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  • Mother of the Misery Chicks: Wednesday Addams As the Forebear for Emily the Strange and Daria

    Mother of the Misery Chicks: Wednesday Addams As the Forebear for Emily the Strange and Daria

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    There’s an episode in season one of Daria called “The Misery Chick.” In it, a former quarterback/golden boy who attended Lawndale High, Tommy Sherman, is welcomed to the school anew so that he might commemorate a goal post named in his honor on the football field (it all has to do with his legendary “technique” of accidentally running into the goal post every time he scored a touchdown while waving at the crowd). As is to be expected, Daria and Jane are less than impressed with his sudden infection of every corner in the school as he skulks around “propositioning or insulting” whoever he comes across.

    When Daria is forced to give him a piece of her mind upon seeing him obstructing access to her locker, Tommy insults her back with the assessment, “You’re one of those misery chicks. Always moping about what a cruel world it is. Making a big deal about it so people won’t notice you’re a loser.” This is the crux of what a “grim girl” a.k.a. “misery chick” must contend with: easily scandalized normies lashing out at the slightest shattering of their worldview. And it was a prototype that Wednesday Addams laid the groundwork for.

    It seems no coincidence that with the advent of grunge in the 90s, the commodification of misery would play into not only the revival of Wednesday through Christina Ricci in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, but also in the brand-new 90s icons of Daria herself and Emily the Strange. The latter first appeared in her germinal form even before Daria’s on Beavis and Butt-head. That’s right, Emily in her genesis materialized on a skateboard in 1991. From Santa Cruz Skateboards, Emily was eventually sold to San Francisco-based company Cosmic Debris, by which time comics and merchandise starring the Wednesday-esque cartoon were ramping up.

    Even so, Daria Morgendorffer was likely the more recognizable between the two in the late 90s. After all, she had her own animated MTV series complete with non-stop sarcastic lines, often courtesy of Glenn Eichler. Emily’s lines were instead more one-dimensional, the stuff of t-shirts and bumper stickers—including, “I Want You…To Leave Me Alone,” “Strange is not a crime” and “Emily isn’t lazy. She’s just happy doing nothing.” So is Daria, usually—her favorite pastime being to sit on the couch (whether alone or with her only friend, Jane) and watch Sick, Sad World. That is, when she isn’t in her padded room reading. Wednesday, too, prefers solitude, generally repulsed by her parents’ displays of affection and/or annoyed by her brother’s stupidity. This being part of what compels her to torture him on a constant basis.

    Daria’s own sense of schadenfreude is more limited to the verbal. Case in point, in the aforementioned episode, “The Misery Chick,” Jane consoles Daria, “Maybe he won’t live that long.” Daria responds, “Come on, you know wishes don’t come true.” At that moment, the sound of the goal post crashing down on Tommy’s body can be heard offscreen. The “beloved” (though generally hated) quarterback’s death prompts many of the show’s characters to approach Daria for “advice.” Mainly about how to deal with being sad. As Kevin, the current quarterback at Lawndale, puts it, “I figure you think about depressing stuff a lot. You’re that type, you know.” His girlfriend/the head cheerleader, Brittany adds separately, “You’re used to being all gloomy and depressed and thinking about bad stuff.” Her English teacher, Mr. O’Neill, puts it even more bluntly with, “That’s your thing, right? Facing the void.”

    Daria is anything but “flattered” by this sudden form of popularity. For it only feeds into what Tommy had accused her of being. At the same time, Jane points out that what it all really amounts to is that they’re not accustomed to thinking at all, and want advice on how to do so before they can all return to their regularly-scheduled vegetative state.

    Wednesday suffers from a similar plight, but is far less bothered by it than Daria (at least in her Christina Ricci rendering). And Emily, too, would likely be more unbothered than Ms. Morgendorffer, for she is the admitted direct descendant of Wednesday. This much was made clear during a lawsuit that occurred over the character’s origins. For Cosmic Debris was sued by the creators of a 1978 children’s book called Nate the Great Goes Undercover, featuring an Emily-like character named Rosamond. With the same dark hair, dress style and Mary Janes—along with the accompaniment of some cats—Rosamond’s similarity to Emily might have been written off as pure coincidence were it not for the additional presence of a very familiar line next to Emily’s image: “Emily did not look tired or happy. She looked like she always looks. Strange.” The line next to Rosamond was, almost identically, “Rosamond did not look hungry or sleepy. She looked like she always looks. Strange.”

    So it was that Cosmic Debris had to establish that such a “misery chick” trope was long ago established by the likes of Vampira and Wednesday Addams. Maila Nurmi’s Vampira, however, was actually a concoction inspired by Morticia Addams (at that time, still unnamed) in the Charles Addams cartoons showcased in The New Yorker. So, by that logic, the Addams women truly are the progenitors of all so-called misery chicks—with Vampira then effectively creating Elvira, Mistress of the Dark through her channeling of Morticia.

    The most noticeable difference between Morticia and her daughter, however, is that Wednesday is decidedly asexual (except in the Tim Burton world of Wednesday). Whether or not that’s because she’s still “too young” seems irrelevant. For girls start to unveil interest in “crushes” fairly early on. Wednesday, on the other hand, has far more pressing torture methods to explore. Daria is also pretty much avoidant when it comes to sex, preferring to admire Jane’s brother, Trent, from afar. What’s more, the series’ writers didn’t see fit to display Daria so much as even kissing a boy until the finale of season four. Perhaps the universe imploded so much as a result that there was only one more season after that.  

    Asexual or not, Wednesday forged a path for “misery chicks” everywhere to be themselves, even if it came with constant mockery. Especially since most misery chicks are presented as middle-class white girls—but hey, don’t discount that unique form of misery unto itself.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Softcore Gloom: The Gentrification of Wednesday Addams Includes Nods to Charmed, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Gilmore Girls and Harry Potter

    Softcore Gloom: The Gentrification of Wednesday Addams Includes Nods to Charmed, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Gilmore Girls and Harry Potter

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    Maybe it seems ironic to say that the character of Wednesday Addams has been “gentrified,” considering she’s no longer white. And sure, in Jenna Ortega’s hands (whether that includes Thing or not), Wednesday is perfectly “passable” as a macabre dark mistress. To those who examine the presentation of the character more deeply, however, it’s clear to see that she’s been sanitized for the sake of making her more “likable” (read: watchable) to normies and outcasts alike. Except that the true outcasts of this world will not be encouraged to find that Wednesday’s so-called black heart is as penetrable as the Grinch’s.

    It all starts promisingly enough when Wednesday reveals her lust for exacting revenge to be uncompromising in the first episode, “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe.” This is where we’re introduced to her at Nancy Reagan High—the school’s namesake being a pointed dig at any preppy, pastel-wearing git that Wednesday might be likely to encounter. Except for the fact that, in the present, with the greater commodification of “weird” as normal, one would be less likely to see such 80s-era “queen bees” of a Republican persuasion “running” the school. Nonetheless, one is willing to go along (at first) on this journey helmed by Tim Burton and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (all three being white men serves as something of a “behind-the-scenes” case in point of the aforementioned gentrification).

    Suspending disbelief that “normies” still reign supreme in the era of their disfavor (with normies themselves having adopted the “trends” embodied by “freakdom”), we watch as Wednesday vindicates her brother Pugsley’s (Isaac Ordonez) bullying by the jocks of the water polo team, their ringleader being the fittingly-named Dalton (Max Pemberton). To secure justice for Pugsley, she thusly targets the team at their most vulnerable: half-naked in the pool during practice. Unleashing two bags’ worth of piranhas (as Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” plays) into the water, we learn afterward that Dalton ends up losing a testicle. But Wednesday maintains, “I did the world a favor. People like Dalton shouldn’t procreate.” For yes, she does hold fast to her “savagery” for all of episode one, complete with her declaration, “I don’t have a phone. I refuse to be a slave to technology.” Her Luddite ways, of course, will be thrown out the window by the eighth and final episode, “A Murder of Woes,” after fellow student and semi-“love” interest, Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White), gives her one as a parting gift at the premature end of the school year.

    Xavier is sort of like the Tristan Dugray (Chad Michael Murray) to townie Tyler Galpin’s (Hunter Doohan) version of Dean Forester (Jared Padalecki). Which brings us to Wednesday’s Rory Gilmore-esque (Alexis Bledel) nature in this edition. Complete with both girls being bookish introverts with writerly aspirations, each starting out at public school (in Rory’s case, Stars Hollow High) before being presented with the opportunity (fine, obligation for Wednesday) to attend a private. Wednesday’s is called Nevermore Academy, not just a private school like Rory’s Chilton, but a private boarding school. Which is where the Hogwarts Academy element comes in. But more on the Harry Potter similarities later. As for those well-versed in poetry ought to detect, “Nevermore” is a direct reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”

    Poe being the “mascot,” of sorts, for darkness and lovers of the grim and grotesque, it’s only natural that the writers should see fit to make him a former alumnus of the academy. There’s even a Poe Cup competition in episode two, “Woe Is the Loneliest Number,” during which Wednesday’s blooming friendship with her roommate and would-be werewolf, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), is further solidified by Wednesday’s desire to help her beat the long-reigning winner, Bianca Barclay (Joy Sunday). It is she who embodies the school’s proverbial “most popular girl” role—though no one can say for sure if that’s because she’s a siren with a very persuasive voice.

    The character of Bianca harkens back to yet another Netflix series, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. A show that, who would have predicted, turned out to be much less afraid of full-stop darkness than Wednesday. In it, Sabrina Spellman’s (Kiernan Shipka) own rival at The Academy of Unseen Arts, Prudence Blackwood (Tati Gabrielle), serves as the locks shorn, Black mean girl of the equation. And, like Wednesday and Bianca, Sabrina and Prudence eventually seem to develop a mutual respect for one another after Bianca and Prudence get over the fact that the chosen boy of her affection prefers Sabrina and Wednesday, respectively, to her.

    The magical facet of Wednesday’s Burton-ified persona doesn’t just relate to Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, either. Even more than that, it echoes Charmed. Most overtly via Wednesday’s powers of premonition mirroring Phoebe Halliwell’s (Alyssa Milano). Charmed in general also seems to cast a towering shadow over the series. At one point, Wednesday tells Thing as she touches a book of spells in “Friend or Woe, “Codex Umbarum—that’s Latin for Book of Shadows.” This being the name of the book the Halliwell sisters use as well for their spellcasting. Then there is Rowan Laslow (Calum Ross), a fellow student at Nevermore with the power of telekinesis… just like Phoebe’s oldest sister, Prue (Shannen Doherty). But yes, more obviously connected to Charmed is Wednesday getting premonitions the same way Phoebe does. The latter, too, can’t control when or where the premonitions will arrive, triggered by touching something seemingly arbitrary that leads to a vision that will ultimately offer a bigger clue.

    This is the component that suddenly makes Wednesday a teen detective who actually gives a shit about saving her school from an unknown and sinister antagonist. That Wednesday and Pugsley had to be forced to go to school in general during the first series run of The Addams Family should be an indication, however, that Wednesday would never care enough about any “institution” of learning to stick around and save it. Indeed, there are glimmers of Wednesday’s contempt for the entire construct of school at the beginning, when she notes of Nancy Reagan High, “I’m not sure whose twisted idea it was to put hundreds of adolescents in underfunded schools run by people whose dreams were crushed years ago, but I admire the sadism.”

    Other callbacks to Wednesdays of the past show up in moments both big and small, from Wednesday telling Tyler she used to decapitate her dolls with a guillotine as a child (this being mentioned in the 60s sitcom version of the show) to her particular way of dancing to her having an ancestor who was a witch to her utter contempt for whitewashed pilgrim history just the same as Christina Ricci’s Wednesday in Addams Family Values. And, speaking of, Ricci’s own presence in the show goes largely wasted and underused. Except when she has the gumption to say to Wednesday, “Never lose that, Wednesday. The ability to not let others define you.”

    Alas, Wednesday is gradually being conditioned, molded and defined by norms and conventions as the series goes on. This includes her cringeworthy romance plotlines with both Tyler and Xavier. If anything, Wednesday would be more prone to asexual tendencies, the antithesis of Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Worse still, they actually have Wednesday kissing a boy already in season one. Goddamn, at least work up to that kind of thing. All “sexual” interactions when it comes to Wednesday Addams, after all, should be strictly Bollywood.

    Even more unnatural is that Tyler, who writes her off as “Grim Reaper Barbie” (that “Barbie” can be associated with Wednesday at all in this series should tell one everything), has the gall to actually take some kind of “ownership” over Wednesday. Doing so when she confesses to him that she is deigning to attend the Rave’n dance (Nevermore’s version of a prom) with Xavier in episode four, “Woe What A Night.” He then bitches out, Dean-style in Gilmore Girls, and berates her, “I mean, call me crazy, Wednesday, but you keep giving me these signals.”

    Of course, the “real” Wednesday would never give any signals to a boy apart from a death stare. Regardless, she lets him continue to whine, “I thought we liked each other, but then you pull something like this and I have no idea where I stand. Am I in the ‘more-than-friend’ zone or just a pawn in some game you’re playing?” Wednesday, genuinely looking guilty, therefore emotional, about what he’s saying, becomes cliché enough to reply, “I’m just dealing with a lot right now.” No outright ignoring or horrification over how some guy would try to make her apologize in any way for her behavior.  

    But herein lies the rub with the true essence of the character. No normie actually has the stomach to watch how a misanthrope would realistically behave without some “light” sugar-coating to it. Some glimmer, through plot device, that all the character really needs is to be “drawn out.” That their defenses are only up because they’re just protecting themselves, but secretly want to be an active participant in “society.”

    Maybe that’s why something about Wednesday feels tantamount to “dark and weird” Billie Eilish going blonde pin-up and then dating an older white male that fronts an “indie” band. In both scenarios, the lack of faith in audiences to want to stick with such a bleak character/persona—an “anti-hero” (and not in the chirpy, Taylor way), if you will—is part of the capitulation to “Disney-fication.” But oh, let’s not forget about the Harry Potter-fication as well. For, not only does the headmaster, Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie), end up dead, but the “Voldemort” of the narrative also ends up inexplicably brought back to life in the last episode. A dash of Pretty Little Liars even gets thrown in when Wednesday receives a stalker-y text (because, lest one forget, she has an iPhone now) in the vein of “A.” By this juncture, the only on-the-nose “quirky” aspect missing is some background music from Lana Del Rey (“Ultraviolence” would be a good choice).

    Hence, whatever season two holds, it’s sure to provide more of Wednesday “gradually” opening up to people as she feigns cold-bloodedness through her barbing dialogue. Yet, to borrow from a meme that gained traction during the Trump presidency (“I know this isn’t the USA Miley was talking about partying in”), “I know this is isn’t the dark and macabre Wednesday that Christina Ricci’s version would have grown up to be.”

    Angela Chase once told Jordan Catalano, “Admit it… That you have emotions.” That appears to be what Tim Burton, et al. is saying to Wednesday with this “modernized” rendering of her. And yet, to quote another character from a teen drama, Blair Waldorf, “You have to be cold to be queen.” In this instance, queen of misanthropy. Which Wednesday no longer really is, leaving that, ostensibly, to the descendants she inspired in the animated personages of Daria and Emily the Strange.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • With A Callback to Addams Family Values, Wednesday Prompts Thanksgiving Revelers to Remember That It’s Still “Pilgrim World”

    With A Callback to Addams Family Values, Wednesday Prompts Thanksgiving Revelers to Remember That It’s Still “Pilgrim World”

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    Being that Wednesday has arrived to Netflix just in time to capture the “Thanksgiving spirit,” it’s clearly no coincidence that, in episode three of the mostly Tim Burton-directed series, screenwriter Kayla Alpert should offer a callback to one of the most memorable plotlines of 1993’s Addams Family Values. In it, Wednesday (Christina Ricci) and Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) are forced to go to a horrendous normie summer camp called Camp Chippewa. Worse than that, Wednesday is enlisted to play the part of Pocahontas in a Thanksgiving-themed play (yes, in the summer) put on by their ghoulishly white-bread camp managers/counselors, Gary (Peter MacNicol) and Becky Granger (Christine Baranski).

    After the Grangers attempt to brainwash Wednesday, Pugsley and a fellow outcast named Joel Glicker (David Krumholtz) with a marathon of Disney movies, Wednesday emerges from the isolated cabin pretending that the “immersion therapy” has worked. Even going so far as to smile at the awaiting crowd of normies, including the odious Amanda Buckman (Mercedes McNab)—the Aryan ideal in every way. But the Grangers should have known better than to believe Wednesday could be so easily cajoled into “normalcy” by visions of The Brady Bunch and Annie. Instead her performance was all designed to lure them into a false sense of security before she changes tack on the script’s dialogue at the last minute.

    So it is that, rather than “sweetly” agreeing to break bread with the pilgrims, Wednesday as “Pocahontas” (who wasn’t even alive anymore during the “first Thanksgiving”) suddenly declines the invitation and declares, “You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations, your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the roadsides, you will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeuvres. My people will have pain and degradation, your people will have stick shifts.”

    Barring the part about the stick shifts, the monologue has remained fairly timeless. Nonetheless, with the world of Wednesday being set in a Salem-esque town called Jericho featuring a theme park billed as Pilgrim World, it was ripe for throwing more shade at the white forebears who came to the “colonies” to claim the land as their own. What’s more, both Wednesday and Jericho’s “founding father,” Joseph Crackstone (William Houston), appear to be at the center of some ominous prophecy unveiled by Rowan (Calum Ross), a fellow student at Nevermore Academy (the school for outcasts where Wednesday is exiled after unleashing some piranhas on the water polo players at Nancy Reagan High). Wanting to understand more about why a pilgrim would be in the mix, Wednesday asks at the beginning of “Friend or Woe,” “If I’m going to be responsible for Nevermore’s demise, the question is: why am I sharing this apocalypse with a pilgrim?”

    The answer starts to slowly unravel as Wednesday continues her search for Rowan’s murderer while Nevermore gears up for its “Outreach Day”—meaning the students from the school are “allowed” to enter Jericho freely under the pretense of volunteer work that enables them to “commingle” with the town’s normies. Wednesday does her best to get through the torture, complete with being subjected to seeing more signage that urges people to “Visit Pilgrim World: Where History Comes to Life.”

    Initial mention of the theme park is made in episode one, “Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe,” when Wednesday encounters a trio of meatheads, including Lucas Walker (Iman Marson), the son of Pilgrim World’s owner. Approaching Wednesday sitting at a table at local coffee shop the Weathervane, Lucas and his henchmen are all dressed in pilgrim garb while on their break from working at one of the only sources of “industry” in town. Mocking them and the park itself, Wednesday ribs, “Why are you three dressed like religious fanatics?” “We’re pilgrims.” She returns, “Po-tay-toh, po-tah-to.” They shove an advertisement her way and announce, “We work at Pilgrim World.” Briefly studying it, Wednesday bites back, “It takes a special kind of stupid to devote an entire theme park to zealots responsible for mass genocide.”

    For yes, like her Christina Ricci foremother playing Wednesday, this is one character who will not suffer the bullshit of such Republican holidays as Thanksgiving. And, fittingly, in Addams Family Values, the “outcasts” were viewed by the Grangers as those that white society has long “othered.” Which is why Becky (truly the perfect name) casts only “the ethnic ones” as Native Americans (further insulting the “misfits” of the camp by appointing a white girl their leader). During her “Native American” casting announcements, Becky uncertainly lists out all of the “ethnic” names, grudgingly stating, “Mordecai, Yang, Esther, um, Consuela, Irwin and, um, I’m still not sure just how to pronounce this…Jam-ahl, Jay-mul? Whatever.”

    The self-superior sentiments of white people like her are crystallized all the more in the dialogue of the so-called play, with Amanda in the part of lead pilgrim Sarah Miller. Trying to make the slaughter of innocent people come across as “palatable,” “Sarah” says things like, “You are civilized as we—except we wear shoes and have last names.”

    Meanwhile in “Friend or Woe,” Wednesday swaps her volunteer assignment at Uriah’s Heap with her roommate, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), so that she can infiltrate Pilgrim World and try to find out more about this dastardly “founding father.” Upon entering, it’s plain to see that the “enterprise” is like a monetized version of The Crucible as one man shouts, “Welcome to Pilgrim World! Witch trials every day! Two o’clock, four o’clock!”

    Soon, the outcasts are given an introduction by Arlene (Lisa O’Hare), who greets, “I am Mistress Arlene. A real OC.” The Nevermore kids stare at her, dreading what they seem to know she’s going to tell them regarding what that play on “OG” stands for: original colonist. Wednesday’s nightmares continue when she’s instructed that her assignment will be to pass out samples of fudge in the fudge “shoppe” that inexplicably exists at Pilgrim World. Wednesday not only informs German tourists that fudge didn’t exist in this time period, but also that, “All proceeds go to upholding this pathetic whitewashing of American history.”

    Christina Ricci’s Wednesday would be proud. And yes, Ricci herself has given her blessing to the project by appearing as a teacher at Nevermore named Marilyn Thornhill, who gets introduced to Mayor Noble (Tommie Earl Jenkins) by Principal Weems (Gwendoline Christie) as follows: “In the spirit of outreach, she’s Nevermore’s first normie teacher.” What that will mean for “normie-outcast” relations (this being a foil for white-“other” relations) remains unclear.

    The fact that Wednesday is this time around portrayed by a Mexican-descended actress like Jenna Ortega lends further meaning to her railing against the normies that would support an operation like Pilgrim World (especially its Black owner, Mayor Noble). To boot, her psychic vision of the past unearths the torment of her ancestor, Goody Addams (also played by Ortega), a fellow “outcast” who gets to have an Arthur Miller-esque moment of dialogue when she derides Crackstone (before being sentenced to burning for witchery), “It is you, Joseph Crackstone, that should be tried. We were here before you. Living in harmony with the nature and the native folk. But you have stolen the land. You have slaughtered the innocent. You have robbed us of our peaceful spirit. You are the true monster! All of you!” This extends to those who still presently celebrate Thanksgiving like it’s not one of the most obscene holidays ever foisted upon the American public.

    Wednesday’s reminder of this dark period in Jericho’s (and the U.S.’) history leads her to seethe over the fact that the entire purpose of Outreach Day is centered around the celebration of a new bronze statue in the town square. One that immortalizes Crackstone. So obviously, she enlists Thing to blow it up with the simple tools of some gasoline in the fountain and a match. And, honestly, it doesn’t feel like such a monument’s “erection” could even be possible in the present climate, with long-standing statues of white supremacists already being political battlegrounds, let alone brand-new ones.

    In the wake of the explosion, during which time Wednesday happily plays Vivaldi’s “Winter” (from The Four Seasons concerto) on her cello, Principal Weems automatically accuses Wednesday of the “crime.” By now notorious for being an outcast among the outcasts, Weems chastises her, “You’re a trouble magnet.” Wednesday replies, “If trouble means standing up to lies. Decades of discrimination, centuries of treating outcasts like second-class citizens or worse.”

    The idea of labeling Native Americans as “outcasts” might be a bit of a whitewashing, slightly offensive move unto itself, and yet, was that not how all “minorities” were made out to be by the white European settlers of the 1600s (and beyond)? Wednesday adds to her ardent condemnation of, among other things, Pilgrim World and the white supremacy it promotes, “Why be complicit in this cover-up? Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.” And maybe that’s why Americans continue to engage in the “act” of Thanksgiving every year, all while wondering how racism can remain be the dominant “tenet” of the nation.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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