Erasure

Content Warning: The text references racism, sexism, anti-Black biases, anti-gay biases, violence, and sexual violence. It also includes swear words, as well as racist and sexist slurs that the guide reproduces only in direct quotations.

Van Go Jenkins is a 19-year-old Black man. He lives with his mother and baby sister, Tardreece, in a marginalized neighborhood in Los Angeles. He dreams that his mother calls him “human slough” and he stabs her. Then, he ponders which one of his children he must go visit.

Van says he does not “give a fuck” about the world or anybody in it (65). For him, the world sucks. He has four children with four different women. One of his little boys has Down Syndrome. He decides to visit him and his mother, thinking that he might have sex with her. Outside in the neighborhood, he looks at his former school and recalls a fight with another student who called his penis “too small.” This fight was the reason Van did not graduate. He thinks he could have a good job and money if he had finished high school. Then, he comes across an intoxicated man. The man tells Van he knows him and asks about his mother.