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.
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. Oscar Baker III grew up believing violence was written in his blood. Facing down that lie changed his life.
"There is a weight to generations of trauma that you don't realize you're carrying until you stop running from it."
