for Alice Walker
Under the influence of spotlights and microphones and the scrutiny of the American public, some speak of assimilation as if it were this natural occurrence, this evolution of kinky to straight,
brown to bleached— the inevitable result of stewing in the melting pot of American culture. Somehow our brown turns invisible with a slight tongue trick.
I have watched so many grace stages, spin webs of lies to moderators and hosts, then turn chameleon, racial shapeshifters with ambiguous opinions on the matters that matter. But not you.
Your work whispers for colorful narratives to come back from the margins, for our histories to climb out of the shadows and speak until the masses listen, until our inconvenient ink is no longer seen as a filthy smudge on America’s reputation but the title of America’s cultural anthology.
If they were to remove us and all our sullen truths, what a vacant canon we would be without griots preserving this strife, capturing each anguish, freezing these pages as time capsules.
Our nation—on the cusp of becoming a collection of all the words we fear; all the little truths we white- washed and blacked out are coming back to haunt us.
Like you, I wait for the day when each child knows your name when we race toward what we fear and relish the unknown.