This is my America

I am about to make a film.
A big ol badass revolutionary film.

But I am not a filmmaker.

I am a person who loves, lives for, spaces where people are vibing hard. Great conversations. Talking about hawt n spicy stuff. Spaces where ideologies are flipped on their heads. Where people break into sweat. Where teeth are ground and bared.

I am here to create such spaces.
I been here for that.

Detroit.

Building from the bottom in Detroit.

This is my America.

Where everyone around me is grappling with one of the most brutal evils of our time: the systematic disenfranchisement of working class folk by the institutions and means of capitalism.

This is my America.

Where I quiver to be walking down the streets of Grosse Pointe after dark with my husband, because  I now understand, and I can feel that we are not wanted there.

This is my America.

Where I am angry, disappointed and untrusting of the guild of whiteness. Where I am no longer shielded by the appeal of Africanah exoticism, and I am no longer inclined to wave my Kenyan passport, or smile at white auntys' fascination of my eloquence and civilized dimeanor.

This is my America.

Where poverty is masked by credit debt, big houses, big cars, endless work days and deep dissatisfaction.

life here ain’t no crystal stair.
It has tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.


This is my America.

Spirits bawl in these broke down homes,

Death.

Agony.

Why aren't we wailing?

Have you walked around these sides?

Detroit?

Stripping down

all that love made in our homes,

all that love-

great conversations caught in walls,

stories,

journeys.

cousins thrown out in the streets,

because of them financial piranhas and thieves,

because of a game we can never win.

because of chasing this here American Dream.


No glitz and glam hereabouts.

Not in this my America.


Ahh.

Aaaahhhhh.

He saw my name and greeted me,

Ba wo ni,  Àlàáfíà ni
And no kidding,

I heard
Atieno, Idhi nade
Uber driver, yesterday.
He had spoken to me in Yoruba, and I heard him speak in Dholuo.

What?

Picking me and Ominira from Grosse Pointe too.

What is this?

Abeg,

America.

Sé dáadáa ni.