You will have to forgive my disjointed, fragmented retelling of this experience. It happened four or five years ago, and at the time, I did not yet see travel for the political act that it is. I did not document it. I was just a young black woman—still a girl, in a lot of ways—on a mission with a white friend and his family and his church. I am forever grateful that he invited me to go along, because without that trip, I would still have never been outside of the United States. Nervous About Traveling We went to Mexico. It cost me somewhere around $265 dollars to go on…

“If you ever come to Beijing, you should call me.” At the start of June, we were sitting in my classroom, the day after final exams ended. My student, C—, had stopped by one last time to drop off a gift: a beautiful little black wallet, adorned with azure flowers and a velvet tassel. I’d been dreading this day for weeks—excited, of course, to be done with the school year, but saddened at the prospect of losing touch with some of the coolest young people I’d ever met. I held the little wallet in my hands, fiddling with its tassel and smiling brightly to keep my emotions at bay as…