Hello friends, here is #5 (Part I) in my NanPoWriMo series, sparked by the wonderful question-prompts and guidance of our host Nancy Lyneé Woo. When she asked this question, what immediately came to me was the thought, “It is not wrong to be ghetto,” immediately followed by “Being ‘ghetto’ does NOT mean what people think.” Let me explain.

See, many tend to think that if you grew up in the ghetto, you are trash. You are lower class than others, just because of where you came from. This idea is promoted very subtly by almost everyone, even people who probably don’t realize they have that prejudice. And I’m not talking about racial prejudice. I’m talking about basically class prejudice.

Therefore calling oneself “ghetto” is, yes, an attempt to erase some of the stigma (by owning whatever the label is people want to throw at you that is supposed to be negative). But it is also the desire to recognize where one came from and validate the others who live there.

I grew up in a ghetto of Houston. On top of that, I grew up very poor so that when I moved cities, my family was still considered “ghetto” despite location because of the looks of an aging home we had no money to fix, car breaking down, no phone, no washer. All of these things caused a necessity to borrow from others a lot (until they decided we were trash and just needed to get our life together and stop bothering them), etc. I can even remember teachers gossiping about me. I wrote a poem about this, “Stink,” in my book The Locust Years. When one grows up with so much stigma attached, it tends to follow them and affect their perceptions of self-worth into adulthood.

I’ve had a long struggle coming back from that feeling of being labeled “white trash,” which feels terrible because not only is “trash” in there but you also feel you are being excluded from other groups that could and should be your community.

But along that journey, I realized something important.

The things I learned by growing up there provided me with an invaluable set of life skills in perceptiveness and being able to deduce the motives of others. I have schemata for the tricks people can have up their sleeve that would probably have taken an entire adult lifetime to develop – BAM – gifted to me so that now that I need it, it’s there. (Why would people living in the ghetto have tricks up their sleeve? Survival. But that’s a whole ‘nother post…)

I am glad I grew up a poor ghetto kid. I am grateful for the lessons I learned.

See my next post for the poem that came out of this and the creative process behind it!

I made this AMA because I do think it’s an important discussion. Please feel free to ask and leave comments. Please be respectful of me as I am of you. Much Love ~K