“WE” AND “US” BY ASHLEY MASSO
Born and raised in the U.S.-Mexico border city of McAllen, Texas, Ashley Masso, a third-generation Palestinian-American, writes from the complexity of borderlands, tracing the scars of systemic oppression while insisting on the tenderness that emerges when people choose collective solidarity. Her featured poem, “We” and “Us”, names the violences of occupation and displacement, yet refuses to let them be the only framework for belonging. Instead, it turns toward recognition, sacrifice, and the deliberate act of choosing community across difference. Her work gestures to the idea that belonging is something we create in practice, defined less by what we inherit and more by how we choose one another.
Now based in London, Masso serves as Impact Officer at Subul Impact Outsourcing, a social enterprise centering displaced communities’ empowerment and economic justice in the tech industry.
TO READ MORE OF ASHLEY MASSO’S WORK, FOLLOW HER ON MEDIUM.
Click on the poem to enlarge.
For more RECS like this one, check out the rest of vol. 002:
