A Country You Can Leave

The following is from Asale Angel-Ajani’s debut novel A Country You Can Leave . Angel-Ajani is a writer and Professor at The City College of New York. She’s the author of the nonfiction books Strange Trade: The Story of Two Women Who Risked Everything in the International Drug Trade and Intimate: Essays on Racial Terror . She has held residencies at Millay, Djerassi, and Playa, and is an alum of VONA and Tin House. Never immortalize the mother. For that matter the father too. People on pedestals are just people you can’t reach. If it weren’t for dear Elián González, the Cuban boy found a year ago tied to an inner tube off the Florida coast, my second father would have no place in my imagination. When Elián first arrived on Florida’s shores, he was on hot rotation for the twenty-four-hour news. They’d replay footage of him being wheeled into some hospital in Miami on a stretcher, talking about how the kid lost his parents during a “tragedy at sea.” I recall Yevgenia, who usually insisted that I turn off the TV when she’s around, standing next to me watching the coverage. “Two days at sea and he looks like that?” Her voice ripe with cynicism, but she nodded an admiring approval. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I didn’t have any reason to defend the kid, but still, I found her reaction unnecessary. “I mean look at him, he’s a poster child for los gusanos staroy gvardii . He’s […]

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