Portfolio > 2021 Writings and drawings

1/10/2021

While I hope not to be someone who inappropriately shares James Baldwin quotes, today I’m reading “No Name in the Street”
This bit has been on my mind:

“I’ve always been struck, in America, by the emotional poverty so bottomless, & a terror of human life, of human touch so deep that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable, organic connection between his public stance & his private life.”

The reconciling of public and private life fills me with anxiety in many ways. Since becoming a parent, my stakes have changed. Being a parent is a largely unsupported role that is held at the same expectations of accomplishment as to a single person.

My son’s father is, to say the very least, alt right. I consider myself a confusedly diasporic Puerto Rican, and while that doesn't describe my political values necessarily, I think my character can imply that I'm not alt right. He and I are not together at all and we battle as co-parents. Our son adapts and evolves in these polarizing ways of understanding. He has two lives. I try to be mindful of what my son is experiencing. Falsely, he becomes a symbol of reconciliation. He is often the carrier of conflict. When I myself interact with my son’s father, I experience his public self. Through my son, I experience his father’s private self. I feel that private self has unbelievable dimensions of sorrow, more dimensional than any of his moralities. Engaging with him and his father, I try to be at my best wits at all times.