Navigating the Invisible Borders: How We Rewrite the Meaning of New Spaces
Introduction: From Lanzhou to Connecticut When I relocated from the northwest part of China to the east coast of the United States, leaving behind the busy, familiar streets of Lanzhou for the peaceful, leafy campus of UConn, I thought that my greatest obstacle would be the language. But as I made my way through this new place, I realized that space wasn’t just a physical background. It is a communicating, confining and shaping power. After reading Garnette Cadogan’s Walking While Black and Sara Morgenstern’s For Kings and Country alongside the insights of my fellow travelers on this journey, I have reached a point of clarity in relation to our connection to our environment. So here’s the point of my argument: While there are external dynamics, Such as the racial prejudice outlined by Cadogan or the historical story touted by Morgenstern, that would like to determine our movements and tell us we can’t go to certain places, I’m arguing that we do have space, agency, to push b...