Appendix: Questions on "A Yellow Ghost"

Justice is possible only where it is never asked, in the refuge of bad debt, in the fugitive of public strangers not communities, of undercommons not neighborhoods, among those who have been there all along from somewhere. To seek justice through restoration is to return debt to the balance sheet and the balance sheet never balances.

—Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study

1. 1. Is the ghost "yellow" because he's Asian or afraid or because white people have declared him "yellow"?

2. 2. Why did the poet delete from an earlier draft the ethnicity and race of the boys?

3. 3. When Kendrick sings "we gonna be all right" are these boys "gonna be all right"?

4. 4. Are they already "all right"? How?

5. 5. What is the problem with writing a poem about boys of color—if these are boys of color—potentially committing a crime?

6. 6. Is there a crime? What is it?

7. 7. What if these boys are not of color?

8. 8. Is the ghost truly dead and haunting the living? Is he haunted by himself? By the boys?

9. 9. Why is he a ghost?

10. 10. How does bad debt enter all this?

11. 11. Who is seeking justice here?

12. 12. Define justice.