A grandfather is born in Jakarta. His mother is Chinese. His father is Belgian and Indonesian. His wife will be British, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Scandinavian. His daughters will be born in the Netherlands. His granddaughters, New York, Los Angeles. This grandfather gardens. I call him in the Dutch, Opa. When he is ten years old […]
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If upward progress is a romantic idea we try to build our lives around, then so too are falling, celerity, this wild and fickle freedom.
I clenched my teeth, seething at this age-old American innocence, the belief that at the end of the day, Americans meant well and, really, that ought to be enough. Enough to claim the perch of fame, the pedestal of saviors.
FEAR, the most horrible and barbaric fear. It had talons and wings and bore its fangs into each of us. It bled out veins. It was parasitic . . .
There is no accident at the core of this so-called “essay.” Ok, there is, but it’s not what you think.
I’ve classified myself and shaped my worth by my bones, by the skeletons of the people I used to be, and by the bodies of the people who left their marks on me.
Slaves, who did not volunteer to board the ships of chains and salts, and whose legacy casts a shadow much longer and darker than the fern, are not physically in this photo, yet their contribution is loud.
