Someone Knows My Name

by Lawrence Hill

Some say that I was once uncommonly beautiful, but I wouldn’t wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her.

To gaze into another person’s face is to do two things: to recognize their humanity, and to assert your own. As

“Someone knows my name. Seeing you makes me want to live.”

Personally, I concluded that no place in the world was entirely safe for an African, and that for many of us, survival depended on perpetual migration.