21
" The other day, I told you our family motto was "Be kind, be curious, be helpful." Kindness and helpfulness you understood right away. Then you asked, "Why is curious in there?" Because being curious is admitting that you don't know, but also that you want to know. That what you don't know, is worth knowing. That people you don't know are worth knowing, that they have something to teach you. That learning about them - that encountering new ideas - doesn't threaten you, it enriches you. That what you haven't experienced is worth experiencing. That you approach the world as a trove of things to take in, rather than things you frantically, fearfully wall out. "Be kind, be curious, be helpful:" what that really means is, "stay open. "
― Carolina De Robertis , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
22
" So let me tell you one more thing. It's something I remind myself, when confronted with hate and fear, something that I hope you keep in mind in this new era and aways. Every one of those conversations you and I have had - about being gay, being feminist, being black or being white - ended with the same question. "But why would people think that?" you asked every time, and every time, I gave you the same answer" "Because they're afraid. Because it's different from what they grew up thinking, and it's a new idea, and sometimes new things are scary." Like the first time you went swimming, I tell you, or that time you tried rock climbing, or the first time we went in a plane. You'd never done it before, and you thought it would be scary. "But then I realized it wasn't," you say, and I say, Exactly. "
― Carolina De Robertis , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
27
" I work hard to embody you, Mama Harriet. When I learned that after you escaped, your brothers had second thoughts and turned back, but you kept going, it gave me the strength to keep going. When I learned that you went back to bring your husband to freedom, and he refused to come with you, instead electing to stay with his new wife, it gave me the strength to always be my own compass. When I learned that you returned to bring your sister to freedom and found out that she had since died, it gave me the determination to keep going, though we may never know the outcome of what we do or whether our goals will actually be accomplished. (Alicia Garza) "
― Carolina De Robertis , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
33
" I've seen some very bad things this year, most of them when I was distracted. The world comes at me when I'm drinking coffee or sitting on a bus. By the time you're old enough to read this letter, the technology may be different, but right now I scroll through the news on a little handset, and so these things appear as slivers of horror in between the daily business of my life - a man burned by a phosphorus bomb as I walk to teach a class at the university, a dazed little boy about your age, pulled from the rubble of his home as I wait in line at the supermarket. Often, I don't even register them, or don't allow myself to think too hard, but sometimes they sink in further than I want them to, and I spend the rest of the day haunted by some image, some event that I didn't prepare myself to witness, another terrible truth about the world that appeared unbidden and made our family's safety and happiness feel even more precarious than before. A distraught father holds up his baby, pleading for rescue from a sinking rubber boat. Why him and not me? What would I do if we were in that situation? How would I save everyone? There are other things, horrible things that I want to protect you from for as long as possible, things that I would keep from you forever, if I could. "
― Hari Kunzru , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
34
" I don't know what will happen in the future. Maybe my worries are unfounded, but lately I've been hearing talk that sounds like it has bubbled up from the history of a time before I was born, talk about people who belong and people who don't, about real people and the others, who ought to be pushed out. The old word cosmopolitan has once again become a sly insult, along with a newer version, globalist. Migrant, which used to be a neutral word, is a term of abuse. We - you, me, your mother, your sister - are migrants. That is our history. Because of that history, because of who we (and our parents) chose to lose and where they chose to go, we are cosmopolitan. It's something I feel proud of, but for others, it seems to be an incitement, a rebuke. "
― Hari Kunzru , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
35
" So when people ask you where you're from, you won't have a one-word answer for them. Some people, the kind who use cosmopolitan and migrant as insults, will call you rootless. They will call you inauthentic. They will tell you that you lack some important anchor to the earth, that your loves and attachments have less force than theirs because of all the journeys in our family's past. When they say such things, remind yourself that they, too, are migrants, even if they've forgotten it. The human story is one of continual branching movement, out of Africa to every corner of the globe. When people talk of blood and soil, as if their ancestors had sprung fully formed from the earth of a particular place, it involves a kind of forgetting. Place is not nothing, and you need to understand that many families have histories that are unlike ours. There is something noble about staying put and building, something worthy of respect. Buy there is also something noble about the nomad who carries a whole world in a suitcase. You were born here in New York, int he middle of a February snowstorm, and so this city will always be yours. Perhaps, if we move again to one of the other places whose names your mother and I have murmured to each other across the kitchen table, you may not grow up thinking of it as home. I'm writing to tell you that you don't need to worry about this. It's not a loss or a lack. Your experience is no more or less authentic or beautiful than a person who lives on land their ancestors have farmed for generations. It is different. You can learn from such people. And they can learn from you. "
― Hari Kunzru , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
38
" You carried your infant daughter in one arm, and walked with me, a child six years of age, tired, trudging beside you. You left that nightmare behind. And you left behind other things, too. The elm trees that lined your street. The familiar scent of autumn. The baker's smile when he handed you the fresh bread, the song of the peddlers in the street, the sound of strangers around you talking, haggling, buying, singing, speaking, fighting in a language you understood. Your friends. Your career. Your home. Your dreams. Your family. Your memories. Pots, pans, the fine silver spoons and forks. Photographs. Heirlooms. Your favorite dresses. Your father's grave. The colorful wares of the markets at the new year. Streets you knew by name. Cab drivers who recited poetry. The halls of your old university. You left whatever you couldn't fit into a single suitcase behind you and closed the door of your home for the last time, the dishes washed, the beds made, the curtains drawn, thinking, "Perhaps, perhaps we will come back," and you shut the door, and left, without knowing if you'd ever find home again. "
― Carolina De Robertis , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
39
" Aunt Hattie, when you wrote that book, I imagine you were thinking of something radical: the abolition of slavery itself. You were only one small woman, and you were looking up at an enormous edifice, towering and monolithic, but what you wrote made the whole structure start to tremble and shudder, and finally, it all came down, thundering and crashing. It wasn't just because of your book, of course, but your book made it impossible for people to think of slavery in the old way. "
― Carolina De Robertis , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
40
" Pay no heed to the darkness, the open mouth of greed, the hateful speech, the walls and the guns and the men who bare their teeth at her golden doors. America is yours. Your prayers conceived her, your dreams for your children brought her into being, and your children make her what she is meant to be. They build her. Fashion her bones, sturdy her structures, make her beautiful and strong. America belongs to you, to all mothers who dream of her. So light the small flame of your heart, cup your hands around it to protect it from the savage and the storm, and walk forth into the darkness, because I tell you, that flame, that bit of light you carry, that flickering hope, that has the power to illuminate even the blackest of nights. Hold steady, walk forth, and burn with truth, with love, with compassion, burn brightly because soon, the dawn will come. To my mother, on that highway, on that endless night, when she walked toward the glow of that torch, with lighting imprisoned in her heart. To all mothers who've walked toward this light, Welcome. Home. "
― Carolina De Robertis , Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
