Almost Surely Dead

by Amina Akhtar

You know, that exotic vibe.

Exotic is a terrible descriptor. It means "characteristic of a distant, foreign country" and makes any brown person feel like they do not belong in the country where they may have lived their whole life. Please stop using this term and thinking it is a compliment.

She wasn’t aggressive, not exactly. She was American. A white American. They were allowed to be loud, boisterous, and nosy. Those were all things my mother never let me be, even though she wanted me to assimilate. I had to be quiet, do what I was told, and never cause a scene.