WEBVTT

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Aisha Sabatini Sloan.

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This is an excerpt from one
of her nonfiction pieces.

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"For my family, Detroit
has always been inevitable.

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It is the place we have been
heading back to my entire life.

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My parents recall White Castle
hamburgers and Coney Island

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hot dogs as if they were
the secret to immortality.

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The city has the beckoning
power of a black hole,

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or the Italian
countryside, or a castle.

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There is no way to
explain our wiring

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to someone whose fairy tale
has always ended somewhere

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like Florida.

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Recently, a new friend
kept scrunching up her nose

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when I said, my family moved
from California to Detroit.

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This happens all the time.

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But in the moment,
it hit me that one

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of the things that makes
no sense when people ask,

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why Detroit, with all
of their death showing,

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is this presumption that
we can choose our homes.

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That's Aisha Sabatini Sloan.

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