Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

Other people’s parents are often a delight.

It was 1996, and the word “appropriation” never occurred to either of them. They were drawn to these references because they loved them, and they found them inspiring. They weren’t trying to steal from another culture, though that is probably what they did.

The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures.

A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture

or experience that is not their own. I hate that world, don’t you? I’m terrified of that world, and I don’t want to live in that world, and as a mixed-race person, I literally don’t exist in it.

The failure was like a fine coating of ash, after a fire.

the strange feeling in the air between them for the last several months was denouement.

It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”

Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair.