dear jesmyn,
while reading your memoir, i keep going back to the question that is posed periodically throughout the memoir, "what is they?" i'm not done reading the book yet, so i don't know if you eventually come up with a definitive answer, but what i do know is that they seems to be a looming, inevitable power that determines the destiny of the black men in your life.
"they killed my brother." // "they picking us off, one by one."
i interpreted they as the symbolic white man whose white supremacist ideals permeate and form the very foundations and structures of this nation. these structures are meant to keep poor blacks poor and perpetuate government-rigged cycles of violence, drugs, and mass incarceration. they is everywhere. they pervades the very air inhaled in poor black neighborhoods. there is not a day that goes by without they plaguing the hearts of black mothers and black sisters with fear. they kills black men's bodies, boot heel on throat, and calls it an accident.
you said that your brother taught you that "love is stronger than death."
loving and taking care of each other is resistance. may we always love and take care of ourselves and each other fearlessly.
faatimah
while reading your memoir, i keep going back to the question that is posed periodically throughout the memoir, "what is they?" i'm not done reading the book yet, so i don't know if you eventually come up with a definitive answer, but what i do know is that they seems to be a looming, inevitable power that determines the destiny of the black men in your life.
"they killed my brother." // "they picking us off, one by one."
i interpreted they as the symbolic white man whose white supremacist ideals permeate and form the very foundations and structures of this nation. these structures are meant to keep poor blacks poor and perpetuate government-rigged cycles of violence, drugs, and mass incarceration. they is everywhere. they pervades the very air inhaled in poor black neighborhoods. there is not a day that goes by without they plaguing the hearts of black mothers and black sisters with fear. they kills black men's bodies, boot heel on throat, and calls it an accident.
you said that your brother taught you that "love is stronger than death."
loving and taking care of each other is resistance. may we always love and take care of ourselves and each other fearlessly.
faatimah
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