They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“The truth is, if we don’t write our own stories, there is someone else waiting to do it for us. And those people, waiting with their pens, often don’t look like we do and don’t have our best interests in mind.”

This passage explores the fact that dominant US culture often features depictions of Black people that are not accurate or authentic, mainly because these depictions are not created by Black people. Notably, Hanif Abdurraqib does not say, “tell our own stories,” but, “write our own stories” (14). To write something is to make it permanent: It can transcend time and geographical location and is less subject to misremembering or misinterpreting. Therefore, writing is the only way of Rewriting Narratives and Incorrect Perceptions. The reminder that “those people” wait nearby “with their pens” is a further call to action, especially since there seems to be a level of intentional violence in the way these people tell Black people’s stories.

“In Bruce Springsteen’s music, not just in The River, I think about the romanticization of work and how that is reflected in America. Rather, for whom work is a necessary and sometimes painful burden of survival. One that comes with the shame of time spent away from loved ones, and a country that insists you aren’t working hard enough.”

This passage implicitly references the concept of the American Dream—the narrative that hard work can help one achieve one’s dreams. Abdurraqib alludes to the inaccessibility of this dream to many people of color, who face systemic disadvantages that prevent them from achieving their dreams and are then stereotyped negatively, leading to an incorrect narrative that they simply “aren’t working hard enough” (19).