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Michigan in Color
Monday, January 27, 2020 — 3A
As soon as I stepped into the
harshly-lit, humid and ever-
so-crowded
Beirut
airport,
familiarity flooded my senses.
Anxiety did as well, as it
had ever since I boarded the
plane from Rome. I was going
to visit my extended family
alone after completing a study
abroad program in Greece,
one I deliberately chose for
its proximity to Lebanon. My
sleepless eyes gazed through
crowds
of
restless
people
trying to get home, scanning
for a familiar face, until they
finally settled on one — my
cousin, ten years older than he
was the last time I saw him.
His eyes were the same kind
ones I remembered, and they
instantly filled me with relief.
My
cousin
drove
me
through
narrow,
bumpy
streets of Beirut, through the
neighborhood that for so long
existed only in fragmented
memories in the back of my
mind, coming to the forefront
in the presence of certain
smells, pictures or feelings: the
A Tribute to Home
Why I Joined MiC
During my first semester writing
for the Michigan Daily I noticed
myself wanting to write more
about my experience as a freshman
of color. Because what I’ve realized
the past several months is how
much race seemingly plays a
significant role in creating new
relationships. Back home, even
though my high school friends and
I come from different religious,
socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial
CHERYN HONG
Assistant MiC Editor
I want to learn myself.
I want to learn my power
of voice. I want to learn
my heart, my trials, my
confusions and my strength.
I often shy from that which
I need: self-love, affection,
my own art, my own words
and thoughts. When I say shy
from, I mean avoid. When I
say avoid, I mean run, or hide.
I grew up in a space that
encouraged this avoidance
of self because that self was
black. I had to force love
upon myself, and cultural
education
came
from
nowhere but home. School
meant being called a n***er
in the hallway on my way to
learn the benefits of French
colonization. School meant
defending my collar bone, my
calves, my thighs, hips, and
hair to the lacrosse players
who joked that I belonged
on
the
team.
Isolation
became a beautiful place,
where I could craft my own
curriculum and create my
own assignments. Those took
the shape of poems about my
body, my heart, my people.
They embraced the thoughts
I wildly feared, and the fears
I perpetually thought of. My
journal and my laptop became
a home and a school that was
GABRIJELA SKOKO
Senior MiC Editor
Photo courtesy of the author
void of everything but me. For
years that is what my writing
has been: just me, alone.
What I have realized is that
it is okay to share. Maybe even
necessary. Maybe refusing to
share is why I am so scared of
my work, or scared to claim a
title as a ‘writer.’ Maybe I can
inspire the way I am inspired.
That is why I am here: to learn
from others and myself. I am
so honored to be welcomed by
this team. I am so grateful to be
offered this outlet of inspiration
and culture and love. I want to
thank Michigan in Color for
accepting me, and for believing
in my thoughts. I cannot wait to
get to work.
Photo courtesy of the author
backgrounds, the extent of our
differences never interfered with
our capacity of connection and
intimacy.
The past several months I have
been diminishing a large part of my
identity. I began to forget certain
Korean words because I didn’t
want to speak my native tongue in
front of my white peers. I started to
eat less East Asian foods I craved
because they were “too smelly” or
“gross.” I detached myself from
anything “oriental” because I didn’t
want to become an Asian culture
and heritage guide in social groups.
Her voice was like shea butter, from
African trees where healing grows
Her skin was the bark, pushing
through clay and stony soil and racism
Her hair was the branches, carrying
the fruit of Black resistance and hope
Her words were the green leaves, growing
against the drought of the Sahara, or
the America, or the (mis)education
which seeks to quench her message, the
water upon the seed of MLK’s dream:
That we would learn to live together and love one another.
She, King
AYOMIDE OKUNADE
Senior MiC Editor
smell of busy Michigan Avenue
through the window of the car
on a hot summer afternoon, a
stack of shiny photographs at
the bottom of my mom’s drawer
in her room. Pieces buried deep
in the recesses of my mind
that I was never able to quite
put together, but appreciated
nonetheless.
On the 2am drive to my
grandma’s house where I would
be staying, my cousin and I
exchanged few words. I told
him he had changed; he told
me I had too. We exchanged
questions of how the flight
was and how we’ve been as I
stared out the window and took
in the sights- towering faded
buildings, balconies decorated
with clothes lines, little shops
closed for the night. There was
so much I wanted to say and ask
him, but I couldn’t bring myself
to formulate words. My heart
was jumping with excitement
and nerves- after not being here
for so long, I worried about all
that I had missed. So much had
changed in the past decade-
and I worried 12 days would not
be enough time to catch up, to
rekindle that sense of home that
I used to feel in Lebanon. Even
worse, I worried that I would
not be able to connect to my
family anymore and that they
would regard me as an outsider,
because after all, I was.
In the days to come, nothing
would prepare me for the
overwhelming feelings that I
would experience — nostalgia
most of all. Memories I forgot
I even had were revived as
old traditions were revisited.
My short stay in Lebanon
consisted of family gatherings
every single day — a room full
of aunts, uncles, cousins, all
gathered in my grandmother’s
house, eating on a spread of
newspapers on the floor. It
consisted of sweltering heat
and periodic power outages
and motorcycles buzzing and
card games until morning. I
met new family members, as
the passage of time had brought
them into my life. So much had
changed; we were no longer the
uninhibited little kids we used
to be, unaware and unbothered
by
the
disconnect
that
is
created by living worlds away.
I was aware of every awkward
pause, every forgotten Arabic
word, every relative’s different
life that I was so out of touch
with.
But
the
unequivocal
pull of family, the love that
traverses time zones, oceans
and decades, was still the same,
and I imagine it always will be.
In
my
Grandma’s
spare
bedroom, where my cousins
and I were staying, there was a
little wallet-sized picture of my
mom as a teenager tucked into
the side of the mirror. My mom,
the youngest of 11 siblings, the
first and only one to move to
America after marriage, the
one that left everything she
knew and loved and risked it all
at the tender age of 18. I felt her
presence with me in Lebanon,
in the way her siblings would
talk
about
her,
remarking
about how much I resemble her
both in physical features and
mannerisms. I saw her eyes in
my Teta’s, as she held my hand
and recounted stories about my
cousins and me so many years
ago. I tried to imagine what
she was like in her younger
days, surrounded by family
and her language and free from
the bounds of stress that come
with immigration. In all the old
pictures, she’s always smiling
big, looking carefree and happy.
I wondered what her life could
have or would have looked like
had it taken a different course.
I wondered who I would be
had she stayed, had I grown up
there with all of my cousins, had
I never known the balancing
and clashing of two identities
as they fought tirelessly to
reconcile their differences. But
that reality is only a distant
dream, and for now I choose
to enjoy the nuances that come
with who I am.
I felt insanely lucky to be
there, to have these roots, to
belong somewhere that expects
nothing of me except to keep it
in my memory. I felt lucky and
undeserving of the out-pour
of love from all of my family
members — the way they put all
of their responsibilities on hold
to make sure I had the best time
I possibly could. The way they
finished my sentences when I
struggled to make a coherent
thought in Arabic instead of
dwelling on my mistake. To
my aunts who invited me for
breakfast and dinner every
day, my grandma who spent
hours making food she knew I
liked, my cousins who took off
work to spend time with me. To
the owner of the corner store
a block from my grandma’s
house who surprisingly still
remembered me and whose
eyes lit up when I walked in.
The days went by fast, too
fast. It was time to pack my
bags for a final time and make
the journey home, much before
I was ready to say goodbye.
The drive to the airport was
silent and tearful, the car
overflowing with my suitcases
and my cousins who insisted on
coming along, and in true Arab
fashion we stayed hugging in
the airport much longer than
we needed to.
People
wonder
how
you
can be so connected to a place
you are so geographically far
away from, how you can feel so
strongly for people you see once
every decade if you’re lucky,
how you hold on to a language
that seems to fall apart in your
mouth. I don’t know how to
describe it, other than that
home never really leaves you.
While I left feeling incomplete,
I also felt a piece of me come
back that I never even knew I
missed; now I’m counting down
the days until I can go back
home again.
“I feel most colored when I
am thrown against a sharp white
background.” Zora Neale Hurston
encompasses how I feel, because
I was detaching myself from my
race as it was the most salient trait
people here noticed about me. I
have never felt more Asian, Korean,
yellow and ashamed. While I
haven’t
experienced
blatant
discrimination or racism, there
are subtle moments of ignorance
or stereotypes that I have been
confronted with, which has made
me feel alienated from my peers.
I want a balance between white-
washing myself and restricting my
social circles to people who look
like me. I will go through life with
a one-dimensional lens, however,
the more I immerse myself with
a diverse group of peers, the more
empathetic, understanding and
multi-dimensional my perspective
will
become.
And
in
short,
Michigan in Color combines my
zeal for writing and allows me
to express my racially charged
stories freely, without sacrificing or
completely taking over my identity.
I’m using my position in this
section to finally allow myself to
revel in the fact that I am a proud
Korean-American and exemplify
how much of an impact my
ethnicity and race has towards
how I view myself. But more
importantly, I’m using my position
to learn from others: people who
have both similar and different
experiences of people of color
against a sharp white background.
MAYA MOKH
MiC Co-Managing Editor
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Photo courtesy of the author
MAYA MOKH/Daily
An alley outside the author’s Grandmother’s building in Beirut, Lebanon.
Kids gathered and played in the lot at the end of the alley every day.