Afternoon, Autumn
I watch the corners of your mouth curl up, as you tilt your face towards the sun and close your eyes. It’s the perfect October afternoon, the kind where the air is crisp, the sky is a nearly cloudless blue, and the sun is still …
Tag: blog
A Journal Entry | October 15, 2022 |Together
We are all going through something. Whether it’s something that looms across the entirety of our day, or perhaps it’s a single thought that only occupies a few fleeting moments of our time, in any case, I’ve come to realize that we are all going through something. We are all thinking, processing, internalizing, pushing aside, accepting or letting go of something, and it’s truly unfortunate that so many of us go at it alone.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – Book Review
In 2020, I identified a serious gap in my understanding of Black history. In a small, but much-needed attempt to fill that gap, I decided to begin my learnings with this highly recommended story. In support of Black History Month, I thought I’d share.
Homegoing is a stunning illustration of a multigenerational story that follows the descendants of two Ghanaian half-sisters, Effia and Esi across six generations. Through one ancestral line, we see the direct consequence of the British slave trade and the centuries of warfare ignited between the Asante and Fante nations, as well their struggles to stay on the surviving side of British colonization. Through the second ancestral line, we see the aftermath of the British slave trade and the atrocities it led to in America. We see how slavery forever interrupted, altered, and stole from the lives of African Americans, whilst perpetuating a culture of deep-seated racism for centuries to come. The unfolding of both stories depicts two sides of the same coin, demonstrating how British colonization and the concept of white supremacy, forever scarred the people of what is now Ghana, both inland and across the sea. Gyasi did an exceptional job of weaving together each story and each chapter, creating a thorough and vivid depiction of the tragedies that black people and their kin have had to endure. Homegoing is a story that provides a very real perspective of the slave trade as well as the trap of a prison system that followed even after its abolition. It details the forces that centuries of colonialism have had on African people and the lasting effects it continues to have on their descendants. Homegoing is an absolute must-read. It is a story that will likely fill you to the brim in frustration, and heartache, but at the very least it will flood you with a sense of empathy and understanding that every one of us should carry at a bare minimum. In addition to all of this, it evoked in me the curiosity to want to learn more about the events that shaped black history, and for that alone, I believe this story did what it intended to do. 10/10.
A Journal Entry | October 18, 2019 | Chronicles of the Heart
Yesterday I read a story about a girl and about her love. Love for a boy who she fell for much too quickly, and love for a new beginning of which brought her more excitement than she’d felt in years. It was a new adventure, a promise of a better future, a story of love much like the others where the doe-eyed main character dives in head-first, believing that this was it, that this was the real deal.