Jamie gets published


Hot off the press, Jamie just got her short accepted to Maganda Magazine: Issue 18! She gave me the ok to post it up here for any of my 7 visitors to read. Check it out.

January 31, 2005
The Story of a Writer
By: Jamie J. Umanzor

Power. Money. Exploitation… Sex.
Poverty. Squalor. Hunger. A woman… Her Body.
Power. Knowledge. Words. A Voice…reaching out to many.

Three different worlds collide. Three different minds cried:
A foreign man as he pounded away and came deep inside her.
A native woman as she made ends meet the only way she knew how,
and a writer as she read the stories of prostitution in a country far away.

What could I possibly do from halfway across the world?
How could I just sit back in my comfortable life and not do a thing?
But how could I help?

…the only way that I know how…I will weave a tale for all to hear, in the hopes that through these words, people will learn, learn the truth of the injustices that began hundreds of years ago.

This is the story of a writer who has struggled with learning the truth:

A baby is born colorblind.
black and blue, red and orange, brown and green, white and silver, yellow and khaki
are all one of a kind in the infant mind… in my mind.
Walking through life holding mommy’s hand
with the invisible sunglasses that daddy gave me.
The TV was just a picture tube that played unreal, horrid scenes from media’s play,
Mommy would say.
Until that day, I believed…
it was a façade, a pictorial fraud played on our minds,
Daddy would say.
They lied! every day they denied me mental freedom
barricading my mind from political, racial, and ethnic wisdom.
After twenty years of living with those sunglasses,
you ripped them off my face. With a fervor I was covered in molasses
paralyzed and frightened…
You doused my eyes with hydrochloric acid,
dissolving the marble scales that idealized a vision so placid.
Shoved historical truths before me like a whirlwind slide show.
Stripped nude of the clothing that protected me from reality,
I was thrown into humanity’s subfreezing, biting cesspool of reality.
If you look closely, you might see bits of my brain on the pavement and the walls;
My head just exploded!
It’s so much…too much

Pinays are bought and sold for sex:
by their families, by themselves, and by businesses specializing in exotic vacations.
Over three centuries ago, Spain came to colonize my ancestors’ land. They came to civilize the savage natives. Somehow having women fuck a Spanish friar became the standard penance.
Over three centuries later, prostitution is the general affliction of the poor. Where bodies are the only commodities they have to make ends meet.
Over three centuries later, the sex trade is an integral contributor to the Philippine economy. My brown sisters have been turned into silver coins and green dollars for the picking of any male. They tell me that my people are by nature sluts and whores, nothing more than sweet meat to be fucked over and over…that we chose to be your prostitutes.

We were once priestesses, landowners, mothers, daughters, business owners, sisters, and beloved. Now, we are beaten, bruised, abused, and bleeding, fucked by the industrialized, relentless patriarchies.
Our exotic eyes somehow plead, “Fuck me, please, oh fuck me.”
My “exotic” eyes do not beg for your company!
They tell a story of a history were we were once priestesses, landowners, mothers, daughters, business owners, sisters, and beloved.
They tell a story of the present were we are eroticized, locked in a cage stigmas, and shackled by and for the patriarchy…fighting to be freed of the burden to be feminine.
They tell a story of the future where we are recognized for our power rather than our weakness.

They beg to be freed from the shackles clamped onto our necks, wrists, and pussies by first world countries whose men can’t seem to get enough of the “exotic” women of third world countries.

I have new chains cutting at my wrists,
the chains of knowledge, the chains that free an ignorant mind.
but hey, is it not better that I know the truth?

As a writer, I hope to educate the masses on the reality of the past, present, and future.
As a poet, I hope to touch the souls of many; and as an educator, I strive to influence the lives of all. My power lies in the words I write, in the anger I express, in the pain I describe,
and through the emotion in my voice, telling the story of a writer as she discovers the world of the pinay prostitute.

It’s the same story we have been hearing for years on end. Rich men from first world countries travel to exotic lands, anticipating exotic women who are fabled to do exotic things. These exotic lands—or third world countries as the rest of us in reality like to call them—draw men like voracious bees hunting for the juiciest and most promising flower. They walk the streets with an air of power, pockets filled with money: The Bait. In today’s capitalistic mentality, money equals power. Where there’s money, there’s a way. It fulfills all necessities and luxuries in life: food, water, shelter, clothing, and sex.

Sex: it’s the staple of life.
It creates life. It creates joy. It satisfies. It destroys life. It creates pain. It’s empty.

To the foreign man, it’s a luxury.
To the native woman, it’s a job.

It’s the only way she knows how to make ends meet. Alone, weak from hunger, living in a shack, and with nowhere to turn, the young pinay has nothing but her body. Men leer and grab as she walks past. She understands that she has…is…a commodity. What choice does she have? Sit there in filth and beg on the streets? Or use the one thing she has to buy enough food to survive until tomorrow? There are so many other men and women on the streets selling their bodies for money, drugs, a roof over their heads, or a warm meal.

Maybe I can do it too…what could it hurt? Just until I have enough to get out of this horrible life. How else will I feed my daughter? She’s so thin and weak. She needs to eat, but no one wants to hire this dirty, uneducated woman that I am. What else can I do?

Stepping out onto the corner, She’s wearing her cleanest pair of jeans and her daughter’s shirt. She cut the top to show some cleavage. It fit so well…clinging to her bare breasts. She stands there and waits for someone to come along.

Oh my god…what am I doing? How can I do this? If I just close my eyes and moan, maybe he will believe me. Maybe I will believe me. If I close my eyes I don’t have to look into his face. I can just lose myself in the darkness of my mind as he grunts and pounds viciously into me, his filthy hands all over my body like a lion devouring its helpless prey.
A few dollars…that’s enough to buy food for the week. That wasn’t too bad; I guess. Now, my daughter can eat and fill her starving belly.

Five years go by; thousands of travelers come and go, and standing on the corner—still wearing her daughter’s [tattered, stained] shirt—is that same woman, looking ten years older.

This is the story of countless women in the Philippines, catering to countless travelers. This is the story of the power that these men have over these women.

Feverishly, I write as emotions are coursing through my body: rage at the injustice, sorrow for the cycle of sex, money, and the abuse of power…the abuse of money…the abuse of the powerlessness and hopelessness that they are living in.

Standing on the cold stage with the bright lights glaring in my eyes, hundreds of expectant stares waiting for me to begin, I wonder: will they care? Will they listen? Will I offend anyone? Does it even matter if I do? No…not really. At least this way, people will know. It might not be much, but if these words reach enough minds, then maybe…finally…we can raise one voice together and take action. So, I take a deep breath and begin this, the story of the pinay prostitute.


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