Page 33 - 2019 EMERGING WRITERS FELLOWSHIP ANTHOLOGY1

person has no journey, no agency – they simply serve to ‘cure’ the white character of

racism.

I considered this on the long drive down the narrow ribbon of road into Big Sur. If a cure
to racism or xenophobia or any other sort of bigotry was the intention of this fellowship,

my benefactors were about to be disappointed. I was an island girl born in a shack who
grew up on a fishing boat masquerading as a woman who’d always known how to drive

on freeways and dress for winter. I’d long outgrown the shirt my mother made me wear
whenever we were out in public that said I AM NOT A TOURIST, I LIVE HERE in bold

across my chest. I bore no obvious markings of my Otherness – the child told to go back
where she came from, though she’d never been anywhere else. Going hungry, being

homeless, the welfare checks and food stamps. Running away from Hawaiian Homelands

to the land of white people, where I put on a costume and faked my way in, hiding any
trace of where I’d been, the stains of my life. At face value, the only diversity stereotype I

would challenge was that I was one at all.

I arrive at the fog-enshrouded gates of Esalen with first day of school jitters and a keen
sense of being the stranger about to crash the party full of people who’d known each other

all their lives.

The grounds are as lush and prolific as to be expected, what with all the yoga and chanting
and compost. I find my way to my cabin, loaded down with an armful of papers given to

me at registration that include a map, an Esalen event list, a Writing Camp schedule,
grounds rules, and local history. The notes jotted in the margins by the woman at the front

desk are indecipherable. I’ve already forgotten her verbal instructions. I’m too busy
pinching myself that I’m actually here.

Two sets of bunk beds taking up a majority of space in the room send me into a panic.
Where would I go to hide? Would my roommates hate me for creaking down the stairs of

my bunk to pee in the middle of the night? Who were they? Would they want to form a
clique, would I be a jerk for wandering off alone? Or would we all keep to ourselves and

avoid each other at all cost? I couldn’t decide the scenario I was rooting for. I was not my
parents. For the most part, I liked people. I did not live in the woods alone or in a cave

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