Dallas Public Library

Dirty river, a queer femme of color dreaming her way home, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

eng

autobiography

no index present

non fiction

Dirty river

904968483

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

a queer femme of color dreaming her way home

"In 1996, poet Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, carrying only two backpacks, caught a Greyhound bus in America and ran away to Canada. She ended up in Toronto, where she was welcomed by a community of queer punks of color offering promises of love and revolution, yet she remained haunted by the reasons she left home in the first place. This passionate, riveting memoir is a mixtape of dreams and nightmares, of immigration court lineups and queer South Asian dance nights; it is an intensely personal road map and an intersectional, tragicomic tale that reveals how a disabled queer woman of colour and abuse survivor navigates the dirty river of the not-so-distant past and, as the subtitle suggests, "dreams her way home.""--Page 4 of cover

Preface. Let's get something straight : surviving abuse as choose-your-own-adventure-novel -- Part 1. How I run away. How I run away from America : New York, 1997 -- 1996, summer of love -- Girlbomb -- Running away root -- Some notes about the going away : or, you are a twenty-two-year-old brown slutty girl who thinks maybe you're an incest survivor reading The courage to heal standing up in the bookstore -- Piece of my heart : queer women of color -- The punk kid of color clusterfuck -- A story of a river -- Survivor psychic powers -- Gasoline in the eyes -- Part 2. Going into the sky. The last time I went home for Christmas -- Mom -- A good brother -- June 17, 1997 -- The amethyst room -- Paula : Toronto, 1997 -- The winter you are so broke -- The letter -- Part 3. How to come back. Healing justice mix tape -- Hard times survival dinner no. 1, Toronto 1998 -- Chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome -- Psychiatric survivor movement -- Punk Desi girls -- Funkasia, 1999 -- Dad again -- Not picking up the phone -- Learning to be brown, parts 1-3 -- Changed my name -- Landed -- Part 4. Opening/femme like a fist. Early '90s New York femme memory no. 2 -- Spinster -- Shit calms down -- Precious -- The palace of words -- Feed the ache : 2010 -- The opening -- Mama, three ways -- Multigenerational -- Made it home : 2012 -- Redemption song