Lawrence Lemaoana

My Own Sanity Within That Madness

It's like your body is imprisoning you. Do you know the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? It’s about being immobile, and just stuck there. This guy gets paralyzed from the spine downward and he can only move his eyes—it’s called “locked-in syndrome”—and he writes a whole memoir. When you’re defined by apartheid, you’re visibly what you are, and you can’t be anything other than what defines you.

My Own Sanity Within That Madness

It's like your body is imprisoning you. Do you know the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? It’s about being immobile, and just stuck there. This guy gets paralyzed from the spine downward and he can only move his eyes—it’s called “locked-in syndrome”—and he writes a whole memoir. When you’re defined by apartheid, you’re visibly what you are, and you can’t be anything other than what defines you.

Notes from a Secure Psychiatric Facility in a Poor Red State

“It’s not ideal,” my supervisor answers when I ask if it is illegal for the state to take control of a person’s life even though he never had a chance to stand trial. Later, I ask a psychologist from our state’s Department of Mental Health the same question. “Oh, totally,” she says. “Of course, we are violating their constitutional and human rights!”

Six Lions

Bringing the acid to Palestine was Khalil’s idea. Because Khalil is my best friend from high school and I live in Berlin, it was difficult to say no. I took Khalil’s request as a divine calling and asked another friend to lead me on the path of finding a drug dealer.

Saboteurs of Rent

Get (the fuck) out, slumlord, parasite, hoarded wealth, they graffitied in black or red permutations on the walls and fences of nine vacant homes in West Oakland, California, stolen land they said, held in the portfolio of Sullivan Management Company (SMC) East Bay.

Excerpt from Heaven without Prickly Pears

The strong Woyna Dega wind picks up an assortment of scents and delicately spreads them around Geneté. The smell of burned banana leaves used to bake bread, wafts from the armpits of damsels, frankincense, ripe yellow plum, herbs tucked behind maidens’ ears, and the honey extracted from their lips: we breathe in this combined aroma…and if you stick out your tongue, you sure can get a taste of Geneté.

Death of a Citizen

It’s fair to say that the rise of citizenship stripping as a legal tool looks a lot like the reinstitution of banishment, a fairly common punishment throughout Europe into the 19th century. In different polities and at different times, banishment was the sentence meted out to punish such varying offenses as murder and incest, vagabondage and treason.

Aliens in Paradise

When value flows only in one direction, when it amasses with one party, then there is bound to be an accretion of want and of waste, of objects sucked clean of their value, of brutalized land, of violence, and of unfulfilled obligations. The Zone is a land cursed by an accumulation of absence.

A Brief History of Rent Regulation in New York: An Update

On Returning Things to Their Proper Places

He can’t bring himself to ask the whole question at once: “What if diasporic national consciousness was there the whole time? What if the Africa we return to was always already building itself anew? What if Africa was always a nation that was not?”

Holding Zone

Oxford anthropologist Ruben Andersson has referred to the various actors with a profit-making motive in border politics as “the illegality industry.” A vast, labyrinthine web of supply chain networks that stretch from Hungary to Southern Spain to Mali aid in the production and transportation of concertina wire, 360º motion sensor-equipped security cameras, and other advanced surveillance technology used to tighten the border fence and security apparatus around Ceuta, Melilla, and other southern border zones of Fortress Europe.

Separate Fidelities

But now, when no one expected me to interpret simultaneously nor with absolute accuracy, my anxiety came from elsewhere—not only did I translate Mr. Chen and Joan’s conversations, I tried to create conversations for them. The circumstances made my role more than a language interpreter: I was a mediator.