We are people, with free will, circumscribed to different degrees by histories that shape who we are allowed to become. I am, by most measures, pretty smart. My grandmother was smarter. She was do-the-Times-crossword-in-pen smart. She was teach-yourself-liberal-arts-with-a-library-card smart. She was, for most of her life, a domestic worker for rich Jewish people who sent me cards when I got good grades in school. The Edelmans. The Goldmans. The Finkelsteins. When she died, quickly, thank God, all of my grandmother’s possessions fit inside the one-bedroom senior living apartment in the small
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