Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

who am i?
brian kwoba
24 Sep 2013

by brian kwoba

my father was a harvard-trained capitalist economist my

mother was a consultant for the world bank and white-savior-industrial complex

who am i?

by brian kwoba

 

if you really want to know me

take a look at the trees the apple fell from

 

my father was a foreign student

born and raised in a small village in kenya

went to school in a tin-roof shack

 

his father

my grandfather

was a shopkeeper who had larger dreams for his son

through hard work and perseverance

my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place

america

and while studying here my father met my mother

 

she was born in a town on the other side of the world

in kansas

her father worked on oil rigs as a geologist

my grandmother Toots started out as a bank teller

 

these are the trees of my apple

so who am i?

 

some say my parents were CIA agents

i’m not sure

but they did meet in a russian language course

at the height of the cold war

at the US government’s east-west center in the pacific

 

picture a summer hollywood blockbuster

a black and white espionage thriller

where tomb raider meets shaft

but they’re both nerds

 

my mother worked for ford foundation and USAID

as a secular missionary for uncle sam’s gospel in the pacific

 

my father gave me little more than my pigment

and the vestigial african identities hiding beneath my names

because of his absence

i’m still haunted by many

dreams from my father

 

i am a kenyan-american

born in hawaii

but i went to elementary school in indonesia

 

picture a vast archipelago

17,000 islands between the indian and pacific oceans

where the dutch came to introduce thievery, bribery, slavery

and the blessings of christ

 

picture a proud people rising up

declaring independence

where the ringing of revolution triggered the security alarms

of world domination in washington

where i now live with my family

 

picture the CIA sponsoring a coup

imagine that!

putting in power a ruthless army general called

suharto

 

this mega-murder-monster strangled over a million hearts beating with indignation

into 17,000 droplets in the bloodbath of his baptism

as a loyal US ally

 

suharto brought peace and stability to indonesia

like a napalm bomb dropped into a sanctuary of

butterfly

wings crushed in the vice grip of a bald eagle’s talons

 

i was only 4 years old

when my mother married an officer in the suharto regime

Lolo was a great role model

he gave me blood red gloves

turned my fists into apples under the dark tree of his guidance

he taught me how to box

 

and he taught me that if indonesia wants to commit genocide

in west papua or east timor

with american weapons

nobody here would hear because the

signatures on the arms shipments belonged to my respectable forebears

like lyndon johnson and jimmy carter

 

you see i have cultivated the image of being raised by a single mother

with humble beginnings

 

but let me be clear

 

my father was a harvard-trained capitalist economist my

mother was a consultant for the world bank and white-savior-industrial complex my

step-father was an indonesian war criminal and oil company executive my

grandmother broke glass ceilings to become a corporate bankster at bank of hawaii my

 

oh my

 

i guess the apple

didn’t fall far from the trees

 

who am i?

 

Brian Kwoba is a PhD student at Oxford University and is working on a dissertation about the "father of Harlem radicalism" Hubert H. Harrison. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • BAR Radio Logo
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio May 30, 2025
    30 May 2025
    In this week’s segment we talk about jails and prisons in New York City and State and the end of city control of the infamous Rikers Island jail. But first a Washington DC activist analyzes how the…
  • Democratic party where are you
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Afeni on Fighting the Bipartisan Fascist Consensus
    30 May 2025
    Afeni is an activist and lead organizer with Herb and Temple in Washington, DC. She joins us from Oakland to discuss politics in the U.S. and how the people can fight the fascism produced by the…
  • Rikers protest
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Eric Adams Loses Control of Rikers Island to Federal Receivership
    30 May 2025
    Our guest is Melanie Dominguez, Organizing Director, New York with the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. She joins us from New York City to discuss the federal takeover of Rikers Island…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Charles Rangel and the End of Black Politics
    28 May 2025
    The late Charles Rangel served as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus for more than 40 years. But the goals of Black politics and electoral politics are not necessarily the same.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: The Intellectual Origins of Imperialism and Zionism, Edward Said, 1977
    28 May 2025
    “In theory and in practice, then, Zionism is a degraded repetition of European imperialism.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us