The Chosen and the Beautiful

by Nghi Vo

I had always been a bit of a failure for her,

My mother...

I existed in a kind of borderland of acceptable and not, sometimes more on one side, sometimes more on another.

People are at their worst in transition,

True.

In truth, I felt less special in Chinatown, and that made me dislike it.

I feel the same way when im in predominantly black spaces.

every kind of love that I knew would wither through it, curl up from shame and exposure and die.