The Essays
For me, and I suspect for many others, this year has been marked by tension. In the destabilization of a crumbling political empire, in the ongoing threats of violence to our most subjugated community members, in the oscillating vicissitudes of the global economy, and in the personal breath-holding that accompanies every small decision as if it is a load-baring column for the future, I’ve spent much of this season waiting for shoes to drop.
These essays remind me of another tension — one that, on some days, is long behind me, and on others, confronts me with an anger, with a shame. These writers put this most personal tension on full display; they navigate a homeland that rejects their very identity, forcing them to become so small they disappear; they retrospect a childhood defined by the ways that tension manifests in those closest to them, and the reactive reshaping of themselves that followed.
This tension is the misalignment between one’s outside presentation with one’s internal sense of self.
These essays have done a great deal for me. They’ve allowed me to glimpse into the minds of their writers, but they’ve also mitigated my own misalignment, bringing me closer toward an unfractured whole. I’m proud to have read them, grateful for the much-needed help I received in shepherding to publication, and hopeful that they might touch you in some of the same ways they have touched me.
—Brian Borchard
Creative Nonfiction Editor
Photo by Solomon Onyeagoro
the weight of other people’s expectations
Jeffrey Ehijie
Instances of injustice, big and small, have a way of lingering with me: I find myself examining the world before me. Sometimes they appear as huge, systemic failures. Sometimes they occur in the backseat of a stifling keke maruwa.
It was a sunny afternoon, and the Ajah bus stop still pulsed with trade activities. A crazy world where noisy traders, passengers, and vehicles perpetually contended for space. The air was heavy with the pungent odors of feces, urine, and unmanaged waste, mixed with the bitter smoke of revving engines, that created a suffocating haze. I always walked briskly whenever I arrived at Ajah bus stop, as if the quicker I moved, the less the city could touch me.
sensitivities
Jon MacDougal
My behaviour was an issue, which is why we were going there in the first place. Ritalin-laced ice cream, attachment therapy, beatings, and vague but constant threats about being sent to a boarding home had failed to soothe my wild, nine-year-old spirit, so this was the next logical step.
Photo by David McElwee