Heaven is a Room on Fire

thoughts on rage and action

Author's Note: I wrote this piece about a month ago to hype #HeroHive up for my upcoming book and to provide the teeniest-tiniest sneak preview into my chapter on rage. I realize how fitting it is for this essay to be posted on the day after the SCOTUS decision to end race-based admissions decisions within Affirmative Actions¹, framing efforts towards equity and inclusion as dangerous. I am very much enraged at that while also being enraged as a Black and Asian woman who felt powerless watching white men exploit Asian anti-Blackness for their personal gain. Rage, rage, everywhere.

---

Lovecraft Country changed my life. It was an incredible tv show. I’m still mad that I have to write about it in the past tense. It was the type of show that gave my language for the feelings I stored into my quivering shoulders. It was the type of storytelling that had me unclench my jaw and realize how much pressure existed in the space between my teeth. It was a bone-to-bone realization that exposed me. I heard that the force of a closed jaw is can reach up to 200 lbs. That means the space of forced silence between my teeth was strong enough to crush me whole.

That is the true power of a well written work of art: it opens the jar of screams that you locked away inside of your chest.

Hanna leading Atticus “Tic“ Freeman out of a collapsing building with a trail of fire following behind her

---

---