A History of Violence

By Oscar Baker III | Illustrations by Aziza Asat

What’s Written in Blood

Night 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.

The history of a place is often written in the silence that follows the violence. In the corners of the Maritimes, stories pass like ghosts—unseen, but constantly felt by those living in the shadow of historical trauma.