The past is buried in you

Here is a fascinating article from the New York Times on what Edward Ball calls ‘Slavery’s Enduring Resonance.’  Ball demonstrates how the echo of slavery still seems to be alarmingly loud in America’s present. Transgenerational whispers from the presenting past.

 

The world is wrong.

You can’t put the past behind you.

It’s buried in you;

it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard.

Not everything remembered is useful,

but it all comes from the world

to be stored in you.

Claudia Rankine