Category: Non-Fiction
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Lives Are Measured
Another memory spreads across the field. My parents load me and my siblings into the brown GM van; we sleep on the 14-hour drive to our grandparents’ mountain town filled with lights and purple shadows and cowboys and scents of anise and Chex mix. The year I was born, my grandparents moved west for Grandpa’s job with the railroad.
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The Map of my Mother Tongue
Damilola Oyedele's essay explores language as both a barrier and a tether. Her accent and diction - influenced by the various Nigerian languages and dialects she speaks - shapes her interactions as an immigrant in the United States and South Africa, and tethers her to Nigeria, her home country.