Page 12 - 2019 EMERGING WRITERS FELLOWSHIP ANTHOLOGY1

By now, most of the Esalen participants from this year have heard the story. Reggie and I

were on the bridge, making a walk to the Big Yurt that would soon become muscle
memory. We were met with a woman and her adult daughter, both white. The older

woman compliments my Fulani braids and my chest tightens. I’ve been here before and
see the familiar road coming up ahead. She then tells me that she saw me earlier in the

food line and wanted to reach out and touch them. I smiled, told her “I’m glad you didn’t”
and walked away. By now, most Esalen participants also know what follows. Reggie read

her glimmer the next day in that same yurt, exposing to the group what casual racism
looks like. The ease with which a white woman tells you that she wanted to reach out and

touch a total stranger to satisfy her own curiosities with no regard for how it makes the
stranger feel. I never talked about the feelings of panic that followed. The gut drops I felt

every time I saw that same woman and darted in a different direction, desperately

avoiding a redemptive conversation. You know, the one where the white person tries to
make amends after a public or private moment of shame. I don’t talk about the fact that

those conversations did, in fact, happen with that same woman and progressively got
worse, sending me to my safe place of curling into a blade of grass or speck of dirt.

What bothers me the most about moments like this is that so often, they act as gray clouds

on an otherwise clear day. And that’s exactly what happened. As many times as this story

has been recounted, I never get to talk about the special moment that preceded it.

Before the walk to the bridge, Reggie and I met for the first time. The conversation quickly
went from names and places of origin to confessions: neither of us actually expected to be

here. And then, the magic. The clarity. The making of a larger me. We looked at one
another and told each other and ourselves “you deserve to be here. We deserve to be here.”

This is the moment I’m choosing to honor and remember. Two women of color affirming

each other and meaning it with everything in them.

-

And all the other beautiful moments to honor my fellow fellows. The domino moment at
lunch with Pam, Sam, and Karen where one by one, the group convinced each other to

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