it’s fun walking home alone at night. when men inevitably cat call, i can do nothing–or i can tell them off and watch my back all the way home. i’m always looking for witnesses in case of an ambush on the way to work, clearing my throat in case i need to scream, using a phantom number so i don’t have to give strange men the real one but it’ll still ring if he calls right away. i love worrying about men i don’t know, about men i do know, and potential threats to my physical safety. because somehow, they’ll ask what i was wearing and it’ll be all my fault.
Hi mom and dad,
It’s me, your disappointing
child. It’s difficult to admit how
deeply my desire to please you
and make you proud has defined the last near-decade of
my young adult life, and even
more challenging to know what
to say after so many years of
just…not saying. Med school is
hard, mom and dad, but not as
hard as navigating my desperate
need for your approval.
I’ve tried to free myself from
that need. I’ve tried to focus
on the love and support of my
friends and siblings, to find
peace in living out my faith, and
to embrace the truth that my
own pride in my accomplishments is more important than
yours. But knowing something
in my mind and feeling it in my
heart are often galaxies apart
from each other.
ANONYMOUSMedical Student, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC
First off, much of our ‘scientific’ knowledge of human anatomy itself is a direct result of colonization. Not just the macro-scale colonization of Christopher Columbus landing on Turtle Island, but even the micro-scale colonization of so-called doctors experimenting on and extracting from non-white bodies. From the infamous ‘scientific’ experiments of the Holocaust on Jewish bodies to the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment to the robbed cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks, much of what we consider medical breakthroughs were the direct result of colonization and white supremacy. The justification that Aryan lives could be saved at the cost of non-white bodies is colonization 101.
Rachel BeglinReturned Peace Corps Volunteer Farm Manager, Longmont, CO