Assembly

by Natasha Brown

But what it takes to get there isn’t what you need once you’ve arrived.

Born here, parents born here, always lived here – still, never from here. Their culture becomes parody on my body.

How can we engage, discuss, even think through a post-colonial lens, when there’s no shared base of knowledge? When even the simplest accounting of events – as preserved in the country’s own archives – wobbles suspect as tin-foil-hat conspiracies in the minds of its educated citizens?

My only tool of expression is the language of this place. Its bias and assumptions permeate all reason I could construct from it.

It is remarkable, even in the ostensible privacy of my own thoughts I feel (still) compelled to restrict what I say.