Cultural Disconnect by Sula Collective

creators pinky ortiz diana bamimeke abondance matanda jaime puente-tortorelli kassandra piĂąero mari santa cruz tiffany rodriguez sophia yuet see ana ortiz-varela jasmine simone oyinda yemi-omowumi

notes from our editors Feeling torn between cultures and identities is a familiar experience for many people of colour. Having to navigate a society that is regarded as ‘home’ yet regards them as ‘alien’ creates a sense of major disconnect between our cultures and ourselves. The feeling of disconnection is something that never really goes away. It is constantly exacerbated by society’s hostility towards our very existence and makes us question our adequacy. Throughout our lives, we are often forced into a liminality of sorts, the threshold between integration and rejection of both our host society and our family’s traditions. Creators from both Sula Collective and La Liga Zine dissect cultural disconnection in this collaborative issue. In these upcoming pages, we explore our individual experiences as first generation to third generation immigrants, and people of color who, in an attempt to assimilate, were too ashamed at our lack of whiteness growing up to embrace whatever traces of our culture we had left. As people of color, we have no choice but to make our own homes and families. Existing in the middle of two cultures, neither of which we fully belong to, requires us to find spaces we can mend and create. These places are where we can be ourselves without having to contort our bodies and thoughts into forms that don’t entirely fit, because we create the mold. -- Kassandra, Mari, & Sophia

curated by Kassandra Piñero, Mari Santa Cruz and Sophia Yuet See designed by Jaime Puente-Tortorelli and Sophia Yuet See

If you spoke to young people in Ireland and in other European countries, you’d find out that most of us are first generation kids shouldering the weight of our “Westernness” - that being our liberalism or our education - and the weight of our origin stories, the places to which we can trace ourselves. A duality like this is especially hard when you’re a person of colour. Despite being born in Europe and holding the citizenship of their respective countries, PoC youth are denied this part of their identities. The continent’s jingoists and racial elitists assemble to shout us down, offended by the suggestion alone that we can be European and nonwhite. We can’t join the club. On top of this, our parents, who are of difficult upbringings, remind us that we are “other”. They tell us that embracing being British, or Irish, or French, flies in the face of tradition. True, you were born here, you went to school here, they say. But remember where you came from. Remember that they will always see you as different. As a foreigner. For as long as you live. Thus, cultural disconnect is born. Anyone who lives in certain parts of Europe, especially Ireland and the UK, is familiar with the foreigner rhetoric, i.e. “they come over here, they take our jobs, they’re benefit-scammers, welfare tourists” etc, etc. This is a rhetoric that’s becoming increasingly tired, that’s used in place of constructive and well thought out arguments. It leads to vitriolic criticisms of our customs and cultures. Yet it’s constantly touted by much of the European media, and sometimes international media, who fuel the distrust and ignorance towards many ethnic groups here. Young people, specifically, are the most affected by this. To be shuttered out by the very society in which you grew up is painful, to say the least. Certain media outlets, with a view to causing unnecessary panic, depict brown and black youth as wanting to “take over” a country, regardless of their backgrounds. Recently in Rathfarnham, a southside suburb of Dublin, two men and a teenage boy were set upon by a group of attackers. The victims were of Afghan descent, and were told to “go back to their own country” (a sentiment that has also been shouted at myself). Plus who can forget when supposed Fox News expert Steven Emerson claimed all of UK city Birmingham was Muslim, and that parts of London were

ravaged by “Muslimreligious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to religious Muslim attire”? Huge numbers of us know this exclusion even in the conversations we have daily. You get told that you’re surprisingly eloquent. You meet someone at an event or in a class; they ask, “Where are you from?” Here, is your response. Then something clicks in your acquaintance’s mind. Maybe an article they read in a popular tabloid or an offhand remark by a friend comes to light. They reply, “Yeah, you live here, but where are you reallyfrom?” It might seem incredibly trivial, but being a PoC attunes you to the smallest of gestures or phrases, including this one. Subconsciously, the person who utters these sentiments believes that it’s just not possible for you to be a citizen of the same nation as them, or to be well-spoken. Subconsciously, the sense of being divorced from our societies is perpetuated. But what of the people who raise us, the mothers and fathers who yearn for the warmth and familiarity of their native countries? Are they wrong to want to show the roots from which we grow? I recall my first trip to Nigeria. How I bounced between Lagos and Ekiti, my mother and aunty showing me the right way of pounding yam, my cousins teaching me Yoruba words. Though I was Nigerian by default, I wasn’t authentically so. And they were compelled to nudge me into my true identity. Now, I am grateful for this, but then I felt distinct from them, misshapen in the way I was both Irish and Nigerian. Often, someone would point out the strangeness of my way of speaking, or of the knowledge I’d acquired. It was usually in jest, but sometimes a person would be genuinely irked by them, by the fact that they had to converse with this agreek.It made me very confused, just as a large number of PoC youth are, especially in adolescence. Confused about my nationality, about which state I was to proclaim proudly that I was from. I did, and still do, love both countries. Only through much reading, self-reflection and discussions with other “first gens” my age was I able to undo my uncertainty. These methods may not work for others, but they certainly are good

springboards. The issue of cultural disconnect stretches far beyond the spheres that we, as occupants of Europe, are used to. It’s amplified by the current refugee crisis - in 2015, over one million Syrian people arrived on the continent by boat, with almost 34,900 others travelling by land. Undoubtedly, there were children and pregnant mothers among them, fleeing the turmoil on home turf. So if we are aware of the prejudices and problems we encounter in our birthplaces, then those of refugees will be tenfold. This is evident in the worrying rise of right-wing groups like the English Defence League or Pegida, who set up an Irish branch in Dublin three months ago. Instead of promoting understanding and education about the plight of refugees, they prefer to fear-monger and to engender hate. The opinions and hooliganism that are well attributed to organisations like these shouldn’t interfere with effective discourse about race and culture. Yet, unfortunately, they do. Feeling torn between your ancestry and your place of birth isn’t helped by external pressures. The chance to be candid about the topics of cultural disconnect or racism in European countries is veryfrequentlyshut down by the accusation of “playing the race card”. People of colour are systematically silenced by societies that are too scared by, too ignorant of or just plain apathetic towards conversations on the above. Not to mention the loved ones who might reject our “Westernised” ways and condemn important parts of us. It seems the one method by which to erase disconnect is information. There’s a disheartening lack of it among a lot of people. Driven by self-interest or fear, they push away those who are already marginalised by the media and by public opinion. There is a counter to this, of course - one where young PoC set out to educate themselves and to talk frankly about the issues that affect them. When this policy of learning (without the distortion of history or of the present) spreads to our institutions, cultural disconnect will, hopefully, be dismantled, to be replaced by something close to understanding, to harmony with oneself and with our cultures, wherever they belong to.

X-TREME TREMBLE!!!! ARE YOU READY TO RUMBLE? THIS EARTH WILL SWALLOW U WHOLE. SO SET THAT SHIT ALLLLL ON FIRE ! ESPECIALLY IN ESMERALDAS (AVERAGE HIGH, AVERAGE LOW) BY JAIME PUENTE-TORTORELLI

I was not alone on the other day, Being alone was never the problemHowever, in my mind I never could. Dealing with the pain of others, Does not come as easy as it should. It’s a long and saddening story. I’m leaving you a four page letter A tell-all, write about it in your paper But you won’t catch me looking vulnerableIt’s enough I’ve been through to give up feeling comfortable. I’ll take my life before you see me cry again, The cruelest and most satisfying revenge. Maybe you’ll want me when I’m not there Turn your speech from hate to desperate prayer. I’ll wear your grief as a coat when I’m lying on the sidewalk, Sinking slowly past layers of bedrock. Reaching the earth’s coreThe warmth and light that I adore. Like the coast in Esmeraldas, still I shiver. I heard my mother cry, wiping her tears with her hair I didn’t see my father, he simply wasn’t there.

Cobble stone roads never once repaved like the wounds of yesteryear Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never go back there, never let these eyes run, never give in to fear. But every day I went back, chipped away at the wall. Trying to find the one that hid behind, the pain that made him crawl. Digging away at the groaning earth, a sharp face appearedIn a moment of panic I heard them cry, desperate to touch the light. He reached up as far as he could, but his skin evaporated to dust of white. My hands bled red, scars and bruises congested the surface of my skin. But his hands had disappeared, his face had turned pale. Though he tried to speak, his mouth did fail. Thin vapor filled the space where his lungs one stood. Fully exposed by the movement of the sun, pieces of him continued to fade I cried out louder, forcing myself further down the way. I shielded him from the sun, but the damage was done. All that remained was his chest, covered in white dust. I wrapped it in a blanket found nearby My head pounding, I reemerged from the pit to find His heart still beating, still glowing red. I fell on the street and through sobs and moans said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was too late! But this heart lives forever! I thought I had lost my true self, but here it lives! In my heart! In my bruised chest! Shielded by my cracked ribs and my own torn flesh!

I live to see this earth begin anew! Losing pieces of me that I never knew.â&#x20AC;?

AWAKE TIFFANY RODRIGUEZ

TO ME MY SKIN WAS A BURDEN. TO ME MY SKIN WAS A SCAR. DARK. UNWANTED. BUT ONE NIGHT MY CULTURE CAME IN MY DREAMS. SHE SHOWED ME TEARS, HAPPINESS, AND LOVE. AND IN THAT NIGHT I WAS REBORN

Tiempo/ExtraĂąa.

by Pinky Ortiz

With fear of possible gentrification amongst predominantly Latin neighborhoods (such as Boyle Heights), I wanted to capture the essence of what it now means to be a Xicano/a; where cultural identity loss and westernization are often encountered. Surrounded by friends of the same heritage, catholic iconography, and traditional Mexican customs, these photos reflect my unapologetic appreciation for being Mexican-American (Xicano).

watch Pinkyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s short film shot on Super 8 here

ABONDANCE MATANDA SO SORRY SO SORRY SO SORRY SO SORRY

we didn’t struggle sail across from mango sun to concrete sky to get knocked down blocked down and shat on i didn’t not birth you into blackout village blackout instead into blinking lights for you to not know life is longer larger than endz oh my maybe is i what clipped your wings? oh my baby, i sorry! but here you must er you take responsibility (sorry) i sorry you know you had to inheritinherit it’s how we do here you are in a blank space but the walls the windows the everythings scratched scratched like looking for luck in lotto but nothing maybe you your friends your enemies meant to be the sad the lost you were

sorry the world and historys forced you borned you here so sorry

ï¿½;ï¿½;E;D,;ï¿½ï¿½;ï¿½ADï¿½;ï¿½;;ï¿½D;ï¿½ï¿½D;ï¿½;,ï¿½; ?G;ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½Dï¿½ï¿½;ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½;ï¿½Dï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½;ï¿½Gï¿½ï¿½,ï¿½;;ï¿½;ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½;ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½Dï¿½; !!

PRESIDENTS PRESIDENTS PRESIDENTS ALL ALL ALL ALLU.S. U.S. U.S. U.S.PRESIDENTS

ARE ARE

WAR WAR WAR

CRIMINALS CRIMINALS CRIMINALS

This!! This!! portrait! This!! portrait! This!! is!made!! portrait! is!made!! portrait! en/rely!out! is!made!! en/rely!out! is!made!! of!/ny!! en/rely!out! of!/ny!! en/rely!out! pictures!of! of!/ny!! pictures!of! of!/ny!! assholes! pictures!of! assholes! pictures!of! assholes! !assholes!

! !!

GEORGE W. BUSH: WANTED DEAD GEORGE BUSH: DEAD OR ALIVEW.FOR HISWANTED INVOLVEMENT OR ALIVE FOR HISATTACKS, INVOLVEMENT IN THE 9/11 IRAQ IN THE 9/11REGIME ATTACKS, IRAQ INVASION, CHANGE, INVASION,OCCUPATION, REGIME CHANGE, ONGOING BEING AN ONGOING OCCUPATION, ALL-AROUND IDIOT, ETC. BEING ETC. AN ALL-AROUND IDIOT, ETC. ETC. ! ! ! !

A A AL LL LL L O O OF FF TT HHT HE EE M M M

La Quinta

When we decided on â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cultural Disconnectâ&#x20AC;? as the theme for this issue, I knew I had to go back to Sunset Park to take photos. It is where my mother was born and where most of my family had migrated when they came from Puerto Rico. When I was younger my mother raised me in primarily white neighborhoods and never allowed me to hang out in the streets. I spent most of my childhood alone indoors watching tv or reading books while my other cousins grew up in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Spanish Harlem. They grew up knowing the streets and the language and the people, while I was disconnected from it all.

by Kassandra Piñero

As I got older I realized I didn’t have a place I could call home. We moved so frequently throughout my whole life that there was no sense of stability or connection for me to grab a hold of. I remember going into La Quinta when I was a little girl, but I never stood long enough to grow familiar with its energy. During my recent trip to Sunset, I grew more uncomfortable with each photo I took. I couldn’t speak the language or navigate the streets as fluidly as I could with Manhattan. I was an outsider. This photo series shows everything I wish I had growing up, but actually shows everything I lack.

I. I used to hate the way we’d scream in the streets. So unashamed to get loud with each other in public. What irritated me the most was how no one ever looked twice because that was the way our families behaved. There’s no such thing as an inside voice when you’re Puerto Rican, talking meant yelling. Yelling meant me growing anxious. It meant me lacking the ability to communicate with my family because I hated the sound of their voices. I cringed at their screaming laughter. I was told to stop acting so white when I would ask everyone to quiet down. II. My mother’s favorite ice cream is from the Mr. Softee truck. It’s what she grew up eating. She also loves Piragua. Whenever she would take me into Brooklyn as a child, we would wander the streets of La Quinta in search of the old men on the corners with their carts full of shaved ice and juices. She’d get coconut and pineapple, I’d get cherry. III. The sight of tenement buildings meant homecooked meals and family gatherings. Too many cousins in one bedroom apartments and bunk beds in the living room. I used to dream about living in a big house with my own bedroom the way all of my white friends did. Now I pray for those same apartments I loathed as a child. Pray for white people to move out of latin and black neighborhoods and hope La Quinta isn’t destroyed by gentrification. I realize the importance of spaces I do not feel at home in. I recognize the evils of the white skin I used to praise as a child. IV. I used to cry about how much I hated my skin, my hair, my brown eyes. My family used to tell me I was a white girl in a Puerto Rican body. “Why do you talk like that?” they’d ask. Separated me from my culture and convinced me that my mind was too good for the skin I was born into. I flattened the curls springing from my brown body and avoided the sun to keep myself from growing darker the way it would have been in PR. My New York accent faded and I neglected the importance of learning Spanish. Taught myself to make my tongue stiff instead of allowing it to roll like the waves off the shores of Puerto Rico. Now all words feel foreign in my mouth. The language I speak is not my own, but neither is the language my grandmother speaks to me in. V. I gag at the texture of fruits. Watch my family scoop avocado onto their tongues, shred mangoes with their teeth and realize this is only one more thing separating me from my roots. I will never know if fruit is ripe or not. I will never feel fresh fruit juice cool my insides during these unbearable summers. VI. There was a time I felt ashamed shopping in the big, knock-off box stores my mother would take me to in La Quinta. All of the popular girls wore Hollister while I wore Old Navy. My flip-flops for the summer were Chinese slippers in every color. Every young latinx girl living in Brooklyn at the time wore them too. I didn’t want to be like the latinx girls, I wanted to be like the white ones.

VII. In the cuchifritos, the waiters all speak Spanish. Some speak English fluently, but the older ones do not. When they see I am not white, but cannot speak the language they are not hospitable to me. I was too embarrassed to tell her my order was wrong. I wished my parents were with me so I could show her that I belong here too, even though I know I don’t. I wish I had been born into Sunset like my mom and dad. I wish I had a home I felt connected to. VIII. There is a bakery called Cafe Con Pan. It is my mother’s favorite place to get sweet breads and cookies. When I went inside, a woman had to translate for me when I went to pick up some Mexican Conchas. My face grew hot and I left without taking photos. I felt like a stranger to my own culture and took the train home after this happened. IX. When I was younger, my mother used to take me to Sunset Park in the summers where she’d take me to the cuchifrito near my grandfather’s apartment to eat bistec encebollado and drink malta. I’d get candy from the bodegas for only a few dollars. Maybe we would go to the park where I’d play in the sprinklers, but at the end of the day we always went back home to our small one-bedroom apartment in our quiet jewish neighborhood. X. Everywhere I go, I am perceived differently. I am multiracial. Ethnically, I am latinx. Being a racial multitude has made me feel like I belong to nothing. There is no community for me. I grew up eating rice and beans, but gagging at the taste of yuca. I grew up poor, but in a white neighborhood. I have been told too many times that I am too ambiguous to define. That I am not enough of anything to be a part of something. XI. I text my mother and ask her if she had a nickname for Sunset Park, something she called it when she was little. “La Quinta,” she tells me. “That is what my mother and aunt used to call it when I was a little girl, because the shopping is on 5th avenue, but the whole area- we’d just call it La Quinta,”

nobody understands nobody understands nobody understands tï¿½e aï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ardï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½girl tï¿½e aï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ardï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½girl by jasmine simone by jasmine simone tï¿½e aï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ardï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½girl

ï¿½laï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½rls ï¿½ï¿½ll rï¿½se. ï¿½laï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½rls all aï¿½rï¿½ss tï¿½e ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½rlï¿½ are staï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½. ï¿½laï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½rls all aï¿½rï¿½ss tï¿½e ï¿½laï¿½tatï¿½ï¿½ï¿½s stï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½. ï¿½laï¿½ï¿½nobody understands ï¿½ï¿½rl all aï¿½rï¿½ss tï¿½e ï¿½eserts stï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ tall. ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½aï¿½ see ï¿½er sï¿½ï¿½eï¿½ï¿½ereï¿½ aï¿½ï¿½ altï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½er ï¿½eaï¿½ ï¿½aï¿½ ï¿½e tï¿½e aï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ardï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½girl ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ tï¿½ere ï¿½s stï¿½ll a ï¿½rï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ tï¿½ere ï¿½ tï¿½lteï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½t stï¿½ll. reï¿½eï¿½ï¿½er tï¿½at ï¿½laï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½ï¿½rls are HUMAN BEINGS WITH THE by jasmine simone ï¿½ï¿½Uï¿½EST ï¿½ï¿½Aï¿½ï¿½ ï¿½

abeni, lost and found

a short story about a girl and her family coming from Nigeria to England by Oyinda Yemi-Omowumi

photo by Petrose Tesfai Before they had left for England, Mama asked Abeni if she could start using her English name, the one she had been christened with on the 8th day of her life. At first Abeni didn’t mind, her mother had sold the move as a fresh start, a new beginning with a better education system, but after the first week it became difficult. Adopting a new name felt like adopting a new identity, and every time Mama called out Victoria, Abeni wouldn’t answer. Victoria was bottomless, it encapsulated an empty being lacking life and experience, whereas Abeni was a shrine to her father’s voice. He had passed four years into Abeni’s life, and there were days where she yearned for his gravel-coated words, the way his throat remained hoarse through the grey thunderstorms and heat-soaked evenings. She could never abandon him, not in Nigeria or in England. When they had arrived, it was the cold that greeted them first. It was 2001, November in England, the wind sweeping through the streets and biting at their exposed hands and faces. Aunty Ngechi had forgotten to explain this to them, how runny noses and red temperatures were standard for English weather, that they should have wrapped up tightly on the plane with double layers and thicker jackets. She greeted them outside the airport, her hair in black braids spun tightly into a large bun wearing a heavy camel coat and honey brown boots. Holding onto a pink plastic bag, she apologised for her forgetfulness and pulled out two woolly scarves and gloves. Abeni noted the foreign colour in her voice, the swirl of English and Nigerian accents as her aunt pulled from nationality to nationality, mixing English with Yoruba. Abeni wondered if the same would happen to her thick African accent.

“My friends, bawo ni? Ṣé àlãfíà ni?” Mama replied as custom “A dupẹ, ẹ se!”, before Aunty Ngechi turned her attention to Abeni, the little six-year-old girl that she had yet to meet. “And your beautiful girl, Kíni orúkọ rẹ?”. “Abeni, Aunty, my name is Abeni”. Mama’s face soured at Abeni’s disobedience, and corrected her mistake. “or Victoria, orukọ rẹ ni Victoria”. It was imperative that England became a part of Abeni. If they were going to stay, they had to belong and they had to succeed, and that could only be a possibility with Abeni’s young and impressionable mind, so Victoria was the best route for them to belong. However, Aunty Ngechi wasn’t bothered by the mismatch between mother and daughter, she was curious about Abeni’s choice of language. “You don’t speak Yoruba?”. “No aunty, but I understand very well”. “You have the accent but you don’t have the language?” “At school, they taught me in English” “Well, you are in England so it is good”. It had been a long time since Aunty Ngechi had been back to Nigeria. She had moved to England with a student visa when she was twenty, and having went to school in a small village teetering on the edge of absolute poverty, she had been taught in Yoruba and had only been taught English by her eldest brother when her parents sent her to him in Lagos at age thirteen. Although life in Nigeria was now easier, it was still a surprise to hear that Abeni had learnt no Yoruba at school, and of course neither her mother or father had taught her. Being an old best friend of Mama, she knew that England had been her eternal dream location, and when she looked into Abeni eyes, Aunty Ngechi could see bonfire embers that sparked at the city skyline of London. Perhaps Abeni would become something intelligent, perhaps she would become the English woman her mother had wanted to be when she herself was only nine. Then Mama took Abeni’s hand and smiled as the taxi driver helped Aunty Ngechi load their black suitcases into the back of the cab. Aunty Ngechi had given them a room in her home, as it had been decided that they would stay until Mama had found a job and could start paying rent for her own little flat. From the taxi cab window, the city buzzed with a blur of red, orange and green lights, and swimming across black slabs of concrete, cars moved with a certain eagerness. London was busy and had places to be and destinations to reach. Abeni could see the sun was setting, but she couldn’t see the sun. Its tangerine glow leaked out of the small gaps between tall buildings, trickling over their pyramid tops and rectangular heads, but she still couldn’t see the sun. It would’ve served as a counterbalance for the disoriented state she was in, after all the sun was the same everywhere in the world, unchanging despite the disparities in the people across continents. Instead, she hoped that she would see the moon, however small, however translucent, a little sliver of white in the dark blue would ground her. So giving up on searching for the sun, Abeni peered into the faces of the people she could make out. The cab was beginning to slow, and slotting into the traffic, her eyes focused on a tall slender woman stood waiting at a bus stop. At first glance, Abeni thought she was beautiful, a celestial body amongst the grey brick walls and glass buildings.

Her hair fell from her face in long auburn strands, and her eyes were wide and blue. The woman pulled out a silver phone and began to speak; Abeni couldn’t hear her voice, but she imagined it would taste like the sugarcane her father used to grow, its sweet-honey-water trickling out of its olive-green bark as she chewed. The woman resembled the girls on the front covers of the magazines that her cousins would bring back from the countries they visited. They were vast travellers, her cousins, crossing borders and borders before returning home with enchanting stories of the foreign countries, be it France, America, or England or Italy, and always, Abeni noted, the same type of women on the front covers of their magazines. Beauty was in those magazines. Her cousins had said, and her Mama had said, and now Beauty was stood at a red bus stop wearing a long rose-pink coat.

**** You don’t realise you’re different until you’re stood in a room full of people who look nothing like you; Abeni had come to that conclusion on her first day of school. It was a Monday and Mama had enrolled her four months late into the school year, and by then concrete girl groups had been formed in shabby-white bathrooms with dilapidated doors. The children were laughing when she entered, but as Abeni looked down at her hands, she became aware of the difference between her darkness and their lightness. Mama started to loosen her grip on Abeni’s fingers, and the teacher began to walk towards Abeni, holding out her hand and smiling. The teachers weren’t this friendly in Nigeria. It was then that Mama let go of Abeni. “Children, this is Abeni. She has come all the way from Nigeria to live in London. Say hello.”. The children responded in unison, “Hello Abeni!”. Abeni felt her face warm at their loud welcome. “Children, we’re going to gather round in a circle and tell Abeni our names, one by one”. Abeni closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Their eyes were on her and she began to feel embarrassed, so searching for comfort she looked towards the door. Mama had left. Abeni was alone. One by one, they cried out their names in squeaky playdough voices, English at its root. Abeni became afraid to speak. Her aunt’s words four months earlier had suddenly resonated within her, and even after months of British television, she knew she hadn’t lost Nigeria’s branches. They had clung to her skin and clung to her throat, an unrelenting grip stopping her from belonging. At that instant, Mrs Greene noticed her sweating palms, and let Abeni sit down on the empty patch of grey carpet that was closest to her. That would do until storytime was over, then Mrs Greene would have to find a playground buddy for Abeni. Someone black she thought, someone Abeni could relate to. Sat cross-legged on the floor, Abeni buried her tightly braided head into her lap as the teacher’s satin voice carried the words of The Gruffalo through the class. This was different. The sounds of the classroom, the fluffy carpet below her, the air. Looking up, she breathed in the colours of the walls around her. There were tomato red posters with the black bold letters of words she had learnt to spell in her uncle’s study back home, yellow frames enveloping pictures of smiling kids in the foreground and marigolds strewn across the classroom. The room was potent. When Mrs Greene had finished, Abeni’s eyes were furnished with tears. Mama had left her. Abeni was alone.

Abeni’s playground buddy was a girl named Layla. She was black too, a different paler shade of brown, and Mrs Greene decided she would do. Layla led Abeni to white lace curtains in the corner of the room and as she pulled them apart, they revealed two wooden shelves, overflowing with books and little trinkets. There had never been so many books in all of Abeni’s life. “Do you know how to read?” These were the first words Layla had said to Abeni. When Mrs Greene brought them together, they had both waved and said nothing. “Yes.” The word spilled out rushed and shaky. “Do you have a favourite book?”. Layla spoke slowly and loud, exaggerating her pronunciations the way she had seen her parents do when they ordered Chinese. Abeni wasn’t taken aback by the noise of Layla’s voice. She had seen people talk to Mama that way on their shopping trips. “You don’t have to speak loud like that, I understand English very well.” “Oh, my mummy always talks that way to people like you… and my daddy says that you’re immigrants”. Layla didn’t know what it meant, but she knew that her dad often swore under his breath when they went to the corner shop to buy milk from the men with the funny accents. Layla thought that Abeni had a funny accent. She thought that Abeni was a funny name. “What does im-mi-grant mean?”, Abeni sounded out the word slowly. Mama had said the word before, but always in a hushed fear-stained voice. “I don’t really know, but are you one?... I think my daddy would be angry if you were”. “Is it a bad thing?” “My daddy thinks so” “I think my mummy does too” Layla pulled out a book from the second wooden shelf. She could see that Abeni’s eyes were dark and teary, so she started to read the story out loud. It was what her mummy did whenever Layla felt sad, and she decided to do the same for Abeni. Abeni gave Layla a small smile, and peered at the cover of the book. It was dark blue, with white dots scattered across the cover. A pearly crescent moon hung delicately from the second word of the title, and there was a brown bird perched on a white winter branch. Abeni leant forward, and held out her hands for the book. Layla smiled. “It has really pretty pictures too, plus it’s my favourite book”. “I can’t remember the name of my favourite book, but it was the book that my uncle used to teach me to read” “In Nigeria?” “Yes” Abeni took the book and began reading from where Layla had stopped.

#barefucker1es abondance matanda

may 2016. sulacollective.com laligazine.com