There's that older poem of John Ashbery's-"America"-with the pun "I'm a wrecker," so wreckage and building out of the ashes of that. We're haunted by the genocide that is America, the decimation of so many native cultures. As a mix-blood European ancestry American, you're a nexus of all those violences, and yet there's a relative personal identity as well.
![There's that older poem of John Ashbery's-America-with the pun I'm a wrecker, so wreckage and building out of the ashes of that. We're haunted by the genocide that is America, the decimation of so many native cultures.](http://cdn.quoteddaily.com/images/anne-waldman/theres-that-older-poem-of-john-ashberys-america-with-the-pun-im-a-wrecker-so-wreckage-and-building-out-of.jpg)