A lot was at stake. I don’t remember the outcome but the person in me who had been to Ghana knew that it should never not be discussed,
that it should not be considered the dark unknown foreign continent ever again.
I’m sure my identity would have changed even more if I had stayed in Ghana.
I got involved with a young African man and saw a tiny bit of Africa through his eyes.
To be sure there’s a mask he wore, one that’s worn for Americans/Black Americans
so that the ways and secrets of their culture are hidden, but through traveling with him
and experiencing some things through his eyes, Africa got into my bones
like the souls of all those slaves jailed and buried at Cape Coast and Elmina Castle.
Maybe it was like in a movie where ghosts have a message for the living.
They spoke to me and I carried their message forward.
This new awareness I had of Africa made its way into my lesson plans and my stories.
Ten years ago it was still uncommon in academia outside of African Studies to acknowledge Africa but as a Professor I brought it up in many lessons whether I was teaching Communications, Writing, or Solo Performance.
I think in small ways I was able to enact change.
Like the Black nurse from Nigeria who had no interest in Nigeria.
I ran into her years later and she said, “Because of you I took my daughters home to Nigeria. I learned the importance of knowing where I come from.”
She might have been part of the team of Black nurses I took to the African burial ground in downtown Manhattan/steps from the 9/11 Museum.
One woman immediately got the spirit and started to cry-laugh,
another wrote of how the bones of African slaves spoke to her.
In another class a young Black woman from Sierra Leone talked about how
her family fled the Civil War and her mother saw a neighbor’s decapitated head
posted on a fence by soldiers as a warning sign.
In another scenario two boys in a city school who were both from Africa
bonded together and created a presentation on Africa.
They were proud and I knew it was because I gave them safe space.
There was one mixed-race young man in another class whose family fled Uganda.
He came out as gay in my class and said, “In my country I could be killed for who I am.”
Even though he was often absent and didn’t receive a good grade
He knew I was a writer and when leaving said, “Please publish your stories, Miss.”
Africa changed my creative work and poems.
I can never not think of Cape Coast
I can never not stop wanting to go
to visit
to see
to remember
to bathe at Cape Coast
or ride fishing boats at Elmina
or wander along beaches of Benin
Or go to South Africa and stare at the beauty of Table Mountain
and its twelve apostles and the role the landscape played in
inspiring prisoners on Robben Island to end apartheid
All of this to say, I am by no means an expert but last month
I volunteered at a gallery where thousands of visual artists donate
their work to a fair once a year.
Every year at the very end I notice the works and images of Black people remain.
It’s not conscious but all the work by white artists is coveted and purchased.
This year a giant sculpture of a brown vagina with hair remained.
I immediately purchased it, and loved it.
I continued looking around and I noticed in a corner a tiny red, black, and green sculpture of the African continent.
I picked it up and said to myself, “I must have this piece.”
“It would be wrong to leave it here.”
I got home and opened the box and there was a note from a proud African artist living in Brooklyn.
She said to the unknown purchaser, “Africa is rising.”
I imagine somewhere in this story, in my journeys, is a metaphor for me.
I, too, like Africa, am rising.
BORN FREES
I used to always write about Assotto Saint
Slamming his hand down on the pulpit at Donald Woods’s funeral
when it was common to hide the cause of death of
young men who’d died from AIDS
if they were buried at all and weren’t abandoned
Someone told me about a thin boy
thin with fear and death
played piano for the choir
no one touched him
or talked about it
I know in my mother’s family
her mother’s sister said a parasite
had killed her son when he died suddenly
But I remember once him coming out of a gay bar in Boston
all the white boys said, “How do you know her?”
I don’t know if he or I said cousin
I’m his cousin
He made me promise not to tell anyone in the family
I’d seen him there
So when they said parasite I knew something didn’t ring true
His mother, a seemingly healthy woman, died shortly after that
but I always felt their deaths were related
His mother either from the lies or repression
or a broken heart
having lost her young son
And I know everyone blames Jussie Smollett for his lies and staged attack
but it makes me think there was something very toxic going on
that he didn’t feel he could talk to someone
Either that he was covering up
an addiction or a hookup.
Watching Assotto stand up at Donald’s funeral and tell the truth
goes down in history as one of the bravest moments I’d ever witnessed
Either that or Audre Lorde spreading open the arms of her dashiki
the bravest woman we’d all witnessed
telling a crowded room of followers,
“I began on this journey as a coward.”
That or seeing a friend at the height of the AIDS era
at a bar his face covered in purple welts
refusing to hide
going out in public
That or Donald Woods being feeble
barely able to walk
accepting an award as a director of AIDS films
Or an ex-lover on a beach taking off her top
and refusing to hide her mastectomy scar
Or when Danitra Vance performed at The Public Theater
and danced naked revealing her mastectomy scars
and Audre refusing to wear a prosthesis
Or when Zakes Mokae in Master Harold and the Boys in the first Broadway play
that a cousin took me to
said to his white master, “Have you ever seen a Black
