Invisible Borders

writing, again

i have kept every word i have ever written, more or less, since i was a child. in folders, notebooks and binders, folded up slips of paper stuck in old diaries. i'm not sure why. the only justification i have is a lecture i attended once given by bell hooks, while i was at stanford, in which she relayed a story of how, in a fit of rage, she burned all her old journals.

then a teenager, i could not imagine such a rage as that and yet could understand the pain she felt at losing them. but i am mature now and finally understand rage, have myself flirted with the idea of simply ridding myself of all these words. there is a fear somewhere in there that losing one is like losing myself, my identity: the quiet, young girl who hardly spoke her mind, but instead wrote it all down waiting for the day when she would share her thoughts. fantasizing about the day, upon her death, when someone would discover a trove of journals detailing the mundane details of her existence and decide it was a life worth living.

the blog thing, well i could have never predicted that--it fills an interesting space. not quite writing, but not quite not writing either. i am excited to be done with school, forever, in a few weeks. i can get back to writing. it goes away for awhile, like an absent friend, yet it always returns, and never leaves me. --AL.

ghana must go // taiye selasi

i wrote a blog about taiye selasi some years ago. her debut novel, ghana must go, is out now. i am inordinately excited and pleased about it. sometimes i have felt jealousy towards writers who have inked their book deals, still waiting for the time to finish mine, but i feel none of that in this case. i'm not sure why, maybe partly because i'm finishing up film school in a couple months and have the rest of my life ahead of me and am feeling deliciously infinite in my possibilities. 

i feel such a kindred spirit in selasi's work about afropolitans--the ever roaming, ever searching for identity cadre of individuals in which i find myself. finding home at once here and there and everywhere, yet somehow only beneath one's skin. perhaps it is possible to anchor ourselves in our creations?

book release party in manhattan on 3/28 at 7pm at 58 W15th Street. rsvp to ghanamustcelebrate@gmail.com. -- AL.

"For 15 years I'd gone to Ghana desperately seeking home writ large, ignoring my role in the relationship, the "I" in "I had to go home". For half my life I'd travelled home and left myself, my truth, behind: arriving in Ghana and assuming the role of (illegitimate) Prodigal Daughter. I was disappointed, naturally, in the ways that home-seeking prodigals are, dismayed to find my otherness in tact among my own. But I had never been myself in Ghana. 

The self I'd become in 30 years: the author, photographer, screenwriter, traveller, designer, thinker. I'd spent months at a time in Oxford, Paris, New York, New Delhi, and always felt at home: for I experienced those cities, experienced myself, as a creator, not a creation...I'd never created an experience in Africa. My father had, my mother had; they'd dreamed and learned and loved, and left. I'd walked in their shadows, but not in my shoes." -- Taiye Selasi