𝓞𝓼𝓱𝓾𝓷 - 𝙸.Mɪᴅᴏʀɪʏᴀ

Chapter 48

▍japan, nabu island
𝐎 𝐒 𝐇 𝐔 𝐍
𝐢. 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐲𝐚
48.    ✿ ↬

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second person

𝑷𝑹𝑰𝑽𝑰𝑳𝑬𝑮𝑬 𝑰𝑺 𝑾𝑯𝑬𝑵 you think something is not a problem because it's not a problem to you personally. When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are. Who are we as human beings if we ignore the suffering of others? Quotes to think about, quotes of importance.

These are things you often thought about growing up. You had no choice, you grew up in a world where your skin defined your worth. Where your weight and size determined your status. Where your fashion choices could land you an outcast. Especially since you grew up in a predominantly asian society while you yourself was a young black girl. Imagine a fish not only out of water, but in the woods. That would be how you felt your entire life. In the wrong place.

Living in Japan ruined your already low self esteem and made you insecure. Yes, nowadays Japan was much more diverse and you would often see people of your race or other ethnic group. But that's now. Back then, it was rare and disappointing, even though you were the foreigner, not them. You envied the girls you couldn't look like. The girls you saw on TV. The girls you read about in books. The girls who bullied you. None of them looked like you.

Bullies. You had a lot of them growing up. It was something inevitable, preparation for the racism you would face as you got older. Being four years old and struggling to speak Japanese didn't help your case. That gave them even more reason to bully you. There you were, a little black girl on foreign land and you didn't even speak the language. You were a big joke.

It was tradition, your grandmother wanted her family to stay connected to their roots. Iyonni understood how out of place it felt being surrounded by people that don't look like you or understand. She moved here when she was a teenager with dead parents and younger twin brothers she had to take care of. She understood perfectly how shunned from society it feels.

In order to keep some level of familiarity, she taught her children English as their first language, and took them on several trips to South Africa and America, her husband being African American, to immerse themselves in their culture. This caused them to do homeschooling for their first year, while they learned Japanese. Kwame and Kamau, her brothers, did the same with their children. And Niari, your mother, did the same for hers.

Unfortunately, you were not that fast of a learner as your older brother, Omari, was when he was your age. You had started learning Japanese when you were close to three years old. And even by the age of four, when you were supposed to enrolled in school, you still weren't close to fluent despite learning the language for nearly two years and being around fluent speakers.