"Where are you from?"

a curious woman asks as she inadvertently touches my hair

caressing the long ebony braid of African curls

that are supposedly the tell-tale mark of a foreigner.

"I'm from Silver Spring, Maryland."

"No, where are you REALLY from?"

she asks again, more aggresively

as if I could not possibly have been born here.

My arrival to this country was not by choice

neither my parents' choice

or their parents' choice

or their parents' choice

or their parents' choice.

Where am I from? Maybe you should have asked my ancestors

when you dragged them from their African villages

and chained them to the American identity

while stripping them of their language, their culture, their songs, their personhood

until they have nothing but a white man's name. 

Maybe you should have asked the rich men

who mocked the patterns of the drums

the dances of the people

the food of the caretakers

the stories of the old

because we were too "uncivilized"

yet hundreds of years later

you want to attach us to a foreign identity

beaten out of us generations ago.

I have no memory of my ancestor's home.

The closest I will ever be to my ancient mothers' home village

will be a DNA test confirming I am "maybe East African".

I have no songs, no dances, no foods, no clothes, no language, no culture

from the ancestors forced across the Atlantic Ocean

whose dreams of passing down tradition had drowned.

I am African-American.

Or black.

Or negro.

Or any other term you wanna call me.

American is not an identity I chose,

American is an identity that was branded onto me

with the burning iron that once branded the foreigners who built it.

Yet American is not an identity I reject.

It is a reminder that despite all outcomes

the people whose identity was killed

birthed a new one out of the ashes of slavery

and connected in solidarity.

African Americans have created jazz, hip-hop, rock 'n roll, the blues, rap,

swing dancing, break-dancing, bounce, jerking, twerking, krumping,

collard greens, any peanut product, potato chips, 

snapbacks, hoodies, sweatpants, sneakers,

the hot comb, the wrench, the ironing board, the egg beater,

the modern fountain pen, the security camera, laser eye surgery,

the civil rights' movement, and, well,

the foundation of rich American agricultural wealth for generations to come.

So yes, I am from here.

I did not ask to be African American.

I simply am due to circumstance.

And under immense pressure,

my people have fabricated a new cultural identity

for millions of Americans to cherish, appreciate, or simply recognize

in 151 years. 

I am not proud to be here, but I am proud of how far I've come.

And how far we will continue to go.

So next time someone asks me

"Where are you from?"

as if to alienate me, as if to separate me from the land I am now bound to,

I'll respond

"I dunno, maybe you should have asked the slaves.

All I know is that I'm here now,

And here to stay."