There’s a name for this: “hybridity”. The living in-between. It’s a central concept to postcolonial studies, one developed by scholars like Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. Hybridity creates something entirely new—neither colonizer nor colonized, but eternally suspended, living in the liminal.
Elamin Abdelmahmoud in Son of Elsewhere, A Memoir in Pieces.
I really enjoyed your book, Stan.
It made me long for what I’ve never had in depth, community, but it also made me wildly aware of the luck of not having to feel the weight of it, of them all, on my shoulders, ever.
That’s actually really heavy. Highways to build all by myself.
No religion. A very secular culture. Fragmented families. Zero blood-related family, no one looking like me. An English first name in the French countryside! Finding myself on the West coast of America. Life always has been hybrid as fuck to me.
And so of course, I needed extremely solid foundations. Science, knowledge and music stabilized me and allowed me to move in this world the way I wanted, respectfully.
And just like you Elamin, and migrants all over the world, I’m a little obsessed with routes and spaces. I think this is why I am in love with horizontality; the endless possibilities, for everyone.