THE LAST BREATH before dawn. A moment of undefined edges slipping between dark and light, when it seems one might step through time and space merged. From the crest of Virginia’s Blue Ridge I look over what, at the close of night, appears to be a...
Thank you, Justin Desmangles. I didn’t expect this. To be in the company of writers of such beautiful and powerful words is a gift; to be chosen and celebrated by the founders and board members of the Before Columbus Foundation on its 40th anniversary is a...
The openness and maturity of First Lady Michelle Obama's speech last week at the DNC National Convention stand in stark contrast to ignorant dismissive responses by certain pundits. But the truth remains. The White House, United States Capitol, and the nation's capital as Washington, District...
Seven years old on a sun-bright June day, she stands by the curio shop’s postcard rack. In their move across the country, her family has visited many national parks — Sequoia, Kings Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon — and at every stop, she runs first...
Following the ceremony welcoming the Hōkūleʻa and its crew from Hawai'i to Piscataway tribal homeland, I thought of ironies of history. The event took place on Piscataway tribal homeland in Piscataway Park. There the National Park Service works in partnership with the Accokeek Foundation, which...
Perhaps you’ve seen the image, too? It’s a watercolor of a man—a white man—standing on a tree stump with a long stick, smoking, one leg crossed over the other, as he watches two women of African ancestry wield hoes on land that they are clearing...
Yesterday I attended a truly wonderful and thought-provoking book launch and panel at UMass re: Manisha Sinha's new THE SLAVE'S CAUSE: A HISTORY OF ABOLITION. Her encyclopedic volume presents the African American role in defining and shaping the abolition movement(s) in this land from the...
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture held the first Black Life Matters Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on February 7th, with volunteers contributing to articles on Wikipedia for the national Black WikiHistory Month outreach campaign. At a dear friend's suggestion they included my great grandfather, Edward Augustine...
This is a website of traces and tracing, of finding voice. Welcome. Edges and hybridity shape my identity as an African American woman of mixed ancestry. Tracing memory threads my work and life: unearthing what is buried, re-membering—piecing together—what is fragmented, shattered, eroded. For me this...