There’s nothing so fraught as being the American-born child of an immigrant
Much has been written about burgeoning cultural anxiety in the U.S., thanks to the political divisiveness of the Trump era. But I’ve come to disagree with the sentiments expressed by many authors.
For many White Americans, there’s an inextricable link between cultural anxiety and White supremacy, and it’s an inverse relationship: White cultural anxiety increases when the traditionally privileged majority senses chipping away of absolute power.
There were no articles about people like me, a firstborn and first-generation American-born Black man who is a direct descendant of a Nigerian immigrant with inextricable ties to other Nigerians in Africa and the U.S. …
My hatred for Donald Trump has always been visceral, a venom that flows through my bloodstream whenever he appears before me. I’ve harbored an intense aversion to the man since 2011, when he began to openly question President Obama’s place of birth and legitimacy because of his roots in Kenya. My father was born and raised in Nigeria before immigrating to the United States in 1975. I was born in Denver, Colorado on December 8, 1976, the first and only son of immigrants. Trump has and always will be an existential threat to people like me. …
Something was going on with the grocery stores.
It was the middle of a Sunday in early March when I arrived at my local King Soopers market for the first time since the coronavirus’s rapid and inexorable spread became the lead story on every cable evening news show. The novel coronavirus is what they called it, a disease with a mortality rate ten times greater than a flu virus that kills more than sixty-thousand American people per year. …
It was the middle of October when Emily called, a young, besotted woman intent on venturing outside the country.
“I need an expedited coronavirus result,” she said. “My boyfriend is waiting for me in Peru. He is a really great guy and I haven’t seen him in such a long time.”
My immediate thought: That’s not fair.
Epidemiologists and other health experts had issued warnings against extensive and unnecessary travel for fear of spreading the coronavirus. I’ve heeded the advice of the experts, constricted my travel to encompass driving to my job, exercising at the neighborhood park, and shopping at the supermarket. …
Three months before I was to enroll at Boston University, my father secured a second job driving customers through the Denver International Airport in wheelchairs. “It’s only temporary,” he said one evening during dinner.
Guilt surged through me, as I assumed that he was working the second job to pay for my college education. Grants and loans paid for the majority of my tuition and boarding, but there were still two thousand dollars that would have to be accounted for by my family.
“How long is temporary?” I asked.
“I’m thinking just the summer, but I don’t know,” my father said. …
Ring. Ring. Ring.
No one is answering.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
It suddenly pauses, leaving me eager for some kind of reply. I hope to hear a voice on the other end of the phone line.
The next few seconds pass without a response from a human being or automated answering service. There is no boring elevator music to tide me through, no beeping or thrumming sound to give me confidence that I will eventually be connected to the first line of entry. It’s just silence. Dead. Freaking. Air. …
A year after my father passed away from cancer my mother started to muse aloud about marriage and progeny. Not for herself though, for she was focused on finding a suitable woman for me, her beloved and only son.
Momma doesn’t want me to be left alone after she has passed on from this world — the prospect of her son being a single man after her death contributes to her sleepless nights. “My children are taking care of me and I am so grateful for the help,” she said one afternoon. “ I am retired and with no husband to share the rest of my life with. …
Bearded, bespectacled, and long haired George leaned back into his chair and said, “This Covid-19 virus is the worst kind of a cock blocker.”
My eyes grew wide. For George had uttered the word “cock blocker” in a hospital workspace containing more than eighteen-hundred employees, seventy-three percent of which are women.
I threw my head back: “Ha. Ha.”
The blue hospital mask redirected my breaths toward my eyes and forehead. I inhaled. My breath smelled of partially digested mix strawberries, orange juice, and oatmeal. Wow, I thought. Is this really how my breath smells when others are within distance? Large glasses covered my eyes and made up for my nearsightedness. …
November, 2012
That biopsy needled must have been at least foot long, as well as metallic, sharp, and all around frightening. To witness the thing made an already crisply chilly hospital room even colder. I looked over to the hospital bed where my dad rested, his back exposed to the world. Then I turned my attention to the nurse who was preparing to plunge the needle. I closed my eyes before the needle was to pierce the skin, and waited. I heard my dad gasp, a signal that the needle had been plunged into his tissue. …
October, 2012
Dad was reclining in his favorite blue chair, staring at the flat screen television, absorbing the national news of the day. He was seventy years old then, balding and paunchy, and in his ninth year of retirement from the airline company.
Dad had suffered some serious health scares recently. It was one crisis after another, and then another one after that. The most recent scare took place a month prior, requiring that he spend an entire night in the hospital. Age was catching up to him despite all that he’d done to preserve himself — he’d lived a very clean life. The sharpness of his youth, once embodied by his chin and cheekbones had been dulled away by time. …
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