Why My Aunt Was Hiding from the Sun

"Why My Aunt Was Hiding from the Sun." Dutch Crossing, 46(3), pp. 297–298

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sacha Celine Verheij

Sacha Celine Verheij (1996) is a writer, poet and photographer and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Humanistic Studies (Universiteit voor Humanistiek, Utrecht, 2018) and an interuniversity Master of Arts in Gender & Diversity (Universiteit Gent, 2022), for which she wrote a thesis on Black British lesbian poets. The autobiographical poem ‘Why my Aunt Was Hiding from the Sun’, which was composed especially for this issue of Dutch Crossing, arose from Verheij’s search for her own roots. Her grandfather Paul Louis Wekker, born in Paramaribo (Suriname), and her grandmother Maria Augustine van Enst, born in Ambón (Moluccan island in Indonesia), met during the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949). In order to blend into Dutch society, they raised her mother (Esmeralda Wekker) as European as possible, erasing their own cultures whilst creating a white armour hiding their brown skin. As a Dutch-Surinamese-Moluccan lesbian woman caught between many worlds, Verheij aims to do justice to the stories of lives – like her family’s – that have been erased from history.