me I could only spend time with the Desi kids at my college if I tried to preach to them.

Today I am declaring that I will be Desi with or without your permission. I am immune to your paintbrush, white as snow, caustic as bleach.

Today I am declaring that you don’t get access to my people’s dances, mehndi, clothing, food, bindis, holidays, languages and jewelry when you tore them from me to conform to the standards of white, male Jehovah’s Witnesses. I might not even want to share any of it.

You can rub the mehndi off, toss away the bindis, break the bangles, tear off my salwar kameez, hold my shoulders down, but the strength of my people will always flow in my blood like the Five Rivers.

*a circuit overseer is a man who travels to congregations of Jehovah’s Witnesses and gives them council. An assembly is a big meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses, this one was 3 days and in the summer.

This is why cults are toxic can’t wait for the day religion as a while is a motherfuckkng cult and should be banished 😈

Although I believe Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult based on their rules about association and the amount of control involved in day to day life, that wasn’t the point of this essay.