TW: Rape

How do you language the un-languagable? On Friday, when Free Write issued their statement regarding Roger Bonair-Agard, I felt myself sink deep into the hole of my own unlanguaging. The statement that Free Write wrote is both about, and not about, me. It is deeply painful to see my body, my story, my life, so distorted and manipulated by others’ projections and misinformation. I didn’t even realize how deeply this anxiety has been in me until they issued that statement. So, this is my statement. This isn’t a call to action, a disclosure of the details of what happened, or a point by point correction of why Free Write’s statement is wrong. My job is not to correct their letter. I’ve been collateral damage to not only what happened to me, but the ways that this has been mismanaged by people who had more power than me, and how deep that mismanagement has affected me.  I write this as a way to claim back my own body, voice, and story, which for too long has been caught in the energy of this.

To say it simply: Roger Bonair-Agard raped me.

I am not the only one he raped. And sexually assaulted. And transgressed. There are an immense number of people who have come forward against Roger and named that he assaulted them, that he has a deep pattern of sexually assaulting younger people in artistic spaces.  There are so many people who have organized around this for many years. There are so many people who have come forward. The information is there. This has been discussed openly since at least 2013. The statement that Free Write has issued is deeply disrespectful to not only myself, but to their students, to the many survivors that Roger has assaulted, and the many people who have organized to protect their communities from his predatory behavior.

When I read the statement, I went into an intense spiral. I knew that they were writing about me, but the facts they said were wrong. The words of institutions always seem to hold more weight than the words of individuals. Once again, I felt myself trapped in language that was not mine. It was hard to tell if I was reading the lies of Free Write, of YCA, or of Roger’s. I felt trapped between all three of them, my projected body, the deep private shame of what had happened, being made public in a very distorted, very wrong way. It is egregious that nearly ten years after this incident occurred, these organizations continue to perpetuate the same harm.

I met Roger when he came to my college to perform. I was 21. I think he was 43. When he raped me I was 23. The power dynamics were clear and inherent in our relationship. I was a poet with a few poems published and he was on the National Book Awards finalist list. In addition to raping me, he also gaslit me so much I lost sight of my own reality, including in two mediated conversations that we had together, in the attempt to heal.

Part of me still lives in that room, in our mediated conversations. Where I was buried alive under the weight of his gaslighting and had to stop our process because of his unwillingness to take accountability, and the way that he was so deeply centering himself in the process. Where I was in the deep grave of his language. The process was never meant to be public in any way. It was meant to be a private process between us, in an attempt for our healing. He signed an agreement in front of me that he wasn’t going to talk about our process to people. That Roger used our private healing process to prove he was doing accountability ‘work’ to either YCA or Free Write or any other teaching organization is a further transgression of my being, body and psyche. This is such an extreme violation of the agreement we entered into for me to even step into that space with him.  

I have done so much work to organize around rape culture in my communities, to try and keep people, particularly my students, safe. I do this because I deeply love and care for my communities, particularly my students. After I told Roger he raped me, I went to different organizations, poets, and organizers across the country and told them what happened. I told YCA. I told other poetry orgs, from local slams to institutions. I sat across from people who were much older than me, many of whom had been Roger’s friends for years, and told them what happened. I watched many of them cry about how their friend was a rapist and they didn’t know what to do, while I had to sit across from them, firm in my truth, dry-eyed. So often, I was not believed. So often I sat in rooms with people who said “I know Roger and he would never do that.” Or: “He never did that to me so he would never do that to anyone.” So often I sat there and watched people make this about them: their friendship with him, how hard it would be for them to adjust to this news. So often I had to wade through people’s disbelief that Roger could ever do something like that, when Roger himself had performed poems he had written about violently raping people.

I wish that organizations like Free Write and YCA would take more responsibility for breaking the cycles of silence and shame that occur around sexual assault. I wish they would take more responsibility and accountability for protecting their employees and their students. I wish they would be more transparent about their processes publicly and earlier, particularly when such egregious harm has been caused. I wish YCA had protected me more when I worked for them.

Why was so much of the burden of responsibility for taking care of my community put at my feet when I had just been harmed? Why was so much responsibility put on me to fix what he had done? There is so much weight on survivors to have to push along everything. In addition to organizations, for the many years since this happened, my name has been used recklessly by people in connection to Roger. Through the years I would randomly log onto twitter and see people  tweeting about him assaulting me, or writing their own statements of how they’ve organized around Roger that carelessly mention me. It has been deeply triggering. You can share my statement. You can share my words. They are mine. But don’t bury me there, in what he did to me. Don’t flatten my name, my body, my person, to that.

What would it look like to talk about Roger’s harm as his harm and not drag survivors’ names into every conversation about him? What would it look like to not demand each sordid detail from survivors to believe them and instead, keep it about him? Ie: “Roger has a history of serially raping people.” Or: “Roger has a history of grooming young women in poetry spaces.” Or: “Roger has written and performed poems about how he rapes women.” Or: “Roger has raped people and not taken accountability for his actions.” Or: “There are many accounts of survivors across the nation who have said that Roger has raped or assaulted* them. Roger, himself, has written poems about raping people. And still people find it impossible to believe that Roger has raped people, and chose to employ him in youth spaces.”

I don’t believe in police, prisons, or carceral punishment. I believe in people’s capacity to heal. But Roger’s healing is not on me, nor does it concern me. Nor are Free Write or YCA’s growth. I am not an authority on what to do or how to handle this.

Again, this is not a call to action. I am not asking for anyone to boycott YCA or Free Write. I believe in the work that these orgs do, and also know that spaces like these are often the only places many young people feel safe and heard. The knowledge of that makes me extremely sad. I want safer spaces for our youth. And it is up to these organizations to take greater steps to ensure the safety of their students, their staff and survivors. Harm happens in institutions. Harm happens outside of institutions and is tracked into institutions. How does an institution handle harm when it happens? How does it keep everyone safe? In the case of these two institutions, it’s not my job to figure it out. I have done my work to protect my community. Now, I am protecting myself.  

I’ve tried so hard to move past this, but every time this comes up online I feel so small. Like no matter what I do I can’t get away from this. It puts me right back in the room with him where he’s telling me I don’t know what happened to my own body. It seals my voice. It robs me of my language, which is one of the most sacred things to me. I am writing this because I realize how deeply my energy has been stuck in all of these moments, scattered in other people’s hands and decisions. I am writing this because I want to stand up for myself, because I want to claim back the parts of myself I broke off in order to survive and move through. I am writing this so that I can be out of the pain of being in other people’s language, and can finally be in my own.  

I feel so grateful for so many people in my community who have held me through this. I feel grateful to claim myself back and to use my voice to break the cycle of my own shame. I am grateful to the earth that has held me so often as I’ve been broken apart. I feel grateful for the sky for pulling me back to myself. I am mine. My life is mine. I feel grateful to step into this new day, where I get to live in my truth.

I am not available to be reached out to about this, by any organization (including YCA or Free Write) or any person. Please don’t use this as a moment to try and build with me. Respect my boundaries. This is my final word on this.

With deep love and hope for a safer world---

Fatimah Asghar.

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* Edit: June 11th 2021; An earlier version of this statement used the word rape here, but the accounts included instances of both rape and assault.