By Matthew Caretti
Pago Pago, American Samoa
The N-word never tasted good in my mouth. Something far too bitter in it. Indigestible. Yet growing up among 1970s white rurals, it wasn’t uncommon to hear the epithet. It was never a word at home, but one cutting along the precise lines of a barber shop razor, caught on the fly out on a sports field, wrapped within damp towels at the summer swimming pool and in sync with slamming lockers along school hallways. A sound just perceptible enough.
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These days I wonder about all the rhetoric. The school board brawls and book bans. The curtailing of curricula. I wake again feeling most unsettled about the coming storm and the words we use. About how to talk to my students about how they talk to each other. I scroll through my own feeds looking for a way to connect with theirs. I want them to know unrest. To know how to get into good trouble.
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