I can’t entirely renounce the condition of indebtedness. I am indebted to the activists who struggled before me. I am indebted to Cha. I’d rather be indebted than be the kind of white man who thinks the world owes him, because to live an ethical life is to be held accountable to history.

Speaking on this subject, Amiri Baraka offers an invaluable quote: “All cultures learn from each other. The problem is that if the Beatles tell me that they learned everything they know from Blind Willie, I want to know why Blind Willie is still running an elevator in Jackson, Mississippi.”

As a poet, I have always treated English as a weapon in a power struggle, wielding it against those who are more powerful than me. But I falter when using English as an expression of love. I’ve always been so protective of making sure that my family’s inside sounds didn’t leak outside that I don’t know how to allow the outside in. I was raised by a

And white tears are why 63 percent of white men and 53 percent of white women elected a malignant man-child as their leader.

the average net worth of whites is ten to thirteen times greater than the net worth of nonwhites. In fact, the income gap between races is only becoming greater. Thirty years ago a median black family had $6,800 in assets but now they have just $1,700, whereas a white median family now has $116,800, up from $102,000 over the same period. The

The poet Bhanu Kapil wrote the following: “If I have to think about what it looks like when the Far Right rises, all I have to do is close my eyes. And remember my childhood.” Friends have echoed the same sentiment: Trump’s presidency has triggered a flashback to childhood. Children are cruel. They will parrot whatever racist shit their parents

To grow up Asian in America is to witness the humiliation of authority figures like your parents and to learn not to depend on them: they cannot protect you.

One characteristic of racism is that children are treated like adults and adults are treated like children.

Much of Lahiri’s fiction complies with the MFA orthodoxy of show, don’t tell, which allows the reader to step into the character’s pain without having to, as Susan Sontag writes, locate their own privilege “on the same map” as the character’s suffering. Because the character’s inner thoughts are evacuated, the reader can get behind the cockpit of