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A review by sayevet
I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter by David Chariandy
4.0
"You did not create the inequalities and injustices of this world, daughter. You are neither solely nor uniquely responsible to fix them. If there is anything to learn from the story of our ancestry, it is that you should respect and protect yourself; that you should demand not only justice but joy; that you should see, truly see, the vulnerability and the creativity and the enduring beauty of others."
"I had forgotten that racial identity is so rarely a matter of personal choice. That it is always, in origin, a falsehood and violence, though it can become, all the same, a necessary tool for acknowledging the enduring life and creativity of a persistently maligned people."
Growing up with white kids, "I glimpsed their contradictions, their inner doubts and vulnerabilities, their brave curiosities and cowardly tribalisms, their sincere desire to be good and also their ability to be casually cruel. The truth is that before I could appreciate my own complex humanity, I was made to understand and appreciate theirs, which I saw confirmed, over and over again, on television, in films, and in books."
"I had forgotten that racial identity is so rarely a matter of personal choice. That it is always, in origin, a falsehood and violence, though it can become, all the same, a necessary tool for acknowledging the enduring life and creativity of a persistently maligned people."
Growing up with white kids, "I glimpsed their contradictions, their inner doubts and vulnerabilities, their brave curiosities and cowardly tribalisms, their sincere desire to be good and also their ability to be casually cruel. The truth is that before I could appreciate my own complex humanity, I was made to understand and appreciate theirs, which I saw confirmed, over and over again, on television, in films, and in books."