Apr 11, 2019
Losing Whiteness When You Lose Your Father
To lose whiteness is to compress the white half, to describe it awkwardly, to never know how to address it.
To lose whiteness is to compress the white half, to describe it awkwardly, to never know how to address it.
If my grandfather could remain optimistic into his eighties, then how could I let myself become jaded in my twenties?
As a child of many cultures, I wasn’t sure I could lay claim to one. But I learned that identity can grow and stretch, widen and encompass more than a single country or language.
Our mothers wanted to protect us. So they hid us, beat us for having opinions, for being too inquisitive in a world that doesn’t permit girls to be curious about things.
We’d denounce the marches and torches and chants. When that moment passed, we’d continue to live with the ghosts of our country’s peculiar legacy.
Something unexpected cracks me open every year: Tonight, it was my daughter, recognizing the name I’d given her because I couldn’t give her the woman herself.
All the wrong people are crying, and all the people who ought to feel something do not.
“I never knew my not looking like or having the accent of my father’s people would save my life.”
There’s a distinct kind of relationship that privileged first-generation children have with their immigrant parents.
Patten didn’t undress for fifty days while onboard Neptune’s Car because “the threat of rape had never been far from her mind.”
The court finally condemned Korematsu v. US, but the lessons of history are being overlooked by those claiming to have recognized them.
Slaves brought peanuts from Africa and planted them across the South, where they were used as animal feed.
“I once believed that I had creative talent, but I have given up this idea,” Clara Schumann wrote in her diary in 1839.
Richmond could offer a bold challenge to historical narratives about the South, the Confederacy, and American slavery.
The story affirms our goodness by assuring us we did it on our own. The story tells us to not make waves.
“Names bind us to people, places, and histories. As the descendant of enslaved people, my name only goes so far.”
“Once your children know that even one person detests their bones and breath, they know.”
“I realized the work that I had been doing, the work that I was proud of, wasn’t enough.”
Every time someone guesses wrong, I am the one to apologize.
“I felt as though I’d been inducted into a special society of survivors.”
