Mangos With Chili - Beloved

Recently I was very excited to have the chance to see Mangos With Chilis' new show "Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead" a show that was positioned to mourn the deaths of queer and trans- folx of color who had been taken from us. One of the poets that read was Rose Sims.


The stage was set up with an altar on one side of the stage and she stood next to it with a projection of a photo behind her. As the poem began she started talking about her family and the experiences of her Auntie being raised in the Phillipines with her mother. Then as the poetry unfolds we learn that the Auntie she speaks of was trans and the way that the family spoke of her was with female pronouns and used a female name for her. The recounting of these stories about this Auntie serve to place the poet in the position of mother telling these tales. She becomes the mother recounting the tales and we become her, sitting in the dark enraptured by these tales of this woman and her life.

As we sit there we begin to see the woman appear before us through the poem, the narrative shifts and we hear about the interest that we, as Rose, as children had in this woman and her life. The way that the language aroound her changed once the interest was shown, the way that the Auntie's name was shifted back to its birth configuration and the way that the pronoun used to refer to her becomes male. This is placed in the context of the poet's own identity as a transwoman, that Auntie becomes a focus for this child/us as a member of the family that shows acceptance of a path that is not the normative one set in front of children.

The image of Auntie behind Rose takes on more complexity when we learn that the arm around her waist, the man who is missing was an American soldier that took her away from the Phillipines. So now we have a relationship in the context of colonialism, in the context of conquering this man/soldier actually serves as salvation and love as oopposed to the violence of colonial occupation.

There's no obvious ending to Auntie's tale within the poem but we realize that whatever may have happened to her it actual matters little because the two narratives of the poet and her Auntie begin to merge into a historical connection, a legacy of love and accepting who you really are and living that life despite any obstacles. The emotion in her voice was obvious and the feeling was obvious to the audience. The love for this Auntie that she never physically met is about a connection through time, a connection of blood and experience that is visually represented by Rose standing in front of the projected image of her Auntie and turning to refer to her so often.

It was a powerful reading and a powerful poem that does a lot to create a connection between family that we create and family that we are born with and the connections and disconnections that can happen within those spaces.