This Is Freedom
The writers in this series discuss a range of topics, from dealing with everyday racism and growing up impoverished and food insecure to living with a widely misunderstood mental health disorder, and more.
As an immigrant, my mother didn't realize that government support was possible, never reaching out for food assistance or the like. You can’t ask for what you don’t know exists.
I was raised to expect the best from the United States because the founders demanded it, but I also learned that America can enslave, rape, exploit, and disappoint.
Without the discovery of antipsychotics in the 1950s and continued development of them, people like me may never know true freedom.
I don’t harbor fantasies of being free myself. A free world for Black people must be created from scratch and, even in a best-case scenario, there will be no place for me once that bitter and bloody work is done.
My mother has experienced what I have only feared for the over 20 years we have been in the U.S. She lives being separated from her family—unable to see her parents.
Freedom is people saying my life matters and them actually meaning it. It’s not being a pawn to get more purchases or diversity hires.
