Now, if we are to recognise that shame is an exterior thing, it is both natural and instructive to then ask: who planted them seeds? I ask this question not at all as part of the process of discarding shame, as some have suggested is the best course of action. The shedding of shame, from my standpoint, is in fact at best lazy thinking and at worst wasteful.

My mum’s pop was an African American man from Boston who came, in the 1800s, to this particular colony. The circumstances of his coming, the…

Jared Field discusses beautifully the search through story for a word that sheds colonial norms and labels.