My full name is John Lee Gaston White.  I was born in the United States of America on July 4, 1984 at 4:44 pm. I am an “Independence” baby.  As a child, my father would call out for me to come to him, shouting  “John Gaston” or “JG for short.  I stood in front of him and he’d turn me around quickly, positioning me just right as to pick me up and carry me on his shoulders.  Carrying me on his shoulders was how I saw fireworks every year for the 4th of July celebration in the city of my birth. 

I believed that everyone making their way to downtown Houston, Texas came there to celebrate with me.  From his shoulders, I could see the world a little higher than his vantage point.  We would walk through the crowds, and I always wondered about the starting point of the fireworks. Where did the fireworks I saw in the sky begin? Largely, what was the beginning of it all? I knew the fireworks on Independence Day started somewhere, and I wanted to find out where. 

Through my poetry and writing, I will take you on a pilgrimage to find the soul of my nation.  Stopping off on the shore of the colonial history of my own life before and after the ships hit my Plymouth Rock.  I summoned my first constitutional convention of all my traumas and fears, hopes and dreams, history and future.  I locked the door with all the original framers of my personal constitution—my family on one side and my country on the other side. 

When I opened the door, this is what you will saw: a preamble that unearths every stone in my life as I laid a pathway to my heart; a Declaration of Independence as my call for freedom and equality; and an exploration through my Federalist’s papers to find my passion and my voice, my love and my truth, through writing my way towards healing and freedom.