by Oscar Baker III
Illustrations by Aziza Asat
What’s Written in Blood
N
ight sinks in deep. It’s August 2009; I’m 18 years old, six-foot-nothing, and brown: half-Black, half-Mi’kmaq. I’m eight beers deep, which is nothing for Kent County, New Brunswick, and I’m lost, stumbling through the dark trying to find myself. It’s party weekend on the res, and I’m heading to my cousin Colton’s place, a beat-up single-wide trailer, its front lawn strewn with empty beer bottles and boxes.
Growing up caught between two worlds weighed down by generations of trauma, the path forward felt obscured. I believed the violence I saw around me was not just a symptom of environment, but a biological imperative—something written in my own blood.
But that night in the trailer, surrounded by the echoes of a fractured history, I began to realize that the stories we tell ourselves about who we are—and what we are destined to become—are the most dangerous narratives of all. Facing down that lie wasn't just a moment; it was a reclamation of my own future.