Yellow girl blues, a poem by Pamela Mordecai

My Mama she done told me
she tell me every day
no mind your skin is yellow
you're a nigger anyway.

Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I walking up the muddy road
in my sampata shoes.

So I grew up a nigger
please check on my behind
my mouth, my nose, my curly
hair – I'm glad to know my kind.

Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I’m walking on the muddy road
in my sampata shoes.

And I go to America
and join in all the fights
sit in and demonstrate
and go to jail for Civil Rights.

Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I walk through so much macca
there's holes in all my shoes.

Dr King say it don't matter,
he say we all is one –
the hose don't know the difference,
nor the truncheon, nor the gun.

Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I feel the firewater
and I run away in my shoes.

Now I come north to Canada
my story it is true
they look me in my face and say
"White woman, who is you?"

Yellow girl blues
yellow girl blues.
I walking in the macca still
and my own take way my shoes...

---

Pamela Mordecai