Goodbye to Identity...

Today, my Identity will be flying thousands of miles across continents to reach her new home in Johannesburg, South Africa. I am getting her ready so that she doesn't get damaged during her long journey.

I am happy yet sad.... will never get to see her again! Yes, I do develop an emotional attachment with all my paintings...it starts the day I form them..they are parts of me..It feels good when I get to see them again once in a while at their current homes..possible only if they are in my friends' houses....

Identity is going to an immigrant Nigerian family ...same as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's, author of Americanah ... I am inspired by many of her lines in that book. One of them was "I did not think myself as black and I only became black when I came to America..... Stop saying I'm Jamaican or I'm Ghanaian. America doesn't care.When you make the choice to come to America, you become black." Identity is my reflection on these lines from Americanah...more so, the difference between Non American Blacks vs. American Blacks in USA as depicted by Adichie.

As an immigrant, I too have felt my identity being reduced to an alien number (A*******), and getting generalized into a category. Why do we fail to see a person first as a human being before categorizing?

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After thought....
I love Adichie's writing style and have read all her books....she is a great speaker too... you can check out her TedTalk videos on Youtube..my favorite is one on the danger of a single story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg