by brian kwoba
my father was a harvard-trained capitalist economist my
mother was a consultant for the world bank and white-savior-industrial complex
who am i?
by brian kwoba
if you really want to know me
take a look at the trees the apple fell from
my father was a foreign student
born and raised in a small village in kenya
went to school in a tin-roof shack
his father
my grandfather
was a shopkeeper who had larger dreams for his son
through hard work and perseverance
my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place
america
and while studying here my father met my mother
she was born in a town on the other side of the world
in kansas
her father worked on oil rigs as a geologist
my grandmother Toots started out as a bank teller
these are the trees of my apple
so who am i?
some say my parents were CIA agents
i’m not sure
but they did meet in a russian language course
at the height of the cold war
at the US government’s east-west center in the pacific
picture a summer hollywood blockbuster
a black and white espionage thriller
where tomb raider meets shaft
but they’re both nerds
my mother worked for ford foundation and USAID
as a secular missionary for uncle sam’s gospel in the pacific
my father gave me little more than my pigment
and the vestigial african identities hiding beneath my names
because of his absence
i’m still haunted by many
dreams from my father
i am a kenyan-american
born in hawaii
but i went to elementary school in indonesia
picture a vast archipelago
17,000 islands between the indian and pacific oceans
where the dutch came to introduce thievery, bribery, slavery
and the blessings of christ
picture a proud people rising up
declaring independence
where the ringing of revolution triggered the security alarms
of world domination in washington
where i now live with my family
picture the CIA sponsoring a coup
imagine that!
putting in power a ruthless army general called
suharto
this mega-murder-monster strangled over a million hearts beating with indignation
into 17,000 droplets in the bloodbath of his baptism
as a loyal US ally
suharto brought peace and stability to indonesia
like a napalm bomb dropped into a sanctuary of
butterfly
wings crushed in the vice grip of a bald eagle’s talons
i was only 4 years old
when my mother married an officer in the suharto regime
Lolo was a great role model
he gave me blood red gloves
turned my fists into apples under the dark tree of his guidance
he taught me how to box
and he taught me that if indonesia wants to commit genocide
in west papua or east timor
with american weapons
nobody here would hear because the
signatures on the arms shipments belonged to my respectable forebears
like lyndon johnson and jimmy carter
you see i have cultivated the image of being raised by a single mother
with humble beginnings
but let me be clear
my father was a harvard-trained capitalist economist my
mother was a consultant for the world bank and white-savior-industrial complex my
step-father was an indonesian war criminal and oil company executive my
grandmother broke glass ceilings to become a corporate bankster at bank of hawaii my
oh my
i guess the apple
didn’t fall far from the trees
who am i?
Brian Kwoba is a PhD student at Oxford University and is working on a dissertation about the "father of Harlem radicalism" Hubert H. Harrison. He can be contacted at bdubkwob@gmail.com.
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This lecture was delivered on February 3, 2026, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (Canada) for the monthly series “Black History and the Project of Black Studies.”
