Sitting on the concrete steps in the back of my grandma’s house, our dad shows us how to burn paper with a magnifying glass. Says people kill ants this way, how cruel it is. It was true: the magnifying glass...
We are survivors: we the descendants of the Africans who endured the wretched march to the west coast of their continent, brutal confinement, and cruel transatlantic passage, to reach alive—somehow alive—the shores of a new world.
Dad, you look like a doll I wouldn’t want to play with, boxed in your casket. The mortician tried to paint you pretty. I wanted to be pretty, too, but mom says makeup is inappropriate for funerals.
