Aisha Sabatini Sloan.
This is an excerpt from one of her nonfiction pieces.
"For my family, Detroit has always been inevitable.
It is the place we have been heading back to my entire life.
My parents recall White Castle hamburgers and Coney Island
hot dogs as if they were the secret to immortality.
The city has the beckoning power of a black hole,
or the Italian countryside, or a castle.
There is no way to explain our wiring
to someone whose fairy tale has always ended somewhere
like Florida.
Recently, a new friend kept scrunching up her nose
when I said, my family moved from California to Detroit.
This happens all the time.
But in the moment, it hit me that one
of the things that makes no sense when people ask,
why Detroit, with all of their death showing,
is this presumption that we can choose our homes.
That's Aisha Sabatini Sloan.