Just One Thing with Ra’Niqua Lee

In his book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, sociologist Matthew Desmond asserts that “the home is the wellspring of personhood.” Ra’Niqua Lee’s October issue story “Eviction Sounds Like This” embodies that idea. Here Ra’Niqua shares just one thing about her piece:

“‘Eviction Sounds Like This’ emerged from my interest in displacement, mobility, and access. My life has been full of movement, and my great grandmother, Muddah, was a testament to that. In my earliest memories, she lives in a house with big rooms, hardwood floors, and long red candles. Then she lives in a house with blue carpet, then a little white house near Memorial Drive. That is the last time she lives in Atlanta before relocating to the suburbs, a duplex with a pecan tree in the front yard and big sunflowers that attract insects that bite and sting. I imagine Muddah on the same street as Joy and her family, looking out at their predicament with hopeful pity and saying a prayer before she guides my siblings and me out to gather pecans. She warns us to be wary of the ones on the ground that might have bugs then reminds us of the old cliché that the bees we see are more afraid of us than we are of them.”