An American Son

A Four Part Immigrant Tale

Prologue: Reality

Sun’s up and I’m still lost.

How do you write nonfiction when you don’t know what’s real anymore? When everything is stylized and catered to your own little advertisable bubble, what room is left for authentic experience? My words become ad copy. My photographs become demos for new billboards and Facebook campaigns. Screens tell me that while history and fact are open to interpretation, my place in society is fixed in place. All this by the same forces who fight tooth and nail for my attention and my dollar, but not my safety nor my future. I grew up watching dystopic 80s science fiction on VHS cassettes from the video rental place on the far end of Main Street. Now I see they weren’t just grim American fantasies.

They were warnings.

Part I: The Drive

“Son,” my father says like a fly fisherman sending out a lure, “have you submitted to the Dan’s Paper contest yet?” My father’s accent is a hybrid of whitewashed Yugoslavia and the Canada that forced it into submission. You hear it and you know there’s something foreign about the spry Tennis enthusiast who raised me, but you don’t jump on it for fear of your own xenophobia or casual deafness.