Two years from graduation, he had no idea what he was going to do with his life, or even where he would live. Hawaii lay behind him like a childhood dream; He could no longer imagine settling there. Whatever his father might say, he knew it was too late to ever truly claim Africa as his home. And if he had come to understand himself as a black American, and was understood as such, that understanding remained unanchored to placed. What he needed was a community, he realized, a community that cut deeper than the common despair that black friends and he shared when reading the latest crime statistics, or the high fives he might exchange on a basketball court. A place where he could put down stakes and test his commitments. And so when he heard about a transfer program that Occidental had arranged with Columbia University, he’d been quick to apply. He figured that if there weren’t any more black students at Columbia than there were at Oxy, he’d at least be in the heart of a true city, with black neighborhoods nearby. As it was, there wasn’t much in L. A to hold him back. Most of his friends were graduating that year: Hasan off to work with his family in London, Regina on her way to Andalusia to study Spanish Gypsies, Marcus dropped out of school. -P.119, August 25, 2021
