Excerpt from Terry Angelos’ Memoir “White Trash”

There is a wilderness embedded in my heart and etched on my soul.
It is deeply imprinted on my childhood like ragged erosion scars the landscape.

It is the taste of ripe mango juice running down my chin.
It is the scent of dust and rain.
It is the dull shine of a rifle in the bedroom corner.

It is mud pies and mulberry-stained feet.
It is a story of ears and lips cut off.
It is newspaper headlines of missionaries murdered and terrorists slaughtering farmers.

It is a song of patriotism howled with futility into the wind.
It is the Boogeyman’s face at the window.
It is exhilaration and despair.
It is lost innocence and the burying of a dream in a shallow grave.

“It is a place that is no longer written on any map.”

Rhodesia.

It is the place that raised me: strong-willed, fearless, curious, racist and entitled.

My heritage, with its bloodied, soiled history entwined around my heart, courses through my veins — a mixture of pride and shame.

I am White. I am African.
I am a descendant of White settlers, of tearoom owners, of tobacco farmers, of copper and asbestos miners, of British Military, explorers, exploiters and cricket players.

I am English-speaking but not actually English. My Britishness is second-hand, passed down like ill-fitting clothes, worn by others before me with stains that cannot be bleached out or stitched over with a patch.

White. British. African.

Half of each and none of all. A cultural half-breed.

I have impeccable manners. I am intelligent, bright and accomplished. Despite this, I have taken more than a few wrong turns, wandered off track and gotten lost down many dark rabbit holes.

My recklessness, poor choices and lack of boundaries cannot be traced to the usual broken home, child abuse, abandonment, desperate poverty or drug addiction syndrome. That would offer a plausible explanation. You could put me in a cardboard box marked defective, or most likely to make a string of poor choices. You could feel pity for me.

No, I am the first daughter of two devoted parents. Respectable, middle-class teachers. From the outset, I was destined for success in a white-picket-fence, 2.5-children family. A photograph my Catholic mother could be proud of.

Instead, by the time I reached 20…
I had become a call girl.