On VTech

I've really been struggling to blog in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. I think my quietness on the shootings has been largely because the first thing I said when I heard was that it was probably an Asian guy mad about all the rich folks in the middle of that poor/working class mountain community. It is just disturbing and sad what has happened and the information that has continued to poor out on this event. As many have expressed, it is difficult to know just what to say and when to say it. I hope we will talk more seriously about guns and violence and apathy and mental health and social care and concern for each other as human beings in the coming days.

For now I continue to grieve the loss of so many brave and heroic and brilliant individuals.


Nikki Giovanni, University Distinguished Professor of English, VPI&SU
http://www.english.vt.edu/

We are Virginia Tech

We are sad today
We will be sad for quite a while
We are not moving on
We are embracing our mourning

We are Virginia Tech

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly
We are brave enough to bend to cry
And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again

We are Virginia Tech

We do not understand this tragedy
We know we did nothing to deserve it

But neither does a child in Africa
Dying of AIDS

Neither do the Invisible Children
Walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army

Neither does the baby elephant watching his community
Be devastated for ivory
Neither does the Mexican child looking
For fresh water

Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs

Neither does the Appalachian infant killed
By a boulder
Dislodged
Because the land was destabilized

No one deserves a tragedy

We are Virginia Tech
The Hokie Nation embraces
Our own
And reaches out
With open heart and mind
To those who offer their hearts and hands

We are strong
And brave
And innocent
And unafraid

We are better than we think
And not yet quite what we want to be

We are alive to imagination
And open to possibility
We will continue
To invent the future

Through our blood and tears
Through all this sadness

We are the Hokies

We will prevail
We will prevail
We will prevail

We are
Virginia Tech

~~Nikki Giovanni, delivered at the Convocation, April 17, 2007