Week 4

Hours had past. Or, so it felt. I peered out the window and attempted to count the seemingly infinite objects strewn alongside the highway. The monotony of the activity induced a sleepy-stupor.

Bang! The bus rumbled over potholes in the highway, driving my head repeatedly into the glass window. My hand pressed firmly to my now throbbing forehead. I squinted, as the excessive glare of the sun reflected from the burning asphalt. Oh, the woes of a nomadic life.

Several rows in front, another traveler scrambled to retrieve the books that had fallen from her bus seat. I was quick to notice a rather large book she gripped tightly as she organized her collection. While her hand steadied the stack, her eyes resumed reading. I moved to her row to inquire about the book.

“What are you reading?” I asked. Captivated by the seemingly two-ton book, she didn’t respond. I leaned forward to tap her shoulder. Naturally, I startled her. I hadn’t showered in days. My hair was greasy, my clothing wrinkled, my voice hoarse, and my face weather-beaten.  

Our conversation was brief. However, I found myself equally intrigued by her synopsis of The Warmth of Other Suns. “It’s a series of narratives…a detailed account of the Great Migration from the migrant’s own perspective. From World War I until the early 1970s, black people moved to cities of the urban North and West to escape a region replete with Jim Crow laws and race-based violence,” she responded. It seemed the Great Migration was more than a demographic shift, but an action of then-unparalleled collective black agency.

I was on one of the dominant migratory routes. While I recognized that my motivation was rather different, I would not breath freely until I had arrived.