Melinda opens with a story of losing her luggage on an impromptu trip to Montgomery, Alabama to see the Legacy Museum from Enslavement to Mass Incarceration. Melinda describes the experience of visiting the museum (she suggests taking multiple days to slowly engage with the concept) and what that brought up for her about borderlands. She connects the impact of enslavement to her ancestors in Cape Verde and what that means as a white passing person.
She discusses the intentional creation of hierarchy in Cape Verde. She names that she sits at the intersection of oppressed and oppressors. Melinda then shares where she got the concept of borderlands - from a poem “To Live in the Borderlands” by Gloria Anzaldua. Melinda explores this idea of mixed identity and what it means to sit on the borders, rather than pick a side. Liberation exists on the borderlands.
Melinda returns to the history of Cape Verde and how the intentional creation of hierarchy including a mixed race impacts culture and identity. She asks how borders can be apart of our liberation and our understanding of how oppression is designed.
Melinda connects back to her physical appearance as a place of respite and a battle ground for race and gender.