Over the last several weeks, I've had conversations with close friends who, like me, were the children of non-European immigrants who landed in the so-called "Global North." Our trajectories were different, but there were some commonalities. We speak multiple languages, eat fermented vegetables, and correct our parents' grammar. But we weren't just the typical migrant children; we were part of "alternative" communities celebrating experimental music, esoteric philosophy, and the spectrum of queerness. We listened to Bikini Kill, made mixed records, and wore too much black eyeliner. The nature of our place in one country did not discount our connection to another, even though almost every message we received from the dominant culture was ultimately met with, "Where are you really from," which can be read as "Why are you here?" But the query often leads us to ask a more profound question: "Who am I?"
The answer is a shadow that lingers wherever we walk, perhaps a pontification that doesn't merit an answer. Rather than ask, "Who am I?" maybe it's worth posing, "Who are the people who marked me?" There is one book that led me closer to an answer.
Earlier this week, I started reading Hua Hsu's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Stay True. Sometimes, I pause when I read memoirs and wonder if self-reflection about one's past can turn into a literary anathema, unable to capture a person's life with transparency and joy. But my skepticism wasn't merited, which I should have known, having read Hsu's cultural criticism in The New Yorker for years. But Stay True was different from his acute reporting; he turned the focus on himself. Hsu offers a poetic and measured account of his upbringing by Taiwanese immigrants in the Bay Area: discovering Nirvana, composing zines, and being anti-mainstream. Although our ethnic, linguistic, and class backgrounds are widely different, his articulation of what it means to diverge from what is expected from my Haitian parents. During my high school years, I would go to punk shows at the Polish American Club in Miami. For college, I actively decided to go to an institution whose motto was "atheism, communism, and free love." [Note: This is an aphorism I still live by.] Here in Berlin, I am grappling with the power and beauty of cultural production that hones in on the condition of the salt of the earth. I want to understand what happens to those whose inheritance is determination rather than those endowed with the residues of exploitation. But I digress.
One of the most beautiful parts of this book is how Hsu switches between the first and second person, allowing the reader to step into the narrative. By flowing through a visually rich narrative about family, place, and faxes, we participate in his coming of age and the beauty of living between multiple communities. You can hear me read an excerpt here. Warming: After sending this recording to my friend Christine, a Berlin-based culture writer over text message, she responded:
OMG love this so much. Where do I subscribe for the Edna Sultrily Reads an Excerpt podcast???
I like Hsu's memoir Stay True because it resembles some of my life or the nerdy parts that fueled my curiosity. Although we are part of different generations--I am a millennial, and Hsu's a Gen Xer--I was nostalgic for a more serene and subdued past. Sometimes, I laugh at the encounters between his mates, how they allow time to pass, incessantly joking back and forth, wasting time, and just existing without wondering, "Who am I?" It is a memoir about being in places that may not know how to receive you. I hope others can relish the text's beauty.
A Word
This year is off to a great start. Mainly because some projects I worked on last fall are starting to surface in a literary light. One of last year's most rewarding journalism experiences was traveling to Rotterdam to profile African American artist Ellen Gallagher for Frieze Magazine.
Over her nearly three-decade visual art career, Gallagher has moved between sculpture, painting, video, and text. She references Black hair salons, literary classics, and psychoanalytic texts in her works, showing that she has the range to capture human experiences with sincerity. During my reporting trip, I visited her studio and saw her vast canvases. My curiosity about her work was met with warmth. I write:
For Gallagher, the labour is not a source of anguish, but of profound enquiry. Curious, I ask whether her artistic practice has changed since the early 1990s. ‘I’m afraid to tell you it’s the same,’ she responds, before pausing for a moment, then correcting herself. ‘I used to develop a relationship to a project and not leave the studio for a few days while I worked on it. Now, I can go away for a period of time before returning to it.’ Devotion is part of the constellation of her process, but so is exploration. As I leave Gallagher’s studio, I feel lighter than when I arrived, giddy from chatting with someone who reminds me of what I miss about Black American family and friends. Although we have both made Europe our home, we still hold space for our people in the same way we always did. Similarly to my Black elders preparing me a dish after I visit their homes, the artist has fixed a plate for my train ride to Paris. Like my own relatives would, she waits for my car to arrive, then hugs me goodbye. Another artist might have given me a frosty farewell but, with Gallagher, I am made to feel like her kin.
You can read a physical copy of my essay, featured in Issue 240 of Frieze magazine.
As I continue to write about abortion, reproduction, and infertility this year, I hope you will read my book review, "Abortion on Trial," which was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. This is my debut article for the magazine, my literary critique of Nicholas L. Syrett's book, The Trials of Madame Restell. For those who do not know, Madame Restell (her pseudonym) provided abortion services to pregnant people in New York City for several decades during the early to late nineteenth century. She was not clandestine about her actions; instead, she challenged the men who wanted to abolish all forms of contraceptives. Sadly, decades of being harassed by an anti-abortion movement led her to commit suicide in 1878. In my account of this tragedy, I write:
Why did Madame Restell commit suicide, given how active she had been in defending her profession and the right of women to have an abortion? Her death says more about the perils of the anti-abortion movement—powerful men who aimed to humiliate and break stalwart women who sought their freedom—than it does about the woman herself. Even as people were increasingly finding ways to take command of their bodies and sexual lives, a new legal order was emerging that aimed to thwart resolute and resourceful women from taking their destinies into their own hands. The lesson that we learn from Restell is that the fight for abortion rights is not a struggle that a single individual should have to bear.
As a historian, I will continually ask myself how to use past events to understand the present better.
A Read
I have always been captivated by Jennifer Wilson's writing, but her recent essay, "How did Polyamory become so popular?" left me stunned and delighted. Wilson is particularly astute in pointing out the normalization and material divide in some polyamory circles:
As ethical non-monogamy becomes the stuff of Park Slope marriages and luxury perfume ads, it’s worth remembering that revolutions don’t fail; they get co-opted—often by people who can afford co-ops. You can understand why Roden Winter might believe that she is ushering in a bright, abundant future by opening up her marriage. A good love affair, when you’re inside it, feels like it could change the world. But changing the world takes more than spreading the love; you have to spread the wealth, too. Maybe that’s just utopian, hippie nonsense. But what can I say? I’m a romantic.
For those who know Jennifer, please congratulate her for receiving the 2024 Silvers-Dudley Prize. Two other contributors whose work I admire that were also selected include Harmony Holiday and Krithika Varagur. Holiday is a prolific poet whose Substack, Black Music and Black Muses, never disappoints. Varagur's Harper Magazine article, "Love in the Time of Sickle Cell Disease," is breathtaking. I hope you give all these brilliant writers a read.
Closing Thoughts
Thank you all for continuing to read and engage with this newsletter. The best way to help Mobile Fragments grow is to share it with your family, friends, and others who want to keep up with my meanderings. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber (only if you’d like). Whether you are a paid subscriber or not, your support is appreciated.
Finally, is it still okay to say “Happy New Year” after five days into 2024? I hope so.
With Love,