Green Island

by Shawna Yang Ryan

“A fortune-teller?” my mother scoffed. She jiggled the baby. “You’ve lost your mind. I don’t have money to throw at charlatans.” “Mere men can’t help us now. There’s nothing else left to do.”

“Once you realize all our assumptions about power are created by the powerful, you understand it must be changed. You rethink power. Not the power that is desire, or dominance. The power that is strength.” He smashed

If we say he was a dictator, then we will have to admit that we were duped.”

“I think you expect I will say that Western is modern, and that our culture is old-fashioned. But I don’t believe that. I don’t believe the West equals modernity. The idea is colonialist.”