Developing a better relationship with feedback means working on killing your ego, this idea that you can just birth your ideas as they appear in your mind, that good writing can be readymade. As soon as you start doing the actual work, you realize that storytelling is a complicated endeavor that shapes you as much as you shape the lines on the page. And as long as you keep doing so, the shapes will align and meld.
Being an Ayitian academic means that I get a chance to stand and fight for my freedom, to liberate my mind and illuminate others, using the measures and institutions within my reach, imperfect as they may be, to attempt to redress some of the wrongs done to my culture, some of the inaccuracies maliciously planted in my stories.
Growing up my nickname was Mèt Peyi. Loosely translated as “Master of the Country”, it was often meant to designate a child too big for her britches, who called out adults on their bullshit, who had no qualms about telling the impolite truth, a “towo”, a bull, lacking grace, devoid of charm. As time passed, … Continue reading How to be Unapologetically Authentic without being a Dick
We raise children and tell them to look around the world. Everything that the light touches could be theirs. What we willfully neglect to tell them is that they’ll never access these lands by being themselves. Imagine a bedtime story from Mom: “And the princess lived the rest of her life worried whether her hair … Continue reading Code Switching: Social Survival or Cultural Suicide
R.A.J. 