Describe an encounter with a text/topic/event/person/experience in your scholarly or other pursuits that has informed and (re-)shaped your interests in research. Character limit: 1,500.
After all the books read, papers written, feelings felt on colonization, systemic oppression, and the alternative magic underneath, I met a boy from Israel. After a year of messages, we reunited in Portugal, March 2024. And when I heard his passionate story about Hamas hiding in schools and hospitals, about how we’ve all been lied to, I cried. How did I misunderstand?
He dodged a conversation about race, claiming, “racism will solve itself.” That generation is dying out, he’d say. Later, this time about Palestine and the State of Israel, he remorsefully remarks, “everyone thought it would solve itself.”
Back home, everyone around me has climate concerns, stands for mutual aid, reparations, land return, and wants to end genocide. The need for change is understood—so, I thought, maybe yes, the work is doing itself—less about the echo of a chamber. Waiting, I heard all these things I have to say. Full-body chills on a bus in Brazil: I’ll go back to school to say the words well.
I was given another boy from Israel months later. I discovered I’d never been in love before and, likewise, never heartbroken—that I had never truly grieved. Despite my education, I couldn’t believe that someone so smart, with so much positionality to affect systemic change, could hold beliefs so violent. Then I saw the reflection, the reasons for our attraction.
And this is how it came to the core that the work doesn’t do itself.