""I was an African American kid raised in a primarily middle class, white experience," he explains. "It was tough trying to fit in, but also trying to play the part that I was supposed to play as that token black kid with my white friends going growing up, letting jokes fly by that maybe were uncomfortable, but, you know, trying to assimilate.""
"He compares it to the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where cracks in pottery are repaired not to hide the damage, but to embrace the breaks as part of the piece's history. "You use the past and take the learning experiences of it. Not all of it. I don't think you need to take everything with you, and at some point you gotta bury it," he explains, describing how he extracts "nutrients" from difficult experiences while learning to let go of guilt and self-blame."
Mon Rovîa was born during the Second Liberian Civil War and adopted by missionaries who relocated him to the United States. He experienced complex identity struggles growing up as an African American raised within a primarily middle-class white environment, often playing the "token black kid" role to assimilate. College produced a "mental shattering" that forced confrontation with pain masked by a jovial persona. Reading James Baldwin and listening to Bon Iver's Blood Bank influenced his healing. He likens recovery to Kintsugi, using past experiences to extract "nutrients," embracing breaks as part of history while choosing to bury some aspects and release guilt.
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