On Boundaries and Diasporic Bodies

There is a scene from my adolescence that comes back to me often, its memory jutting forth somehow more jaggedly, more demanding than the rest. It’s an interaction my father and I had one day concerning our ancestral inheritance. At the time, it didn’t feel like a compelling conversation between two consenting adults. It felt like I was being persecuted and examined on cross. Every admonition administered was a spear. Every observation, a branding iron telling me what I unequivocally was and at the same time would have sold myself up river to never become.