As Driskill writes, “This class will not save you / This class will not save any of us”. This is difficult and wearing work, and it does not even come as an immediate solution. But because we do, we also have teachers who are queer people of color who have to put their emotions aside to discuss, academically, the personal traumas that come from living in such a society. We shouldn’t have these systems of oppression to worry about. This should just be the nature of the world, but how else am I going to survive?” Teachers (underpaid and under-appreciated) shouldn’t have to teach queer theory and critical race theory to students currently suffering under those systems of oppression in tangible ways every day. What is debating about labels and theorists going to do for the people suffering out in the real world right now? This poem also reminded me of the words of Van, from Nia King’s collection of interviews with QTPOC: “It sucks that we need to be paid to do this kind of work, because we really shouldn’t. This concept is reminiscent of the point made in our Queer: A graphic History textbook about the inaccessibility of academic queer theory and how hard it is to engage in ‘discourse’ when you are dealing with financial instability and oppression on a daily basis.
It really juxtaposed the mundane necessity of going to work or school with the pressing and tragic demands of life outside the professional sphere.
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