They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

by Hanif Abdurraqib

When people squint at my name on something in front of them and then ask where I’m from, I tell them “Columbus, Ohio.” When they look again and then, perhaps more urgently, ask where my parents are from, I tell them “New York,” smiling more slightly. Occasionally, I’ll get a person who asks where THEIR parents were from, and I humor that as well. No one has ever gone beyond two generations before me, but I look forward to the day where it all plays out: me in line at the bank, or at a deli, someone attempting to trace my lineage to a place they feel makes sense. Me, eventually saying, “Well, I’d imagine Africa came into play at some point, but now I’m here, so who can say really?” What people are asking in this exercise is never about where I’m from. The question they’re asking is “why doesn’t your name fit comfortably in my mouth?” and we both understand what this is asking, and my toying with the asker usually doesn’t win me any points. The answer they are digging for is less exciting: my parents converted to Islam in the 1970s, when many young black American-born New Yorkers found their way to the religion. A desire for reconnecting their roots to something that felt more like home than Christianity. My father, before Islam, was Catholic, though I’m not sure of my mother’s religion. They took new names. The name “Abdurraqib” means “servant of the observer” in Arabic. It is hard, even now, for people to imagine that any Muslim people are not people who came here from ano...