An Open Letter To Young Brown Girls Everywhere

*This is brilliant! Share this with any Latinita you know. VL (3.5 minute read)

By Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez, Huffington Post Latino Voices (3.5 minute read) 

Dear Brown Girl,

You see everything. You notice people around you growing and changing, because you are perceptive. Keep that. Trust your instincts. This world will tell you that feelings are not real and that logic trumps all of that, but know that those feelings are generationally taught. You’ve inherited an eye and an instinct for things that probably come from your mami, tias, hermanas, abuelas. They are smart; do not discard their knowledge, strength, and super human ability to love you and your hermanxs.

The world is in the palm of your hands, and older people who have believed the lie that only white people are more valuable will try to cut you down and keep you small. You come from ancestors who survived genocide. You cannot be small and you cannot be stopped. Do not let them fool you into thinking you aren’t capable.

Run, laugh and play. Be as carefree as possible; it will make everyone around you wonder how a brown girl can be this carefree in a world that wants to see you fall. You deserve everything under the sun, because the sun is indigena. Didn’t your mami teach you that? Make friends. Later these people will become your lifeline. Find other carefree brown girls to build with and laugh with and, most importantly, run with, because this world will want to drown you, so learn to run away and into safe and warm embraces.

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Read. School will not save you. School systems are made to indoctrinate you, teaching you history that puts the government in a positive light. They will teach you a history that erased American Indians, a history that negates Aztlan, a history that pretends that the USA is not to blame for all the ills around the world. Do not buy into it. Read on your own. Go the library. Ask your tia malcriada, she probably has some great book recommendations. Do not ask white people for advice. They are indoctrinated― they have to be. They benefit from these lies. You have to learn this, fast, to ask other brown folks. Ask your older primo, the one in college . . .  READ MORE