home, strange home//teju cole

i'm really digging teju cole's new piece in the new yorker. altho i've long considered it a magazine i couldn't read (we share very few aesthetic sensibilities in common), i will doubtless find myself reading this essay again and again. you need a subscription to read it on the new yorker website, but you can download it off tc's website here. and check out a cool vid here. found my first negative review of open city here, which, i'm guessing, means it's worth a read to see what all the fuss is about. --AL.

"Growing up in Lagos, I began to invent memories of my place of birth, the small town of Kalamazoo, Michigan. There was evidence in the form of photographs from those first months, and I had my American passport (pine green in color), a squeaky rubber puppy I'd played with in the cradle, and stories from my parents. I convinced myself that I could remember our one-bedroom apartment, on Howard Street. I even had a memory of the room at Borgess Hospital: it was just after five in the afternoon, and some Nigerian friends of my parents were there. I was born by Cesarean section. The nurse pronounced me a 'gorgeous Borgess baby.'"

--Teju Cole, from Home, Strange Home