When the lights came on, my eyes were already stinging red from the 3-D glasses and big screen glare. As we crossed the vast and vacant dark parking lot, I turned my eyes up into the light rain for relief. "Oh c'mon Ange, it was a magnificent story about protecting the environment. The characters were blue aliens--not people." My friend could not have known that this time it was different. I was not angry or disappointed or offended. The film had, quite literally, hurt me. The wound was throbbing in the soft of my belly, just below my ribcage. Was I the privilege-soaked self-anointed hero choosing to parade as a dread-locked native while my nation systematically exploits them? "Jesus Christ Ange, stop seeing everything as racism for one minute. It was a good story." A trembling hateful yell emerged from the soft of my belly: "How could you be so cruel?!" Tears fell harder and faster than the drizzle. I hated myself for allowing such emotions, so carefully bottled and buried, to now burst and spill out all over my friends in this middle America parking lot. We drove away from the theater in the shocked silence of my sobs. Living in Uganda, East Africa had changed me more than I realized. I could not pretend it was only a story. The Avatar Incident , 2009
When the lights came on, my eyes were already stinging red from the 3-D glasses and big screen glare. As we crossed the vast and vacant dark parking lot, I turned my eyes up into the light rain for relief. "Oh c'mon Ange, it was a magnificent story about protecting the environment. The characters were blue aliens--not people." My friend could not have known that this time it was different. I was not angry or disappointed or offended. The film had, quite literally, hurt me. The wound was throbbing in the soft of my belly, just below my ribcage. Was I the privilege-soaked self-anointed hero choosing to parade as a dread-locked native while my nation systematically exploits them? "Jesus Christ Ange, stop seeing everything as racism for one minute. It was a good story." A trembling hateful yell emerged from the soft of my belly: "How could you be so cruel?!" Tears fell harder and faster than the drizzle. I hated myself for allowing such emotions, so carefully bottled and buried, to now burst and spill out all over my friends in this middle America parking lot. We drove away from the theater in the shocked silence of my sobs. Living in Uganda, East Africa had changed me more than I realized. I could not pretend it was only a story. 
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