Yo quiero amanecer hasta que el sol caliente

“…just as American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more beautiful and more terrible…”

— James Baldwin “A Talk to Teachers” (1963)

On this *holiday* that I was taught growing up celebrated the discovery of a New World, I’m thinking back to three weeks ago were we spent my birthday fulfilling a dream of mine. These pictures/videos are from our trip to the first free settlement in that *New World*. The last thing anyone needs is an IG post turned into a bad history lesson, but what I’m taking away from seeing the Africa I lived in for the better part of two years thriving in the country that I’ve always known I come from (if not one where I’ve always felt I belonged) is that what it is to **be an American** (be it in the 🇺🇸 context or the 🌎 one) is part of a question of identity that I’ll probably never have the answer to (until I write the 🔥 hip hop musical 🔥 I’m always threatening Angelie with 🤡). So I’ll go back to words of a man whose words always seem have AN (if not THE) answer and end this day and whatever it, if anything, means to you on with the following thought from the same text…

“America is not the world and if America is going to become a nation, she must find a way — If this country does not find a way to use that energy, it will be destroyed by that energy.”