I returned from Spain to discover
my home in shambles.
Not the house in which I live, but
the country I call home.
My husband, two daughters and I had
spent twelve days abroad, to visit my grandfather’s homeland, a place that has
always held my heart. When I’m there, something in the blood says, “This is
you, and you are this.” We went in
celebration of my birthday, an extravagant and memory-making exercise in
togetherness. Our plan: to break the cycle of our busy lives and broaden our
collective point of view.
On the long plane ride home, my
fourteen-year-old told me what her most vivid memory of our trip was.
“There
were those guys on the street in Barcelona, asking for money. Remember? They
had three signs in front of their collection cans:
‘BEER’, ‘WEED’, ‘FUCKKK TRUMP’. That was cool,” she said.
I
remembered. They were a dirty steam-punk
brood, their primitively scribed display propped against the well-lit façade of
an H+M store on the crowded Rambla. Amidst the throngs of bustling tourists snapping
photos, we’d paused to admire their aesthetic and their bold message. Those squatters’
signs beat out my daughter’s memories of flamenco dancers, medieval cathedrals,
Belearic beaches and Gaudi’s mad sense of beauty; a peek at the inner workings
of my American girl.
On the long plane ride home, I got
lost in the words of a man who’d returned to America after a prolonged
self-exile. His remove sharpened his perspective on what he called the American
legend. The book, James Baldwin
- The Last Interview and Other Conversations, spans twenty-five years of
Baldwin’s revelatory visions of race, exile, homosexuality, American injustice,
and the writing life.
High
above the Atlantic Ocean, our mobile news feeds silenced, my family and I were
oblivious to the violence erupting on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia.
As white supremacists staged a hostile assault on Equality, Freedom, and Public
Safety, Baldwin’s fifty-year-old insights defined our immediate state of
American disgrace:
“If
one could accept the fact that no nation with twenty million black people in it
for so long and with such a depth of involvement, that no nation under these
circumstances can be called a white nation, this would be a great achievement,
and it would change a great many things.” – James Baldwin, 1961
The moment connectivity resumed, a
deluge of reports and reactions flooded in. By the time we reached the familiar
comforts of the house we call home, we’d each curated our own synopsis of the
day’s tragedies, including Mr. Trump’s incompetent response.
My
eleven-year-old spoke up. “Trump didn’t come out against the KKK! Even those
Spanish street dudes knew what a jerk he is.”
“Yes,”
I said. “Most of the world knows what a jerk he is. And as Americans, it’s important that we voice
our opposition. His version of America is not ours. He is not our president.”
It’s been four days since Charlottesville erupted.
Donald Trump continues
to flail and tweet and fuel the fire.
His failure to encourage peace and
brotherhood is an outrage.
His failure to exhibit any
semblance of morality or empathy is unconscionable.
His failure to defend the core principles
of American justice is an act of treason.
FUCKKK TRUMP.
He has never been my president.
