Sublime

As the scholar Seo-Young Chu puts it, I was exiled back to the uncanny valley, where I was returned to my silicon mold and looked out of monolid eyes. To be a writer, then, is to fill myself in with content.

filled with the kind of determined cheer that masked a deeper despair.

deference

My heart was skipping in my throat. I knew that anger. How had I managed to find it in Ohio?

Everyone wants a broken-glass girl, bought second hand. Look. The damage was already there.

“You know, I don’t think she ever lost her shit around her white friends.” “Yeah, well,” Erin said ruefully, “we were family.”

I began this book as a dare to myself. I still clung to a prejudice that writing about my racial identity was minor and non-urgent, a defense that I had to pry open to see what throbbed beneath it. This was harder than I thought, like butterflying my brain out onto a dissection table to tweeze out the nerves that are my inhibitions.

But while I may look impassive, I am frantically paddling my feet underwater, always overcompensating to hide my devouring feelings of inadequacy.