Let’s weave a story, beginning with a character. Let’s call her Joy.
It’s 1999, mid-summer in the bowels of the American south just a few miles from the Mississippi River. The Louisiana sun beats onto the backs of patients scrambling into Women’s hospital, a newly built facility meant to replace the notorious Earl K. Long hospital in East Baton Rouge. The development was long overdue as outdated equipment and overworked nurses diminished its desirability, and many people traveled elsewhere to deliver their babies. Many celebrated the urban development, acclaiming its facilities and doctors, but others criticized that its inaccessible location made its new walls a bit too high. Nonetheless, all made their way to their only option in the small town. Amongst these patients were Osinachi and Kenneth, established residents of the town hailing from Imo State, Nigeria, nearly bursting with excitement for the birth of their daughter. She isn’t their first, but she certainly was their last.
“So the last shall be first, and the first last.”
Matthew 20:16 KJV
No matter how old you get in a Black household, if you are the last born you’ll always be the baby. Joy learned that firsthand growing up in a full house. She was closest to her sisters but loved to rough house with her brothers. Though she was small, she was determined to be mighty. Her parents were careful, fearful even, of the world around them so the walls of her home surmounted any might she felt she had. Physically, she had no way to see the world but as expected of a formidable opponent, that didn’t stop her. She found solace in books, mostly fiction, that carried her to new worlds. Literature became her vehicle, faith became her anchor, and eventually words created footpaths to places only she could travel. Research invited her to many tables and she ingested knowledge like a glutton. And so she grew, well-fed, well-cared for, and well-loved.
As the daughter of immigrants in America, Joy knew education was a priority so she treated it as such. She obtained her first degree then her second, both focused in the vehicle that drove her to madness. She quickly learned that the pursuit of knowledge would open her eyes to more than just metaphorical footpaths and philosophical ideas, but also to discrimination, disenfranchisement, and oppression against all people, but especially her own people.
Who are her people exactly? I’m pleased you asked. Joy identifies as a Nigerian American, which is different from an African American, which is different from an AfroLatino, which is different from a Black Brit, right? Precisely. While all of these denominations of Blackness exist, like Joy, we all identify with a subcategory of such and we understand that identity is integral to the landscape of humanity. We all belong somewhere, but it seemed as though Black people did not belong anywhere. Brought to America on slave ships against their will, African Americans were displaced and now mockingly jeered to “return to where they came from.” Under the same fate almost one hundred years prior, people of the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria were transported to (then, Hispaniola) Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and now hated on the land they built brick by brick. Natives of African countries experienced the violences of colonialism, survived pillaging of their homes and lands, the destruction of their arts and libraries, and the demonization of their beliefs. They ventured to countries abroad seeking refuge, settled there, and made do. The seeds sown into those lands are her people.
Though this discovery was heavy, it illuminated a fire within Joy. Small, but mighty, she knew there was work to be done. How this work would be done was far beyond her as the damage to the Black community was irreparable. Where should I start? What should I do? What would actually make an impact? she pondered ceaselessly. Empty promise followed meaningless resolution and the arts were making a political exit. With a newly embedded focus on STEM, Joy didn’t understand how to change the world without becoming a scientist or doctor, two careers beyond the realm of her scope as she did not fancy the sciences. It’d been years since she truly wrote for pleasure since school provided longer reading lists than she had the capacity for, but the flame had not gone out. Newly laid off from a draining position in education, she now had time to revive what’d almost died.
She began to write.
“I am a product of every other black woman before me who has done or said anything worthwhile. Recognizing that I am part of history is what allows me to soar.”
Oprah Winfrey
And wrote she did. She wrote a story in a space–a safe space–where she, and her people could amplify their silenced voices. They could shout and dance and share and love and feel, and no one would police them. She created a time loop in which discrimination and displacement threatened no one’s identities. The space existed between boundaries of humanity, much like its desired patrons. All were welcomed, allies alike, and she could finally breathe again. She called this liminal space The Braid Blog.
The Braid Blog houses the experiences of those erased as a live archive of culture, literature, art, language, and stories belonging to those who chose to live and not die. These facets create a history of Africa–its descendants the curators, because we may have been lost but we did not forget. And so we begin with the first strand of a long braid of humankind’s story because contrary to colonialistic belief, we are human.
Thank you for reading.
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