Because I was brown
they cocked their thumbs
aimed pasty forefingers
at me while they shouted
‍ ‍ Take that, Geronimo!

“I have yearned for the right to have nothing to say, and the confidence to say it anyway.”

“Because our dark-haired fathers, wooden rulers snapping in tanned fists, forced us to be great at it.”

“She didn’t want to commiserate. She wanted me not to have seen, not to know what it is like to move through the world embodying that particular target.”

The answer to the “Negro question” is a mix of sermon and jeremiad, calling attention to the gap between a desired moral universe and disastrous present reality.

In Hong’s essay on her fraught relationships with female friends during college, the topic of mental illness goes largely unaddressed—as it often is in Asian American culture.

The City We Became isn’t simply a jarring attack on white privilege, it’s a necessary nudge towards reality…By inverting white savior tropes, Jemisin shows how systemic advantages have weakened cities while diversity remains their strengths.

You can’t place me. I could be any
thing in the summer
when my tan has vacationing ladies
in Williamsburg touching my arms, wet gaze on my frizz—​
can you believe I’m from where you are, lady?

For Piper, race was always a conscious affiliation, not an essentialist identity. […] Throughout all of this, Piper seems to have organically arrived at an understanding of race that aligns with its actual definition—a social construct rather than a biological fact.