#Diasporic awakening

[ausetkmt]

Barbados Announces Creation Of A Transatlantic Slavery Museum - Travel Noire

Fresh off the country’s status as the world’s newest republic, Barbados is breaking ground on a transatlantic slavery museum with the largest collection of British slave records outside the United Kingdom.

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley announced the creation of the Barbados Heritage District, which includes a “memorial, a major global research institute, and a museum located in Newton Plantation outside the country’s capital, dedicated to accurately recounting the historic and contemporary impact of slavery on Barbados and on the lives of individuals, cultures, and nations of the Western hemisphere.”

The first phase of the project will be the Newton Enslaved Burial Ground Memorial. This monument will serve as a tribute to the country’s enslaved ancestors and provide an avenue to remember and honor those impacted by the effects of forced migration. The development is expected to be a catalyst for significant job growth across multiple industries.

“Barbados is authentically enshrining our history and preserving the past as we reimagine our world and continue to contribute to global humanity,” said Mottley in a statement. “It is a moral imperative but equally an economic necessity.”

David Adjaye, who has been commissioned to design the project, shared his vision for the Barbados Heritage District.

“Drawing upon the technique and philosophy of traditional African tombs, prayer sites, and pyramids, the memorial is conceived as a space that contemporaneously honors the dead, edifies the living, and manifests a new diasporic future for Black civilization that is both of the African continent and distinct from it.”

At the inauguration of Barbados’ new president Dame Sandra Mason, who replaced the Queen as head of state, Prince Charles acknowledged the UK’s role in Barbados’ grim beginnings.

“From the darkest days of our past, and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which forever stains our history, the people of this island forged their path with extraordinary fortitude,” he said. “Emancipation, self-government, and independence were your way-points. Freedom, justice, and self-determination have been your guides. Your long journey has brought you to this moment, not as your destination, but as a vantage point from which to survey a new horizon.”

[conjuremanj]

Three Questions That I Keep Hearing.

Please take the time read and tell me your thoughts.

Is There Such Thing As Head Work In Hoodoo? No. I've also heard of this so called head working. But it's not a thing in hoodoo. A skull candle don't just work on a person's mind.

Question: I Read There No Blood Sacrifice In Hoodoo? Yes there is. Okay there are online comment that is speaking on this saying probably from spiritual online community saying how Hoodoo isn't strong enough because they don't do any sacrifices.

People can I correct these people and say That's incorrect, because we do sacrifices when its need. It can be use for hex's, healing the body of disease, sending petitions to ancestors.. So people if you know your history especially black Americans then you should know that they did sacrifices right so how can someone believe we still don't do it when it's called for, when most religions even Christianity have sacrifice goats to ansestors. That's like saying Vodou or Palo or Santeria don't do it.

Even see on line some of y'all put your petition paper in a casket / coffin for working like say hex or curse. That can also be use to send messages to ansestors.

But you know some of the older ways to send a petition to ansestors was to make a petition paper burn it to ash put it in the mouth of a goat sacrifice it, That will take it to the spirit world ansestors.. I seen it in the mouth of a pegon.

All I'm saying don't be ignorant to this.

Question: Do Some People Go To Hoodoo For The Wrong Reasons? Yes.. I would say so.. Some do it for Good reasons like starting a botanica or a online shop.. Others do it they may do it because they may think hoodoo is more powerful.

Online you see online all this this pretty shit, the altars, the pretty spell candles with glitter inside or bottles that have to have the wax perfectly dripping down and the authors who write books on hoodoo that is fake. I'll tell ya real magic isn't pretty and if you think this is real hoodoo then you have seen it.

Then some get into this is because they get tired of the church or going to church is one big reason.

After they leave the church and maybe even Christianity they now want to get back to their roots which I think is is Great 😃👍

Now This What I Think Is The Wrong Reasons Some Get Into This. Now after they leave the Christian church they want to get into Ifa because they read all this stuff online about the religion or see celebrities talk on it and they want to become a Babalawo or maybe a Santero... Because they watched a movie like Eves Bayou, Skeleton Key, The Craft or The Believer so now they buy and put on they elekes and want to be a priest or priestess and they get a reading done.

So they pay for a reading with a Babalawo or Santero and they tell them you need to be initiated. Great, there happy now," How much is it going to cost they ask around $200, $300? " No, it's will cost around $15,000. Now reality hit them they get mad and say shit like. " This is a rip off $15,000 they ain't shit. I'm going to to learn Haitian Vodou.

So now you fine you a Mambo or a Houngan get a reading don't for $50 to $100 and they tell you that you might have the gift to become a Houngan or Mambo Asogwe. Again your happy to hear that right.

"How Much Is This Going Cost Me? It'll cost around 12,000 and time in Haiti". "I don't have that kind of money, This is Bull Shit they just trying to take my money making me go to Haiti, This is shit is fake too". So what's next.

I'm going to do Santeria or another Orisha practice. Same thing you get a reading done and ask what it cost. "The average price in the United States is between $8000 - $12 000. More if it's a warrior Orisha and some be up to $20,000. "This Is Bull You Say."

So now what may be a Palero. "That'll be a start of around $2,500 just for a initiation. So now they need to find something cheaper. So you pick Hoodoo, you look online and you find a online course like Lucky Mojo gives and it only cost $200, $300 dollars and you think.

" You mean I can become Pro in Hoodoo after intaking a 2 week course", and reading a few books, (that are badly writing books that nothing to do with real hoodoo). So you take the course and now you get you little certificate and a tarot deck and start calling yourself Papa and Mama and telling people your hoodoo is traditional and you been doing this for 10-15-20+ yrs. Only to promote a new business.

That's sad people. 😢😭

What happens now is when someone ask you for help you do a reading tell them what your going to do they say" WOW 😳 I never heard of that before" well that because I'm it a secret and my Hoodoo is different and you believe it because you can't check to see if this person is legit or not because now one really knows the real outside the real communities.

But if you pretend to be Houngan Asogwe voodoo priest or a Santero, or a Palero, or a Babalawo etc if you lie they'll know. Because if you can answer who your God parent is; or what this is or that means then we know you not a real priest.

All I'm saying is if you get into a practice do it for the right reasons, don't do it because you don't want to spend the money to become a priest and rather take a online course because it's cheaper. That's make the people who do train and practice for years look bad.

[rotzaprachim]

this is going to amaze some of you but the Hebrew language is older than the state of Israel. Older than theordor Herzl, in fact. And before you go off about how it’s just the modern Hebrew that is evil - Hebrew has had a long history of post exilic use and original composition. “Dror yikra” wasn’t written until 860 c.e. “Lecha Dodi” was composed in the 1500s. Hebrew vocabulary has an important place at the core of diasporic languages like Yiddish. It’s not as simple as “disappearing” at the time of the exile and being “awakened” by Eliezer Ben-yehuda. Plus it’s a generally bad look to paint any middle eastern language as evil, no?

[beautiful-02-08-18]

Ephesians 6:10 (KJV)

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

I’m trying to go back to my regular upload schedule, so here’s a FanCharacter/OC for the Running Man Animation show.

I had placed a lot of effort into this design, even though I created her because I feel bad for a character in the show. She ended up looking more like a DnD character than a RMA character but nonetheless I really like how it turned out. I had this character idea for a long time now, but she had a different premise with a much more “edgier” backstory. She was also going to be an albino peacock but somebody else already kinda thought of that and I did not want my characters to look like anybody else’s so I ended up changing it. If God is willing I’ll be reusing this design in the future.

Her design is based mostly on what scrap of information I can get from her tribe, which is Pikok, but it’s just mostly headcanons. It's so bad that I had to reference Charming Gold’s parents for her even though she is in no way related to them. I also wanted to give her a dress because I like the idea that the tribe has rather strict gender roles but opted to give her loose pants. It's kinda disingenuous to think of that because we were never really shown what a female Pikok member looks like. Besides, fighting in a dress is weird for show that relies on action.

For now, here’s a summary of her character:

Dazzling Diaspore, would be the villain of an AU called: Running Man: Judgement. Filled with hatred she strived to awaken Ulcus to erase humanity once and for all. Similar to Charming Gold, who was her former childhood friend, she is also 1,000+ years old as well as having the ability of energy absorption, while although much weaker than Charming Gold she is able to casts illusions of people. Dazzling Diaspore has immense knowledge of medicine, including the red crystals and potions, which she regularly drinks affecting her health but strengthening her powers. She is quiet and serious, as well as observant with a great memory.

Here are the inspirations I used for her:

References:

Running Man Animation was created by LINE Friends Corporation and SBS

[beautifulbizarremagazine]

The one and only Kehinde Wiley! His portraits depict “contemporary African-American and African-Diasporic individuals that subvert the hierarchies and conventions of European and American portraiture.” On his website, Kehinde shares further: “Working in the mediums of painting, sculpture, and video, Wiley’s portraits challenge and reorient art-historical narratives, awakening complex sociopolitical issues that many would prefer remain muted.”

---

#beautifulbizarre #kehindewiley #painting #portrait #oilpainting #oilonlinen #newcontemporary

[dustedmagazine]

VirgoTwins — ArtSpace (Damn That Noise/Expanded-Art Records)

Photo by STILLRIFT

Jon Ivan Gill is an author and academic who views hip hop culture as a global philosophy of life and social justice. Encompassing history, religion, Afro-futurism, culture and philosophy, he collapses lineal time and logic, making world building connections that are often startlingly apposite. Part cosmic beat poet and part hardboiled dialectician, his musical alter ego, Gilead7, embraces contradiction, paradox and poetic license, building his narratives to arrive at deeper truths about the world. In producer Boricua Sandy, Gilead finds a collaborator equally wide-ranging in her inspirations. Together as VirgoTwins, their debut release ArtSpace combines an eclectic range of soundscapes with Gilead7’s exploratory verses. Sandy matches his words with expansive backings that owe as much to ambient electronica as traditional hip hop. If this seems counterintuitive, her music frees Gilead7’s lyrical flow from the strict imperative of rhythm and gives ArtSpace a loose, understated vibe that serves as a counterpoint to the intensity of the words and the scratching of guest DJ Presyce.

“Othello’s Children in the New World” is structured as an argument between a tenured professor protecting his status and his younger non-tenured colleague, with Gilead7 playing both parts. It ranges across Afro-diasporic history, the destruction of indigenous cultures and dismissal of their intellectual and artistic achievements by an academic structure wedded to power rather than knowledge— “What they don't know won't hurt 'em/But it will still our imperial power from global interior to coast/And to prevent that great awakening I'll do the most/Make the real historical records disappear like a ghost.” This tour-de-force of verbal and analytical dexterity plays out over growling bass and snippets of communal voice. “Shadow Work” celebrates unacknowledged underground artists. Sandy energizes hazy dreamscapes with loping drums and a circular guitar riff as Gilead7 chronicles the struggle of unrecognized innovators. Jessica Santana provides a foil on the RnB tinged “Empath” where removing a water bug from the house leads to a meditation on difference and co-existence set to a quite lovely piano backing. “A-Symbol” is a freeform reflection on how language and meaning are twisted by power but offers art, specifically, hip hop culture as self-defining path to identity and resistance. With ArtSpace VirgoTwins meld poetry and polemics into a potent interrogation of distorted of histories and a demonstration of the subversive potential of language and music. 

Andrew Forell

[sistahscifi]

When you think of Nubia: The Awakening by @clarenceahaynes and @omarepps, what is one word that comes to mind? Our word is Black, like dripped in melanin, African Diasporic cultural richness!! Get your copy at your local #library. If you love it (and you will!), we have copies available signed by Omar Epps. Link in bio: @SistahScifi | www.sistahscifi.com Images reposted from @mrsj.r NUBIA: THE AWAKENING I can’t start this review without mentioning the stunning and vibrant cover that first attracted me to this book featuring the art of @yung.yemi. It’s such a magnificent image which perfectly reflects the story within its pages. This book is a Afrofuturistic YA set in a dystopian New York that has been ravaged by climate change. The rich get to live Up High and continue to thrive while those left on the ground have to fight to survive. Working extremely hard to perhaps one day have the opportunity to join them for a better way of life. This is a powerful read that weaves important issues so relevant in society today into its fantasy coming of age story. Climate change, class issues, racism, drug use and poverty are just some of the hard hitting subject matters. As the protagonists discover they have emerging extra-ordinary powers it makes them question why and how best they should use them. They discover more about their ancestral past in the hope it will empower them to fight for their futures. This is a book that will help younger generations know that their voice matters and that they have the strength in them to make a difference. . . . . . . . . . #nubiatheawakening #yadystopian #yadystopianfiction #yafantasy #yafantasyseries #comingofagebook #scifibooks #afrofuturism #scififantasy #representationmatters #yareads #yareader #bookcommunity #bookstagrammer #amreadingyafantasy #supportblackauthors #climatechangeawareness #blackpantherfans #epicsaga #dystopianfiction #bookcoverillustration #omarepps #fridayread #weekendreading #ancestralhomeland #SistahScifi @penguinrandomhouse @getunderlined @delacortepress (at Sistah Scifi) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnHhPkBLope/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[arcticdementor]

I have written and spoken about the four types of racism – individualised, structural, institutional and internal. I have rarely talked about the latter for many reasons, mainly because the majority can interpret it as attacking People of Colour. I do not pen this piece of writing for the gaze of white folx; thus, if you are racialised as white, please read with caution; Hold your privilege in mind, and I humbly ask you to stay in your lane face your front. These words are not about or for you.

…

We should look back at the opening quote. We need to think about the idea of trauma. Some traumas are incredibly powerful, so ingrained that it embeds in the dispositional of unborn foetuses (Williams, 2020); they span centuries and through a diasporic spread both through ‘voluntary’ and forced migration encompasses the globe. These traumas lead to the environmental factors that lead to the same cycles that destroy the meritocracy premise. Yes, I am saying that chattel slavery, colonisation and every act of racism between then and now impact People of Colour today. Sleep. Sleep is important. The unconscious state is not necessarily a place of healing but one of survival. Without a level of denial of the hurt, how would one exist in this world? Imagine for a minute. a Black person in the UK being subjected to the daily glorification of those who thought of their ancestors as animals, commodities. Stack that with the fact they were compensated by the government (for their loss of stock). At the same time, the descendants of those very same people use their privilege to run the country (two whole prime ministers). Sleep is important. I have often seen the media point to those embued and enamoured by whiteness. Look, here are a few Brown and Black folx who agree with our ideology. While this is fundamentally and systemically damaging, we still have to consider all our Brown and Black brethren as victims of the same racism. Sometimes, just sometimes, it’s easier to pretend that the violence inflicted on melanated bodies is not based on racism but anything else. It’s easier to blame other folx for not working harder enough, centre on class, the wrong place and time or my favourite ‘it’s not what you know but who you know’.  I am not asleep, and I refuse to keep my morning calls on silent mode. It’s time to wake and awaken those around you.

[geeknik]

Cosmic Cyberlocution: Unraveling the Meta-Vulnerable Mazes of SQL Injection and the Dawn of Database Origami

SQL injection is a form of cybernetic locution where a syntax-disrupting injection molecule, or SQLI (SQL-yielding iconograph), sees a digital opportunity to extract logic-streaks by abusing macrosemic dilations that keep the integrity of a database system. The communication platforms in their most innocent form just want to move data back and forth, unassumingly creating a tunnel sphere wherein an SQLI can metamorphose into a mutable SQL worm.

Upon initiating a cabalistic interrogation, this spitfire worm deceptively mutters invocations: SELECT, INSERT, DELETE, or UPDATE; it dynamically forges new paths, unlocking chunks of cherished data as if these were open source caveats. Like a parasitic virtual predator inflation-depreciating misapplied coded queries, the SQL injection concurrently engenders a wormhole in this ostensibly invulnerable info-sphere.

Trans-culturally multiverse in application, SQLI transcends the commonly known mundane application layer in the OSI (Onion Skin Ideation). It dangerously dinner-jackets into engulfed Mare Nostrums, barrelling through Davis-matrix ethical firewalls by exploiting a netizen's IF and ELSE constructs. Flicking the digital switches of these database TRIGGERS an SQL injection, potentially extrapolating whole terabytes of vulnerable data.

Yet, software network security gurus can counter this invisible cyber sword with delightful robust-and-rogue defenses such as formless form validation, parameterized quarrying, and sweet-natured stored proceedings. These stellar, fortress-like broadswords of data protection can infinitely out-radiate the shadowy cross world attacks of SQLI. In stringent conformity with these arcane meta-protocols, it is plausible to wheel a rampart so immaculate virtually nullifying the SQL injections.

Thus, shaped by eleventh-dimensional axes of high abstractions, this meta-vulnerable loophole in a spontaneously ordered network lets the seemingly innocuous data-lite masquerade disrupt, disorient, and deconstruct, ultimately leading to the discovery of an information goldmine in the interstices of unsuspecting crypto-crannies. Its pure lunacy to let the truth tables turn oblique by these sentient, cyberlocutionary semantics. But in its twilight, it awakens an array of diasporic countermeasures crinkled onto the database origami to repudiate the SQL worm onslaught.

[biglisbonnews]

Lucinda Chua's 'YIAN' Takes Flight Who do I run to?YIAN begins with departure. A curvature in time subtle enough to invite imbalance and open enough to feel like embrace, the first question of Lucinda Chua’s debut album does not ask where or when of its listener, but instead: “Who?”“I like the idea of the album being a loop that starts with a question and ends with a question," Chua tells PAPER by way of introduction. "I think going into the album, I was looking for answers, looking for something very tangible and concrete that would give me a sense of having conquered it. But the deeper I went into the album, the more I realized I don’t know anything.”If Chua’s central question is who, YIAN is her response. An intuitive player, Chua took up piano by ear at age three. Learning by listening, rather than reading sheet music, Chua’s musical practice is personal and corporeal. “Music is something that I felt so much in my body from a young age,” Chua explains. She departed from the classical world to session work and rock music in her early teens, eventually going on to support acts like FKA Twigs during her Magdalene tour. Chua’s own discography has been steadily expanding from symphonic and solo cello compositions to her first EPs Antidotes 1 & 2. Where Antidotes distills emotional vignettes — like snowflakes caught on a finger and melting into memory —YIAN descends in all directions around its listeners, a flurry in time.On YIAN, Chua constructs landscapes of herself: an ocean, an avalanche, the echo of the wind under-wing. Named for Chua’s middle name in Mandarin, YIAN translates to "swallow," a songbird whose reliable migration — its own paradox —connotes positive change, the dawn of spring. “I never fully understood it. It always felt quite alien to me,” Chua says of her Mandarin name, Siew Yian. “It translates to 'swallow,' which is a songbird that migrates between two places, and I really resonated with that as a symbol or metaphor, because I’ve felt very in between the Eastern world and the Western world growing up with two cultures in my family. I guess the feeling of the in-between is something that I’ve always felt. I explore that in the record.”With influences in ambient and classical music, Chua’s dioramic memory conjures pastorals alongside impressionism, as if Harold Budd’s “Sea, Swallow Me” undertowed Vaughn Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.” The motion of Chua’s swallow is two-fold, soaring beyond itself and surrendering, swallowed, to a whole. Chua reclaims the narrative of exploration. We encounter Chua at the center of a mutable landscape: her own diasporic identity, having been born to a Chinese-Malaysian father and a white British mother. Putting sound to her internal dissonance, YIAN exercises curiosity in contradiction. “I really like the fine line between something that's really pleasurable and really uncomfortable in the music, the dissonance and then the resolution. I think as a listener it can feel really gratifying to be on your toes but then to have that moment of release.”For listeners, YIAN is a permeable space, stripped to essentials — reverberated keys, mantric melodies and no drums —and unmoored by temporality. The place is the person from which time flows, inviting mutual recognition and collective healing. “There’s so much empathy within the listener that it can awaken certain things” Chua says of her own relationship to music. “It’s like I’m watching or listening to someone else feel those emotions, and it’s reminding me of my capacity to feel.” YIAN is contemplative and hopeful. Journeying towards an inaccessible home, Chua glides across the emotional currents of a crystalline landscape. Distorted strings gain glitchy permanence on “Grief Piece;” cello played sul ponticello on "Autumn Leaves Don’t Come" oscillates across its own borderland as Chua’s lyrics linger more as thoughts than melodies. “I’ve been living in the sky too long/ Waiting for someone to take me home,” Chua harks, a swallow.Arriving just after the spring equinox, YIAN is in perpetual transformation: Paper roses bloom across ancestral stones in “Echo,” and Chua’s outstretched orchid palm, lan hua zhang, decorates YIAN’s music videos. “We say 'like an English rose' to specify a certain type of beauty,” Chua explains. “But it’s interesting that the rose is indigenous to Asia. The rose originated in China and was brought over to the UK. I love the idea of the rose being a symbol of the diaspora.”Pulling visual cues from Chua’s exploration of classical Chinese dance, YIAN is informed by fragmentation and reformation. Lost under the Song Dynasty, much of the cultural practice of Chinese classical dance has been carried through memory. Through careful study of ancient Chinese cave paintings, scriptures and texts incorporated into martial arts and Russian ballet, Chinese classical dance was reborn, much like the album, which Chua describes as “a returning or remembering.” Just as there is a sense of recollection throughout YIAN, there is a counter-parallel tide of loss. “There is a feeling of falling,” I note, “between the rose petals, the snow, “Autumn Leaves Don’t Come,” without really a clear direction or arrival.”“It’s quite elemental. There’s an emotional weather,” Chua adds. “Snow at first can feel magical, but it can be tiring, you know, because it’s like you’re carving out your path or you’re finding your way and leaving these marks behind.” In every revolution toward a whole, Chua diverges. Chords dissolve and swell in the final moments of YIAN''s closing song “Something Other Than Years,” and resolve in a second question: “When all I feel/ Is all I know/ Show me how to live this life/ Something other than years."Sung in rounds alongside the album’s only feature (by yeule, a fellow child of the diaspora) Chua’s curiosity turns this time to the listener, prompting a response and inviting departure anew. Photos by Milo Van Giap https://www.papermag.com/lucinda-chua-yian-2659661268.html

[fatehbaz]

I’d like to read a sci-fi story and say, “Gee, I’d like to live there. This place seems like it treats people fairly or at least values doing so.” I’d like to see more stories where resilience tools from the past are put to use. Obviously, there’s sci-fi that does this, but I’d like to see more. Perhaps that’s why I write in the genre, as a way of problem-solving futures, or as Toni Morrison said, to write stories you’d like to read. [...]

Afrofuturism existed long before the term was created and will exist beyond this period. I don’t see the times as dictating its necessity. People of African descent and the African diaspora will have a relationship with the future, space, and time and will pull from culture, experiences, and the resilience tools to navigate it in part because that’s what humans do. [...] Black people don’t have the luxury of abandoning hope and dreams because of shifts in politics. W. E. B Dubois wrote the sci-fi story The Comet in the 1920s, and while there was a literary cultural renaissance afoot, I wouldn’t call that the best of times for Black Americans. Ezekiel’s wheel as a spaceship reference was in Black spirituals during enslavement. People looked to hope because they had to. Sojourner Truth in the early 1880s said she’s “going home like a shooting star.” When François Mackandal led a six-year rebellion of self-emancipated Maroons against plantation owners in Haiti in 1752, nearly forty years before the Haitian Revolution, people claimed that during his capture he turned into an animal and flew away.

Many African cosmologies from the Dagara to the Yoruba are inherently interdimensional, as evident in the symbolism of the art and architecture. [...] Brazil has a robust Afrofuturismo scene of theory and works. There’s a book called Afrofuturismo written in Portuguese that I’ve just ordered. I’ll have to translate it via Google until an English edition comes out. I spoke at a virtual conference of Brazilian Afrofuturists recently and I’m really excited by the depth of their work. Jelani Nias of Toronto, Canada, has a cool book called Where Eagles Crawl and Men Fly. Toronto has a robust scene and is home to the annual art show Black Future Month curated by Danilo McCallum and Quentin Vercetty. Afro SF: Science Fiction by African Writers edited by Ivor W. Hartmann is a good anthology. The book came out a few years ago and has a wide range of works from authors across the African continent. I also like Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo. [...] 

I don’t want to say it’s a template. People all over the world have relationships to space, time, and the future with a unique cultural lens. However, the term has created ways to narrow the focus on literary works, music, and more from specific cultures. I think it’s given rise to conversations on the shared aesthetic and philosophical thought within other cultural lenses. It’s pretty exciting. Within African/African diasporic communities, the term “Afrofuturism” helped people to anchor and frame the works they were creating or ideas they were tossing about. I think terms like “Indigenous Futurism” and others are doing the same [...]. 

[A] veil was broken during this period. Many have awakened to the fact that there are grave disparities and that they could consciously or inadvertently be contributing to [them]. [...] However, walls, gentrified neighborhoods, and gated communities can’t protect people from a virus. [...] There’s an abundance of “neighborliness.” I had three neighbors pass away during this period. After one neighbor’s funeral, the procession of cars came to my block. The cars were led by a purple and gold carriage carrying the body. Yes, I wrote that correctly. A carriage. A fairytale Cinderella-style carriage with gold trim. A minister on a remote microphone asked if any neighbors wanted to say a few words. Some said prayers. One guy came to the mike and gave this rousing inspirational prayer for the block, all followed by a balloon launch. Over a hundred balloons were sent into the sky in honor of this man who most in our society would describe as ordinary.

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Ytasha L. Womack, interviewed by Wade Roush. ““A Veil Was Broken”: Afrofuturist Ytasha L. Womack on the Work of Science Fiction in the 2020s.” The Reader - MIT Press. 19 August 2021.

[zelihatrifles]

The Stationery Shop of Tehran

When i was finishing this book, it was late into the night and i was supposed to have fallen asleep much earlier, but i stayed up because i simply had to know what happened to Roya and Bahman and Badri and Mr Fakhri and Zari and all the others, because i could not help conversing with and upbraiding Roya after learning each new information that was so beautifully unravelled by Kamali as i kept turning the pages hungrily. I could relate to Roya so much, for falling in love so young, for the rush, the accidents, the possibility and the reality of loss, and she felt so tangible as a character. Zari stayed a favourite of course for being so forthright to the point of rudeness, and for staying there beside Roya till the very end. I only complain that her affection for and relationship to Yousuf was never elucidated upon and surprisingly never quite recognised by her elder sister who was more if not equally stupidly and deeply in love which she very amusingly described like a tree having "fallen on your head".

My favourite romance was probably that of Ali Fakhri and Badri. Even if i could not completely smell the melon musk scent of those sultry summer afternoons in the bazaar, i could definitely feel the sweet secretiveness of the awakening of young sexuality in those coveted meetings. Fakhri seemed like a delightful person and i wanted more development for him and then suddenly i am too stunned by what he did, and more specifically, what he let happen.

Mrs Aslan's bitterness aligned in my mind with those of Tara in Burnt Sugar and the demented mother in The Almost Moon, but i could not quite understand why she was so acrimonious - what loss could have made her that? Only romantic loss or poverty, albeit gravely difficult, somehow did not seem enough to cause her rudeness. But the final revelation shook me completely.

When i read till Roya's move to California, i was telling myself that the writing is not very strong because Bahman seemed so very flat as a character. Just a stereotype of the politically active "siasi" who seduced a girl and promised her high hopes only to leave her dramatically at the altar for someone his mother chose? That seemed too cliche, and to tell the truth, i was a little disappointed. Then, suddenly, Bahman went from one-dimensional to seven-dimensional with that letter of his, and i couldn't be happier.

The coincidences in the novel happened as if by diktat of destiny, and were surreal rather than improbable. But what is so real is that the stirrings of young love which are so naive but so obstinate that they they freed them at the same time as anchoring them within each other all the more firmly. Their love story, spanning decades, can easily be dismissed as too utopic but i'd rather be foolish and optimistic and believe that "we'll always be seventeen" rather than be weighed down by age.

Food forms such a crucial part of who we are. It determines our sense of belongingness as well as of alienation, our sense of community as well as of individuality, our familiar traditions as well as the experimental novelties. Roya was comforted by her Persian food when she was in "easy-peasy" America, suffering from a diasporic racio-cultural dissociation. Always a powerful conversation starter, food saves face and our soul as and when required. The same goes for poetry. Rumi's eternal verses were not just a background score or carrier of more than one billet-doux, but a direct participant in the flourishing love stories. And i can vouch for that with my own life as well...!

The brutal accounts of political demonstrations were giving me Persepolis flashbacks, and i found myself wondering what that other Marji would have thought of Roya or Zari or everyone else.

There were too many parallels in Badri and Roya's stories - the role of the jilted lover, the character of the stationery shop, the child meeting the ex-beloved, and last but not the least, the baby who did not grow up. I do not claim that i understood all of Fakhri's motives, but i could not finally bear a grudge against him, because after all, he did pay a huge price for what he did. And Badri, oh Badri, my heart went out for her. She can be seen as the wronged woman figure, the one stigmatised as the wicked witch for her evil designs, but who can argue that it was not all because of their forehead-written fate? Having read this modern political fairy tale now would help me deal much better with grief and loss, whether it be romantic or familial or camaraderial. Thank you so much, Marjan Kamali.

[conjuremanj]

The Ancestors.

After God and before all other Spirits in the African Diasporic Traditions first comes the Ancestors.

In this post I'm speaking on the different ways people honor the ansestors.

The ancestors Is the foundation of who we are, and where we come from. At one time were where we are now. They're much closer to us then other spirits, they help us and guide us. They also long for us to succeed, because if we succeed it reflects on them. Through regular prayer to them, they too are elevated, they move further towards to the light and come closer to the full understanding of their place in Heaven. Through their elevation, we can be elevated too, and reach further towards our own potential and goals.

One of the first things that to be taught to do within the Traditional African Religions, or any other, is to build a strong relationship with our ancestors. Once this relationship is built, we can ask them for assistance in almost every aspect of our lives, and they will be there to help. For example, if I want to obtain more money, then I could turn to an ancestor who was very successful financially in life. I can call on that energy to assist me.

But there is a difference between honoring and working with them (see my post on building ansestors altar)

The first step in building this relationship is to show respect and honour to our ancestors. You can care for the graves, visit then talk to them regularly. If your ancestor graves are too far away then tend to the graves of the deceased in general. The grave yard isn't scary go and talk to someone fix a pot that's on its side pick up the trash or dead flowers. Etc.

You know throughout South America on November 2nd, also known as All Souls Day is recognised as a day to honour our ancestors. Get Gede in Vodou. On those day, the cemeteries become crowded, with people singing and dancing, celebrating with their ancestors. They clean the graves and decorate them with offerings of foods and sweets, drinks of all the types that the ancestors enjoyed in life, and of course flowers and libations of water are placed and poured.

Serving Your Ancestors. Interested in practicing the Afro-Caribbean religions of the Diaspora, the very first thing that you will want to start with is to serve your ancestors. Every morning when you awaken, go out a glass of water on your altar. Light a small white candle [a 4 inch white tea light candle] and I gently sprinkle some water before the cross and pray a simple prayer. You can use any prayer that you like.

That’s it. It takes about 2 minutes in total, and gives my ancestors refreshment (the water), light (the flame) and energy (the heat from the burning wax). It strengthens them, helps them to grow stronger and elevates them further towards God. ( Now I don't know that for sure but I think they injoy it.)

In most Spiritual traditions, the ancestors are fed somewhere away from the normal household routine. Your welcome to do it where ever.

Offering: After the glass of cool fresh water on the ground, light a white candle, you can offer them the food and any drinks they might like, anything at all. The food is left overnight, and then thrown in the rubbish. Bottles of alcohol are placed on the ancestor table for the Spirits to continue to enjoy. (Now not every one can go to a cemetery I can't it's gates are closed unless I call for permission if that's the cast use your altar it's fine they won't hate you😁)

Ancestor Altar. An Ancestral Altar, is a very personal space. (Not to do magic on) This is a space where you will commune with your ancestors, and you want this place to be welcoming to your ancestral spirits. With such a personal space, there are only a couple of fundamental rules.

Everything about this table should reflect your family, your ancestors, their likes and life. As you get to know your ancestors better, you begin to hear them, you will begin to hear what your ancestors would like. You may choose to set up an ancestral table anywhere, but remember that this is a place where you will quietly interact with your ancestors.

Not my image but I wanted to share this.

HOLY MASS SAID FOR THE DEPARTED. Traditionally the Catholic Church spends the Month of November offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the Faithful Departed. Different Churches will do this differently. In many Catholic Churches, on the first of November they will put out sheets of paper with a pen. This sheet of paper has lines on it, and here you can write the names of all those in your family that have passed on. (Petition paper) For each and every Mass that is said the Priest will collect the papers, and roll them in a purple scroll and place them on the altar.

21 DAY ROSARY ELEVATION FOR THE Ancestors. Beginning on November 1st and finishing on November 21st, some Vodouist who are also Catholic like to offer a Rosary each day for their ancestors at the ancestor table.

After the recitation of the Rosary, you may wish to read to the ancestors from the Bible or simple commune. Allow the taper candle to burn all the way down. Recite the Rosary for the last time for the Novena. Let your ancestors know that you are happy to have spent the last 21 days in prayer with them. Leave them offerings overnight, then dispose of them.

When it's all said and done there are many ways to acknowledge your ansestors hope you enjoyed this post.

[humansofhds]

Amos Jackson III, MDiv ′23

“Healing matters to the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the poor, and the hungry. People can get justice, they can get policies and even resources, but it's the healing that actually helps them to move forward. If an individual gets justice but still carries trauma, are they really obtaining true justice?”

Amos is a first-year master of divinity degree candidate at Harvard Divinity School.

Politics and the Church

I was named after one of the minor prophets in the Bible as well as my father and my grandfather, who was named after his uncle. I'm the fourth generation of my name, but the third in my immediate family. I'm originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, but currently based in the Washington D.C. area. I’ve been here since I started college at Howard University, where I graduated from in 2019 as a double major in political science and African American studies.

I grew up in a non-denominational church and even went to pre-K there, but when I was about 13 we moved to a Baptist church not too far from our house, and that's where I really begun my personal faith journey. Growing up, no matter what happened on a Saturday night, we were going to church on Sunday at 7:45 am in the morning. 

Interestingly, the church was my introduction to politics. I remember that the first time I met a politician was while he was at church campaigning, and I can recall asking myself why politicians frequented the Black church during election season. Because of the influence of my upbringing, and watching how religion played a big role in social movements, I've always had an interest in the intersection of religion and politics. I wanted to know why this intersection was so important to politicians. “Why now? Why here? What purpose does it serve?” 

Seeking the answers to these questions is a big part of the reason I’m now at HDS. I still attend church every Sunday (now virtually) and lead a prayer call for my church every Sunday at 6 pm while also being devoted to the various social justice causes of my church, because I believe that faith requires me to go out of the four walls of the church building and be involved in the community.

Articulating the Value of HBCUs

I initially did not have the desire to attend an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) before I committed to Howard University. It wasn't until I got there that I understood the intellectual and cultural richness of the HBCU experience. The biggest benefit of all was getting my education from an African diasporic lens of learning. In comparison to other schools that might have been providing a Eurocentric or westernized form of education, I was learning about psychology, political science, and other spheres in a way that addressed them not just generally, but also their specific interactions with and effects on Black people.

Having the opportunity to be in a space where I felt comfortable and could unapologetically be myself was such a blessing. I also had the honor of being student body president and becoming an ambassador for my HBCU. HBCUs make up only 3 percent of higher education but produce 50 percent of Black lawyers and doctors. Some of the most exceptional Black leaders in this country—such as Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, Ella Baker, John Lewis, Kamala Harris and so many others—were shaped and highly influenced by their HBCU education, and being able to stand on their shoulders as an HBCU alum is a high honor.

Working on a Historic National Campaign

2018 was a very important year for me. I met the then Senator Kamala Harris at an event in D.C., and I shared with her about the disappointment I had felt the night when the 2016 election results were released. I told her how I had believed my opportunities were crushed in D.C., but the silver lining in it all had been that fact that she was elected that very same night to the United States Senate. And there I was, a year-and-a-half later, asking if I could work for her. She offered me the opportunity, and that summer I started interning in her office. Just days after graduation, I was working as a national political coordinator for her presidential campaign in New Hampshire and Nevada. Fast forward to this past September, when I joined the Biden-Harris campaign as Senator Harris’s deputy political director. These opportunities have been endless, and I attribute this to my HBCU education providing me a pathway to work for an alumna of my institution. I do, in a way, see politics as a ministry, and I am grateful that I can now answer the questions I had as a child about why religion was significant for politics. I am seeing firsthand the extent to which society is driven by their social, religious, and moral views, and I'm just saying, that really matters. 

The Road That Led to HDS

While in college I had also done an internship with the Center for Responsible Lending, which had a program called the Faith & Credit Roundtable. Part of the work we did there was train clergy to go to Capitol Hill and advocate for their parishioners and congregations regarding economic issues like payday lending, predatory lending, fair housing, and student loan debt, particularly in the Black community which, compared to other communities, has a very high debt-to-wealth ratio. Seeing the impact of that work awakened my aspirations, and I said to myself, “I can do this. I want to do this.” Incidentally, one of the directors of that program had received her master of divinity degree at Duke Divinity. She was the one that advised me to think about the possibility of attending divinity school. I, however, was under the impression that divinity school was only for those who wanted to preach or become a pastor, so I was really blind to all the opportunities that divinity school could bring. I did however end up applying to a few divinity schools, and ultimately Harvard. What solidified the decision for me was knowing that HDS provided the opportunity to take classes in all the different schools. So, if I wanted to see how religion affected public policy, I would have the Kennedy School. If I wanted to see how it affected business, I would have the Business School. If I wanted to see how it affected law and social justice, I would have the Law School. Therefore, making the choice to be in an institution that would enrich me in all of these capacities was a no-brainer.

Smelling the Roses

Something I’ve been reflecting on lately is that one of the biggest things we can do as students of ministry is to understand how healing works, and that it takes a communal effort to heal. Healing matters to the oppressed, the disenfranchised, the poor and the hungry. People can get justice, they can get policies and even resources, but it's the healing that actually helps them to move forward. If an individual gets justice, but still carries trauma, are they really obtaining true justice? People always ask me if I have plans to run for office, but I don't know about all that. I just love doing the work. If it provides an opportunity, sure; but that's not a goal of mine. I just want to pursue God's will for my life, and whatever that brings, I will take. I’m at the school I’ve always wanted to go to, doing the work that I always dreamed of doing, meeting the people I’ve always wanted to meet. So, I'm just trying to enjoy the moment right now, and be grateful and settled in the blessings that God has put in my life.

Interview by Suzannah Omonuk; photos courtesy of Amos Jackson III

[midrashic]

 8 | MOST OVERRATED BOOK | LAST WORDS FROM MONTMARTRE | QIU MIAOJIN TRANS. ARI LARISSA HEINRICH

there are actually a lot of books i think are overrated, and other strong contenders for this title were the poet x, jane eyre, and the glass town game, all disappointments in recent years, but for “the biggest gap between expectation and reality,” it’s gotta be qiu, who i decided to do my final postcolonial woman writers project on back when all i knew about her was that she was a cult-classic queer chinese-language novelist.

and i had regrets! every now and then i pick up another chinese novel in translation in the hopes that this time i will enjoy it but i never do. i just don’t vibe with chinese literature. (i can say this because i’m diasporic chinese, all y’all whites have gotta just grit your teeth and power through.) the narrative shape of chinese novels is very different from english novels, chinese sentence structure always gets translated in ways that feel very clunky to me personally, and i find i can neither enjoy it on an aesthetic or a structural level. (i should have known when a blurb compared it to gertrude stein’s works.)

and so all of these things were at play, along with an emotional distance qiu’s narrative stand-in keeps from her readers, a sense of alienation which is not unusual in queer literature in the west either, but again is something i just don’t vibe with. there were elements i did find really interesting, like the way the narrator’s queer existence was so profoundly shaped by the queer agitators of the west who reveled in their non-normativity and aesthetic experimentation throughout the 80s. it’s a world so different from the only lgbt experience i’ve ever known, which is deeply invested in assimilation, the logic of rights, & representation. and as an artifact of the author’s life--as, like the summary says, her suicide note--i respect & honor it. but as a novel, i hated it so much that i switched to a creative project in which qiu became a footnote.

When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note.

The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’sConfessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s Dictée, to name but a few,Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.

[ april in books ]

[floristwhitaker]

The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto

by Martine Syms

The undersigned, being alternately pissed off and bored, need a means of speculation and asserting a different set of values with which to re-imagine the future. In looking for a new framework for black diasporic artistic production, we are temporarily united in the following actions.

***The Mundane Afrofuturists recognize that:***

We did not originate in the cosmos.

The connection between Middle Passage and space travel is tenuous at best.

Out of five hundred thirty-four space travelers, fourteen have been black. An all-black crew is unlikely.

Magic interstellar travel and/or the wondrous communication grid can lead to an illusion of outer space and cyberspace as egalitarian.

This dream of utopia can encourage us to forget that outer space will not save us from injustice and that cyberspace was prefigured upon a "master/slave" relationship.

While we are often Othered, we are not aliens.

Though our ancestors were mutilated, we are not mutants.

Post-black is a misnomer.

Post-colonialism is too.

The most likely future is one in which we only have ourselves and this planet.

***The Mundane Afrofuturists rejoice in:***

Piling up unexamined and hackneyed tropes, and setting them alight.

Gazing upon their bonfire of the Stupidities, which includes, but is not exclusively limited to:

Jive-talking aliens;

Jive-talking mutants;

Magical negroes;

Enormous self-control in light of great suffering;

Great suffering as our natural state of existence;

Inexplicable skill in the martial arts;

Reference to Wu Tang;

Reference to Sun Ra;

Reference to Parliament Funkadelic and/or George Clinton;

Reference to Janelle Monáe;

Obvious, heavy-handed allusions to double-consciousness;

Desexualized protagonists;

White slavery;

Egyptian mythology and iconography;

The inner city;

Metallic colors;

Sassiness;

Platform shoes;

Continue at will…

***We also recognize:***

The harmless fun that these and all the other Stupidities have brought to millions of people.

The harmless fun that burning the Stupidities will bring to millions of people.

The imaginative challenge that awaits any Mundane Afrofuturist author who accepts that this is it: Earth is all we have. What will we do with it?

The chastening but hopefully enlivening effect of imagining a world without fantasy bolt-holes: no portals to the Egyptian kingdoms, no deep dives to Drexciya, no flying Africans to whisk us off to the Promised Land.

The possibilities of a new focus on black humanity: our science, technology, culture, politics, religions, individuality, needs, dreams, hopes, and failings.

The surge of bedazzlement and wonder that awaits us as we contemplate our own cosmology of blackness and our possible futures.

The relief of recognizing our authority. We will root our narratives in a critique of normative, white validation. Since "fact" and "science" have been used throughout history to serve white supremacy, we will focus on an emotionally true, vernacular reality.

The understanding that our "twoness" is inherently contemporary, even futuristic. DuBois asks how it feels to be a problem. Ol’ Dirty Bastard says "If I got a problem, a problem's got a problem 'til it’s gone."

An awakening sense of the awesome power of the black imagination: to protect, to create, to destroy, to propel ourselves towards what poet Elizabeth Alexander describes as "a metaphysical space beyond the black public everyday toward power and wild imagination."

The opportunity to make sense of the nonsense that regularly—and sometimes violently—accents black life.

The electric feeling that Mundane Afrofuturism is the ultimate laboratory for worldbuilding outside of imperialist, capitalist, white patriarchy.

The sense that the rituals and inconsistencies of daily life are compelling, dynamic, and utterly strange.

Mundane Afrofuturism opens a number of themes and flavors to intertextuality, double entendre, politics, incongruity, polyphony, and collective first-person—techniques that we have used for years to make meaning.

***The Mundane Afrofuturists promise:***

To produce a collection of Mundane Afrofuturist literature that follows these rules:

No interstellar travel—travel is limited to within the solar system and is difficult, time consuming, and expensive.

No inexplicable end to racism—dismantling white supremacy would be complex, violent, and have global impact.

No aliens unless the connection is distant, difficult, tenuous, and expensive—and they have no interstellar travel either.

No internment camps for blacks, aliens, or black aliens.

No Martians, Venusians, etc.

No forgetting about political, racial, social, economic, and geographic struggles.

No alternative universes.

No revisionist history.

No magic or supernatural elements.

No Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, or Bucks.

No time travel or teleportation.

No Mammies, Jezebels, or Sapphires.

Not to let Mundane Afrofuturism cramp their style, as if it could.

To burn this manifesto as soon as it gets boring.

— Martine Syms & whomever will join me in the future of black imagination.