that there are people out there, like Madame, who don’t hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you—of how you were brought into this world and why—and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs. The first time you glimpse yourself through the eyes of a person like that, it’s a cold moment. It’s like walking past a mirror you’ve walked past every day of your life, and suddenly it shows you something else, something troubling and strange.
Humor often revolves around a sudden switch of perspective. Something that seems entirely sensible and logical while you’re embedded in a protagonist’s viewpoint becomes suddenly hilariously weird or surreal when glimpsed from that of a neutral passer-by. Authors like P.G. Wodehouse wrote brilliantly funny books simply by stringing together one sequence after another deploying this kind of sudden revelatory switching.
Here I wanted to achieve something related, but provoking not hilarity, but something chilling; a feeling of revelation that feels unfathomed, producing a sense rather like losing balance at the edge of a dark pit.
Lauren Basson and 528 other people liked this
@Erica and Cherrisa, until you two mentioned it, I had not thought of the parallel with children from transplanted cultures. Specifically, in the history of the slaves in Am…