I’m elated to finally share the beautiful cover for my upcoming short story collection, Ajébutter Women (ah-jay-butter).

Ajébutter Women is the winner of the W.S. Porter Prize, and will be published in the U.S. by Regal House Publishing and in Africa by Paperworth Books.

For those who don’t know, ajébutter is a Yoruba term that means “one who can afford to eat butter”—referring often to someone raised with comfort or privilege.

Sometimes “culture” is not untouched by those structures and the power imbalances they create. They shape our families, our ideas of success and respectability, who gets to belong, who is considered the “right” one, and what we believe we owe one another. And from there, things can become complicated. Contradictory. Sometimes heartbreaking. Often, heartbreaking.

So much of Ajébutter Women is about this conflict: the distance between who we were taught to be, who we have become, and who we imagine ourselves to be.

And, ultimately, I wonder, in light of all this, what will we choose to continue?

The stories are culturally specific, but the questions aren’t only African questions. If you care about power, inheritance, belonging, and how the systems we live within shape our intimate lives, you are already implicated in these questions too.

I’m genuinely in love with how this cover turned out, and it feels a little surreal to see a book I’ve carried for so long finally taking physical shape.

Ajébutter Women is now available for preorder, and as I prepare for publication next April—the official release date is April 27, 2027—I’m beginning to plan readings, conversations, classroom visits, and other events around the book.

If you’re an educator, librarian, bookseller, organizer, or part of a community that might be interested in hosting me—or teaching Ajébutter Women as part of your curriculum—I’d love to hear from you. And please share the book with friends, family, students, book clubs, or anyone who might see something of themselves in these stories.

The book cover is finally out in the world. And the book is coming.

Preorder Ajébutter Women here.

I was on the phone with my cousin, and we were speaking about the death of her sister, who had been the eldest daughter in the family. What we were sure of was that, by the standards set for her as the eldest, she wasn’t supposed to die. A death that you can’t account for without airing your dirty laundry is not part of the African dream. No matter where the African daughter finds herself, there’s a sense of duty bestowed upon such daughters to protect the family name and to find a way to make that which is messy—and perhaps even filthy—clean.

I’m speaking as an African daughter born to African immigrants in America whose parents did their best to preserve their ways of knowing in a new context that was often antagonistic and cruel; so that pestering need, to come up clean, was a part of the deal. What my cousin and I knew from such an intense upbringing is that The Good African Daughter is supposed to live. She is an archetype that works better alive than dead, especially for our parents who put so much hope and prayers on her. We know that between our parents and us there is love, but in the relationship, there is often tension too, because The Good African Daughter’s life is seen as proof that she was brought up well and comes from a good home. Her progress is a mark on the family’s report card that tracks success and gives parents their bragging rights. And our parents, specifically our mothers, brag boldly about the Good African Daughter. Most of the time, this excess is forgiven, as it is known that there is love in this—maybe, hopefully—but it’s also known that somehow this kind of boasting is tracking something, a reading out of an excellent performance review of sorts. The stakes only get higher, and if The Good African Daughter knows anything, she knows she must perform and reach the goals that have been outlined for her to meet.

Someone has now died.

A first daughter. In her 30s. So much life that was ahead of her now gone. My cousin laments over her dead sister, saying that the reason for her passing will not be spoken about at the funeral. Don’t you know it goes against the demand that a first daughter, an African daughter, a good African daughter, survives and thrives, so her success can go global, and so that something in the lineage, the accrual of generational wealth and prestige, can be secured and passed on.

What I remember of my cousin’s eldest sister, this person whom I cannot name because it hurts too much to name her, was that she was boisterous, burdened, and I think, by the age of 12, already burnt out from all the expectation. She craved tenderness, a softening that would allow her to turn to mush. She never did get this in full, I think. Is it a crime that she died painfully ordinary, with ordinary hopes that had nothing to do with what was demanded of her? You should know this about her, that she was A Good African Daughter Gone Bad, so typical and unassuming in nature that it chafed against the Great Book of Expectations thrust onto her lap. She wanted to have everything most everyone wants: love, understanding, some money for stability, some peace for sanity, a good time for the joy of it, and that elusive thing that I think most Good African Daughters secretly want: to be left alone to one’s devices.

If you had known her, you would have known that she was indeed smart, resourceful, and yes, gorgeous. And…she was delightfully average, not really trying to excel at anything, but definitely trying to find her way to heal something, and to me, this was the most brilliant quality about her. But I’m sure to some it was the most confounding; I’m sure someone must have told her, you are wasting your talent, and hearing this likely pricked her heart.

Would you, by the standards set for The Good African Daughter, say my cousin’s sister’s death was a rebellion or failure?

***

What would I have told my cousin’s sister, this woman who was so incredibly alive at one point and then in a flash, gone, and we, the living, left in mourning? I think, if given the chance, I’d say to her what I should have said to myself years ago. I’d say what I’d speak now to all Good African Daughters Gone Bad. I’d say, this burden you have of failing, of disappointing everyone and everything that has ever professed to care for you, while also having to prove all those forces that sought to diminish you wrong, does not only belong to you. It belongs to everyone in some way, on some level, though it’s not all the same, and though some aren’t carrying enough of the load, and though it’s a huge probability that you’ve been carrying too much of it, what you need to know is that it has been passed down, the beauty, the intellect, the creativity, the resolve, and, the failure. It’s a wildly problematic and beautiful inheritance.

But to navigate all of this, please keep in mind that whoever told you that being good meant sacrifice either sacrificed themselves or was the beneficiary of such sweat. Whoever told you to endure either endured themselves or benefited from someone’s endurance. Whoever told you that the accumulation of things—titles, children, husbands, property, proximity—matters, told you this because knowing they had this was what got them through their most harrowing days, or they were the ones lording these constellation prizes over you to quell you, so you’d never ask, “Is this sustainable?” and you’d never think, “Is this right?”

You are terrified of failing, but what I think you are more terrified of considering is that something vital—something that needs to be named and cast out—has been failing you, A Good African Daughter Gone Bad.

Read excerpt here

I’m obsessed with the conditions that bring the ajebutter and the coconut into being. More than that, I am curious about how we, as a group, navigate the material conditions we inherit, along with the nervous conditions it creates (shout-out to Tsitsi Dangarembga and Frantz Fanon whose writing kicked off this series. You can read that article here). That’s why reading the memoir A Gloomy Girl Variety Show (Feminist Press, 2025) by Nigerian-American writer Freda Epum fascinates me. I’m reading it with the analysis that usually, the children of Black immigrants are inheriting a class position that gives us closer proximity to conventional notions of success.

Because we were born or raised in the West, it’s often believed that we are closer to opportunity and better off than those back home. Our yardstick for success is usually measured against what is whiter, lighter, English-speaking (or Europeanized), able-bodied, capitalistic in sensibility, and monied; all this is considered desirable, and we work to get closer to it, knowingly or unknowingly. One major conundrum that emerges from this quest of upward mobility for the ajebutter is the question: what do we do with the access we have been given? And for those of us born and raised in the US, another question that arises as we navigate is: what does it mean to live in America, and to see the country for what it is? Here are some of the nervous conditions I think many of us have inherited that are also major themes throughout Epum’s work.

Nervous Condition 1: Class Preoccupation and a Hyper-focus on Upward Mobility

Here’s a detour I’ll take to illuminate my point on the matter of our inherited class preoccupations. When I was living in Abuja in 2022, the concept of going japa (Google it if you don’t know) was shifting as I spoke with people about their aspirations to leave Nigeria in the face of dwindling economic opportunities. It was after the murder of George Floyd. The world witnessing the murder of an unarmed Black man had ushered in—if anything—a global racial reckoning that allowed people to talk about racism directly and unapologetically. This reckoning wasn’t only about white and other non-Black people having an epic come-to-Jesus moment about anti-Blackness—how it showed up in systems and in people—it was also a reckoning that gave Black people in other parts of the world permission to openly acknowledge that in the West, a Black person, no matter her station, would have to reckon with being identified as a permanent second class citizen. People were questioning what type of structure they would be stepping into if they decided to leave their homeland. Was it worth the trouble?

In one conversation, a man who had never been to the US said, “If I were there, I just wouldn’t talk about racism; I think Black Americans are too focused on it, I would just mind my business and get ahead.” I had heard this idea before, the thought that if one pretends racism doesn’t exist, or isn’t that bad, then all will be fine. But in my experience, when problems are known but not addressed, they only get bigger. Those 8 minutes and forty-six seconds the world witnessed of George Floyd having the life drained from him were so abhorrent that it was impossible to turn away. It forced us to take stock of everything and wake up to our humanity, or lack of it.

The man I was speaking to was convinced that ignoring the issue was the only way to survive, but in my view, he had already given himself away in his assertion. He knew there was a problem, but was choosing to ignore it, which meant that somehow, he was acknowledging that he would be spending a considerable amount of energy stomping down those icky feelings one feels when met with injustice or outright hatred. (Those feelings, I’d argue, are there to remind us that we are human).

But he truly believed that if he didn’t make race a big issue, then it wouldn’t be one. I didn’t bother telling him about all the health issues that come with trying to ignore something as pervasive as racism in the US. I was too tired to explain. But I saw in our conversation that it wasn’t about whether gross inequity existed—that he could see—it was more about his class aspirations: to what extent can I ignore everything and get my material needs met? So then, by his logic, to assimilate, the Black immigrant or child of Black immigrants would have to create distance between an unacceptable version of Blackness in favor of a more acceptable version of Black representation. To appease the hierarchy he would (hypothetically) step into, he would not talk about racial injustice, or even engage with how class is deeply racialized, particularly in a nation like the US. It was about deference to power. He would receive less punishment for being alive while Black and, in return, hopefully some status from the power holders for making such concessions.

Sigh.

I find the whole performance of civility exhausting, but I won’t deny that I don’t hear the lamentations of those who say: Well, how do you suggest one eats in this world? I will say that this performance is one that I have seen many act out to sit slightly above the bottom rung on the totem pole. It comes with its psychological and emotional costs. But more importantly, it’s telling. You can often tell the quality of a person by what they do when they have proximity, authority, and resources.

Nervous Condition 2: Navigating While Black in America

In her memoir, Epum shows that she belongs to a long tradition of Black immigrants (and their offspring) who could not ignore the structural inequalities many people face—all while navigating racism, classism, ableism, and failing healthcare systems as a disabled Black woman in America. When she speaks of Sandra Bland’s life, and how the death of this African-American woman impacts her, this is an acknowledgment of a shared connection that she is not willing to turn away from. She can’t help but be haunted by how horribly African-Americans, specifically African-American women, are treated. Here are people whose intellect and hands built a country where so many are the beneficiaries of this insight and struggle, and yet, this country cannot bear to show an inch of humanity to those it has exploited. It’s so haunting that it hurts Epum, and it’s palpable in her writing. Epum sees herself as part of a collective who constantly must prove their humanity to an inhumane state apparatus. There is a recognition throughout Epum’s memoir of knowing that she belongs to a rich legacy of creativity and intelligence, and yet there is also an undeniable reality to the pressure she faces that is present. In a world antagonistic to Blackness, there is an incredible grief that can come with being alive. It’s not a mourning of who you are; rather, it’s a mourning of what you are constantly put through. And Epum refuses to turn away from this yearning, the yearning to live a dignified life; in fact, I’d say she spends a lot of the memoir in a kind of grief over this.

Nervous Condition 3: Navigating Being High-Achieving and High-Functioning At all Costs

When many of us think of Nigeria, a prominent belief that emerges is that Nigerians, when given the opportunity, will excel, even while facing harrowing conditions. We know the stories of people who have succeeded against all odds; they become mythologies in our families and lineages, and over time, these narratives become the primary interpretive framework for our collective hopes and aspirations. It’s like we are hearing of our own superheroes, extraordinary people who defied all odds. The idea that if one uses their gumption to lift themselves out of poverty and further into the upper echelons of society, then everyone should be able to do it, is pervasive. Nigerians are routinely described as one of the most highly educated immigrant groups in the US. The story is familiar: Nigerians as high-achieving doctors, engineers, political leaders, artists, and activists—participants in a long intellectual and cultural lineage that can make achievement itself feel inherited.

​What often goes unacknowledged is how this narrative of excellence hardens into expectation. It leaves little room for fatigue, ambiguity, illness, or failure—conditions that are more often interpreted as personal weaknesses than as structural breakdowns. An unsettling question emerges: if excellence is always demanded, what do we do when the outcome falls short of the dream? Many children of immigrant lineages grow up inside a prescribed script of success. When we deviate by not arriving as expected—there is often a subtle casting out, sometimes disguised as pity, most times seen as a wasted opportunity.

​Epum refuses that script. She writes from the position of a US-born, first-generation Nigerian American woman—full-figured, living with mental health challenges, precarious economic options, and navigating two cultures that both possess limited vocabularies for how to talk about the complexity of “not making it” or “almost making it.”

Rather than rehearsing familiar markers—titles, recognition, financial stability—Epum turns inward, tracing the emotional costs of living as a Black Nigerian woman navigating systems that treat excellence as the price of belonging. In doing so, she gives language to what success narratives routinely erase: exhaustion, disillusionment, and messiness. In this way, her memoir goes against what a model daughter of Nigerian immigrants is supposed to look like and the acceptable Black immigrant success narrative.

Nervous Condition 4: A Crisis of Mental Health

Epum moves between late-stage capitalism and mental health institutions; between the psychic toll of racial violence in the aftermath of Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin, and the influence of pop culture and reality television in shaping our collective fantasies of arrival. Beneath this range is a persistent anxiety: the fear of labor without arrival, of effort without reward. This fear is not hers alone. It is widely shared, even if it rarely appears in the stories we tell about ourselves.

​I would say a big conundrum for us ajébutters is the fear of broadcasting a message to folks in Nigeria that things didn’t turn out the way we hoped. It’s hard to talk about a relative’s mental health crisis, or tell someone the real reason a sister died unexpectedly. How do you explain that what did them in was the sheer pressure? Considering what people deal with in the Global South, I’ve seen many immigrants abroad break their backs to send remittances home, because admitting that one is in trouble in a country like the US brings shame. It’s tricky. By being abroad and having certain access, I am definitely implicated in how inequity reproduces, and I won’t deny that this implication can come with profound ignorance. However, what many of us were told growing up was: study those books because that is what will lift you out of economic precarity.

But what of those whose lives didn’t just “take off” after college, or are still at a standstill by conventional metrics of success? It can be deeply embarrassing to talk about, especially when structural inequities prevent you from fitting neatly into the system’s logic. I also see the tension between those of us raised abroad and those living in Nigeria. There is a monumental economic strain on many people across the African continent; I understand why people look at us and ask what we are whining about. Yet, I can’t help but think of the children of Black immigrants who are living paycheck to paycheck. I can name those who had nervous breakdowns, who could never climb the corporate ladder, who felt a severe loss of identity they could never reconcile, or who are no longer here with us because of what my friends call the “Nigerian immigrant factor”—a tragic mirror to the everyday infrastructural challenges that folks in Nigeria call the “Nigerian factor.” The story of the American Dream is much more nuanced; there is a lot more failure than you think, you just haven’t heard about it.

​Nervous Condition 5: Absence and Isolation as Inheritance

​Epum, like other first—and second—generation writers, describes a relationship with her parents’ homeland, Nigeria, of isolation and alienation. Like everyone else in America who is taught so little about Africa as a whole, she too must go on a quest to piece together what she can about Nigeria from the usual places: television, school, and her parents’ version of it. In many of the books I’ve been reading written by people born in a country different from their parents’ homeland, and who have had little to no access to their parents’ homeland, I would say that the writing of the diaspora experience is also about the quest to uncover and retrieve, while existing in a space of not knowing or not knowing enough.

We may not speak our mother tongue, and if we do, perhaps we aren’t fluent. People from back home may hear us pronounce our names and, upon hearing how we say it, they might go, “Wow, that’s not how you pronounce your name.” While this is happening, we are also navigating what it means to be Black in the West. This is a part of the colonial rupture I think needs to be looked at closely for the children of immigrants living in the West: what does it mean not to know or fully understand your parents’ lineage or country? I’ve seen varied reactions from ambivalent to people feeling like they are walking around with a void inside them. I think this is what makes Epum’s memoir significant; she reframes diaspora not as a fixed identity but as an evolving reckoning.

Conclusion

While there is far more to delve into when considering our nervous conditions, I will say that there are always exceptions to the rule, and not everyone may relate to these conditions. But I think patterns are worth noting. I often read Black diaspora stories as a constellation of narratives in dialogue with novels by writers living on the African continent. It is fascinating how we build worlds, unpack the issues impacting our lives, and make connections (or fail to do so) on the page—especially when grappling with questions of identity, geography, caste, and class. In my view, Epum’s writing beautifully exemplifies this. It highlights the profound contradictions that ajébutters and coconuts inherit, illustrating how well they adapt, or how unwell they become when they can no longer adapt.

Author’s Note: I’ve been sitting with the idea of ajébutterness for many years now, trying to understand what it means to move through the world shaped by its contradictions. This series is where I turn to literature across the Black diaspora to think through these conditions more deeply.

My forthcoming short story collection, Ajébutter Women, which won the W.S. Porter Prize, will be published by Regal House Publishing on April 27, 2027, and continues this line of inquiry.

There’s something eerie about living in the US. It’s like living in a haunted house; the bodies and all the ghosts keep piling up. One story many of us are shattered over is that of Nolan Wells. A Black teenager goes out with his all-white friend group on a boat in Mississippi and doesn’t come back from the trip; he dies, and the people who were with him, his friends, say they cared for him, but nothing in their actions actually shows care or even friendliness. Something about the way they speak of his life feels hollow but strangely familiar. In fact, it all feels mean. And though it hurts to admit, it’s all too common.

Anti-Blackness is a mean-spirited virus; it’s filled with contempt, and it needs a target to diminish. Its favorite thing to say when someone cries foul is, “Your Blackness is not the issue,” and then it will wax poetic about how it is just trying to be “helpful,” and even convince you that it cares about you. It would be fascinating to watch how this operates if it wasn’t so lethal.

Prayer vigils are happening as I speak, I’m sure, for Nolan Wells and his family, and for such a friend group to never find an unassuming Black person. Nolan Wells, his life, his light, and his story are now triggering memories for Black people who remember what it means to be the only one in an all-white friend group or enclave. It’s literally like we are trading ghost stories in the public square. The patterns are all too glaring. At first people are “friendly,” or friendly enough, but then there’s something eerie lurking about that some of us can’t articulate because everyone has been conditioned to suspend all disbelief and accept every indignity known to man to keep the peace, even to our detriment.

When we share these stories, we realize that we as Black people have been living in a perpetual Jordan Peele Get Out horror film, with our accounts of near-death experiences as mementos of survival, perhaps. What is it that makes these experiences so horrifying? In my own Get Out experiences (sadly, I’ve had more than one), I would say it’s the cocktail of unprocessed and unresolved sentiments I often encounter, ranging from mild to terrifying, to obtuse, to downright vindictive. And if there are Black or non-Black POC there who have also drunk the Kool-Aid and cling to white proximity at all costs, then they could be eager to tear you apart to pledge their loyalty to the powers that be.

It was in predominantly white settings where I learned, almost searingly, that not all skinfolk are kinfolk. They too could look at you with either the blankest of expressions or with utter disdain and say, without blinking, “Your Blackness is not the issue.” They might go for the kinder sentiment, stare at you with glistening eyes, and say, “Ok, I hear you, let’s just take a breath,” and then, from there, go on to subtly blame you for the unfortunate experience you’re in while the people they’re protecting categorize you as the problem that must be contained.

It was in these majority white settings where I often stumbled upon how little work a community can do in understanding themselves, their habits, and inclinations. Rather, I saw the reproduction of the habits and thoughts that strengthened structures that often put the most vulnerable people in danger. And would you believe me if I said that whether the space espoused conservative, liberal, or radical ideals, the result was always the same? There was always a healthy level of denial and rancor for anyone who tried to call the ghosts that kept spooking folks the f—! out.

It was a gnarly ride being in these spaces. The layers of unconsciousness tightly wrapped around the refusal to deal with one’s history, ancestors, and lineage imprinted themselves on everything, and yet everything was done to convince me that it made more sense to question my reality, my perception of what was happening, than to deal with what was actually happening. Silence is the price of entry into these spaces that too many of us have been taught will bring us success and maybe some acceptance. But yet we have the accounts of people who have lost their minds or almost lost their lives trying to make it into these “hallowed” circles.

It’s not a pleasant thing to admit, but when travesties like this, like Black people going “missing,” keep happening, what else is there to say? Do you want to hear the pleasant thing or the thing that could actually point to the truth and maybe even save a life? I digress.

In the haunted house that is America, I think too many find comfort and a strange glee in saying, “Let’s stay calm until we have all the facts.” But as we, Black folk, take to social media and call out these ghosts, ignoring the rampant fear and the rage bait we encounter, I find that there is a clarity emerging as we share our Get Out experiences and confirm the accounts of others who have also been haunted; a public archive is created that will likely challenge and complicate official accounts.

We will have to trust, as we have been trusting for so long, that our accounts are legitimate and verifiable. No, we are not making this up, and yes, America has yet to atone for how it treats and keeps treating the people who built this country and keep trying to make it better, even though many have given their lives to a place that gives so little back and yet keeps extracting without regard, without care. It’s a true thriller we find ourselves in.

This deranged sci-fi-esque experience we call life will continue until it’s no longer the most exploited carrying the heaviest load. So these days, when I have to speak in a public forum, online or IRL, I’m usually not trying to convince anyone—especially those who have been groomed to disbelieve me—to believe me. If I am being haunted, that means someone is doing the haunting, and this has always felt to me, after so many years of trying to appeal to someone’s moral decency, like something that can’t be my priority anymore. Do the people who haunt and taunt and recoil have what it takes to do a decent thing? I don’t know, but it sounds like they have a lot of work to do.

I speak out to connect with others who also have names, dates, research, and patterns to share and are getting online to create an archive to confirm that, actually, if we keep talking to each other and comparing notes, then down the road what we’re saying could be the information needed to protect a life. We are not talking about the exception to the rule; we are talking about noted and recognizable patterns.

That’s why these ghost stories, as frightening as they are, are important to tell. It’s a liturgy of truthtelling, I suppose, especially when we have to tell someone that we care about: be aware of your surroundings; you’re not among friends; when the time comes, get out!

This isn’t a movie. We’re talking about our lives. Our stories are instructions.

Rest in peace, Nolan Wells.

Later that day I’m taken to an ancestral wall in Jamestown, and I’m told there’s another Jamestown in Accra. I learn that Jamestown, Accra is where enslaved people were kept before they were taken to the West. Or maybe the best way to say this is: before they were kidnapped and exiled from their homeland. It’s interesting being in Ghana while thinking deeply about the Transatlantic Slave Trade, all it has wrought. I can’t help but remember a publisher in Nigeria saying that for those of us living abroad, being cut off from our ancestral land was a rupture, even if we made a life outside of the African continent, and could never imagine another reality; it’s still a point of departure that must be acknowledged.

I think that’s why so many of us can’t help but ask: what does Africa mean to me?

There’s also a Jamestown in Virginia, where twenty to thirty enslaved Africans were first brought to the US. While walking down Jamestown in Kpone, I think of The 1619 Project and how it asserts that slavery shaped everything we know about the US today; it all starts there in Jamestown, Virginia, colonial expansion fueled by the exploited labor and intelligence of Black people. It’s a strange and bitter truth that imprints itself on everything.

Here we are dealing with the afterlives of slavery (Saidiya Hartman), and contending with those forces that can own up to what has shaped us, and the forces that are tightening their grip because they can’t. When speaking to a colleague about this, she mentions that if 1619 as a date of reckoning is vital to understanding American history, then perhaps, to understand the global effects of how the entire world arrived here, it might be necessary to introduce another date. 1492. Another reckoning waiting to happen.

The following week, there is a funeral for a woman who died quite young. I am told that when someone dies at a young age, everyone wears red. Everyone seemed to know her, or know of her, and many people gathered to celebrate her life. Music played from the morning till the evening. Later that day, I walked with a friend to the beach, and on the way we stopped to get a kibab, which in Nigeria we would call the spiced meat, asun. I am not going to be cheeky and ask whose kibab/asun is better, as Ghana and Nigeria are still trying to resolve whose jollof is better.

From there I walked to the beach, and I learned that at night everyone walks along a particular road to get to the ocean: motorcyclists, children, families, lovers, friends, all walk this same route, it seemed. It was around seven pm, and I got another kibab and a malta before putting my foot in the ocean while dancing to the music playing in the background: at one moment Drake, another Cardi B, another, a genre called Wes Life.

It’s comforting to be in an area where people know each other, have grown up together, and still have practices that show a care for the well-being of the whole. I’m not one to romanticize; some would say this place is not paradise, but as of late I’ve come to accept how contradictory being alive is. I’ve been in places that were supposed to be paradise and looked shiny on the outside, but the inside was anything but. So exactly, what is paradise? I can’t say.

Pleasure as Risk

It almost feels dangerous to talk about pleasure, considering the times we are in. When I was in Johannesburg, one of the big conversations I had was about why some Black South African women seem to be so diplomatic in disagreements with men. I noticed their caution. The silences they tiptoed around. The ways they measured their words, painstakingly.

I asked some women about this, and they gave similar responses: “Violence. You have to be careful of violence.”

In 2024, I was reporting on a story of a Ugandan marathon runner, Rebecca Cheptegei. She was set on fire by a disgruntled former partner when she returned to her home in Kenya, where she lived and trained.

When I speak to women living in Nigeria, they tell me about that boss who they have refused to sleep with, who is now making their life a living hell. That boss has now accused them of being a witch, which may very well mean a woman who dares to say no. It’s no surprise to see so many millennial and Gen Z Nigerian women taking to social media to say that the hatred for women has reached a peak that may soon make a heart burst.

I’m giving examples from different countries in Africa, but what I’m not going to do is pathologize these examples by saying these places are just “prone to violence”. I find this rather smug and a recycling of a tired and supreme mindset, like, “oh look at me, I have better habits than your people, you should be more like us,” and I think, oh really? Didn’t Andrew Tate and his brother just get arrested for what…the sexual exploitation of women? And…Jeffrey Epstein anyone? Stop. Please.

I believe in a feminism that isn’t afraid to exhume the skeletons buried in one’s own backyard. One that seeks to relate, not obfuscate. Whether we like it or not, we are trapped in systems and structures that actively deny our right to pleasure and gets off on exploiting the most vulnerable. The problem is global and connected.

And still, pleasure and desire are vital to being human; we have to find some way to talk about it; we must take the risk.

Talking Pleasure and Sex in Ethiopia

When I was traveling in Ethiopia, I visited a friend’s family in a small town, about a six-hour drive from Addis Ababa. Over a plate of Wolaytan food and coffee, I sat with my friend, Tseganesh — a no-nonsense Ethiopian American undergraduate student who visited her family every summer. Abel, her childhood friend, and her older sister were there. We sat around the table and made small talk (something I’m not very good at).

The older sister — Helen — was an attractive single woman in her 30s. In Ethiopia, I had observed a conservative culture wrapped around religion, family, and duty during the day. But at night, when I’d go out with friends to bars or other venues, I’d meet a wave of energetic women.

Some wore tube tops, bright lipstick, and tight pants, ordering honey wine and swallowing shots. The more drinks consumed, the louder the laughter, the more unhinged the hips, and the more their (true?) sentiments fell out. At one dive bar — there was this shot called The Orgasm that I noticed many women ordering. I too loved this shot. Rum mixed with Baileys — it tasted like a candy. If it wasn’t for the fear of a hangover, I would have drunk more.

A woman standing at the bar had ordered this beloved shot, saying, “I just love this shot, and who wouldn’t want an orgasm?”

I immediately wondered if this was one of the few spaces we could admit our desire for pleasure.

There are so many things African women must accept out of responsibility, whether it’s child rearing, schooling, marriage, working, or cooking; there’s a selflessness to our existence, there’s a selflessness expected from our existence.

There was something about this dichotomy that struck me. During the day, a woman is dutiful, but at night, she inhales orgasms. It seemed that a woman could only express her need for pleasure in the dark over a shot. I had wondered to myself: We might be drinking orgasms, but are we actually allowed to have them?

Exhuming the Skeletons in my Yard

I realized that as a Nigerian American woman I had my own hang-ups. For years, it was impossible to imagine a romantic relationship outside of marriage. If a relationship wasn’t fulfilling, you figured out how to manage because you were forever bonded to that person; pleasure was an afterthought.

In my early 20s, I was with someone who had no intention of truly giving me pleasure. When I tried teaching him, he assumed that I was promiscuous, and I retreated into a well of shame. Since he had proposed and we had been sexual, I thought I’d have to be with him forever. I had no other blueprint for how a relationship should work, and I internalized the idea that “a good girl” stays with one person. I also felt that as a good African daughter, if I introduced a love interest to my family, he had to be “the one.” I had spoken about him already, and therefore, in my mind at the time, we had to stay together. A year into the relationship, it dawned on me that forever is a long time to spend in misery.

There’s this fear we can have around airing our dirty laundry to save face in front of those who might judge us. But anytime someone pretends to have everything figured out, there are usually 10,000 ghosts hiding in their closet (at least).

Where have we been Wounded?

I once had a conversation with my mother after relocating to Nigeria. She opened up about her experiences in her homeland, saying, “Nigeria is really a country for men.” She shared her experience as a young professional working for a man as old as her father. He pursued her, and it was clear that if she didn’t accept his advances, life would grow difficult. “Sugar daddies,” she called them. They would pick a young woman (or girl) and take care of them materially. Sex usually came with the trade. Clearly, pleasure in that scenario was likely transactional, if it was even a factor at all. My mother quit that job immediately.

“That’s the way things were.” She said. “It was hard being a woman.”

There’s a lot to say and heal in the life of an African woman.

Pleasure as Reclamation

“God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately.”
― Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood

There’s a lineage of Black women throughout Africa and the diaspora who have thought deeply about how our desires and pleasure can exist out of bondage and expectation. While we engage in a desire and a joy that can free us, we also must unravel ourselves from centuries of conditioning. I think of Audre Lorde’s essay, Uses of the Erotic, when she writes:

“We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings. For the demands of our released expectations lead us inevitably into actions which will help bring our lives into accordance with our needs, our knowledge, our desires. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for or accept many facets of our oppression as women.”

When I uncovered what actually brought me joy, I was surprised at how little these joys and desires were connected to systems and structures that had ordered so much of my life. In fact, I found that I was most delighted when I interacted less with what I can only call sites of bondage.

I know it sounds extreme, but as a Nigerian woman once living in a house where I was expected to “serve” my elders swallow with egusi because they were hungry, you might understand why I would say this. They were literally waiting for me to serve them once I came home from work at eleven thirty at night. It was either do my “duty” or face social death.

And I think of another time, when I was much younger. A white teenager was telling anyone who would listen that she had discovered the joys of masturbation. To make herself feel less alone, she looked at me, the only Black student in the white friend group, and asserted that of course I was masturbating like she was, because…I just gave that vibe. Mind you, I was a band and show choir nerd and had no romantic prospects; I was also a girl terribly afraid of her feelings and her body, but you know, who was asking?

In speaking of pleasure, I’ve had to study these stories that have built my life to uncover how my pleasure, and my right to define it, has been stolen away. That’s why I can absolutely imagine a world where I become deeply unacceptable and unlikeable. Where I ignore all reason to be amenable and the “good girl” and rather I connect with an incorrigible lineage of Black women, dead and living, who tell me, sis, you better go sit by the sea and drink your mango juice in some damn peace.

This is a pleasure and a desire fulfilled. I’m not yet ready to share it with anyone. I’m too busy enjoying being useful to myself.

Who I’m Planning to Read right Now around Pleasure and Desire for Those of Us Who Were Never Supposed to Have It

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah - Ghanaian feminist writer, activist, and scholar of African women’s sexuality. Gonna read Seeking Sexual Freedom: African Rites, Rituals, and Sankofa in the Bedroom soon, 'cause she’s out here doing Oshun’s work.

Dr. Erika Hart - Black queer nonbinary sexuality educator, activist, and writer whose work explores pleasure, consent, race, gender, and sexuality as sites of liberation. Their book, Nasty Work, has been sparking a lot of conversations that has expanded my thinking.

Shan Boodram - Canadian-born, Caribbean-descended sex educator, intimacy expert, author, and media personality whose work explores sex, pleasure, dating, desire, and healthy intimate relationships. I’ve appreciated the folks she talks to about relationships, growth, and intimacy.

I think there’s a moment in a woman’s life when she realizes she has officially aged out. If you’re a woman aged 35 and up (or maybe a bit younger) you know what I’m talking about. Society tells you in one way or another that you’re tumbling towards irrelevancy, particularly if you haven’t quite achieved all the things you were supposed to: Marriage, baby, thriving career, big house, financial security, and endless youth. It’s been said that by 35 you’re no longer perceived to be young, and so the anxiety of being past your prime heightens.

When I realized there were certain fellowships and grants I could no longer apply to because I was “too experienced,” I knew I had officially aged out. When someone found out how old I was and then said: Oh well, you’re not young anymore. You’re like a very old millennial; this was another reminder that I had aged out of the coveted youth category. Actually, I really knew I was “old” when someone in her twenties looked at me and two other Black women around my age and said: Oh, you all are aunties, so you wouldn’t understand. And then, after realizing that some of us took offense, she said: Oh, don’t take it personally; I respect my aunties. She gave me a good laugh.

In many ways, I can accept the fact that I have aged out. Being alive means we’ll grow, and growing up usually means certain markers of youth and effervescence shift into wisdom and a more chilled-out vibe. Although I appreciate the woman I was in my 20s, I would never go back to reliving that era as I prefer the ease I’ve found in my 30s. When I realized that I don’t always have to be the smartest person in the room, or the wisest, or the wokest; and that it actually might be more of a relief to be seen as the dumbest, I felt relief. It felt like I had graduated into a new phase and level of maturity within myself, especially in a world that often extracted so much from me.

So I guess as I think of the things that I’m “aging out” of according to the powers that be, I’m also thinking of the things I’m aging out of that I’m more than happy to leave behind. I think for Black women across the diaspora, we have different ways of navigating this in an anti-black world. Our features, hair, body weight, and skin tone are always “up for review” and open to scrutiny, and we are expected to deal with it and just “love” ourselves, even as the onslaught of negativity and gaslighting we face is unrelenting and exhausting.

So our beauty, and our love for that beauty, becomes such a sacred thing because we choose to keep what makes us unique and undeniable in a world that seeks to crush it while also mimicking it.

So then, what does it mean to carry such a complicated beauty that has launched a thousand conversations?

A Toni Morrison’s quote makes me think about how we as Black women carry such radiance.

“I think of beauty as an absolute necessity. I don’t think it’s a privilege or an indulgence…it’s almost like knowledge, which is to say, it’s what we were born for.”

I think we were born for this, born to hold such intense beauty and call it ours. I think so many of us have gained much knowledge from it, and because of that, we can claim it unapologetically. More importantly, we’d be damned before we gave it up.

With that, here’s my humble list of things I am aging out of happily:

Dating for Optics — Going on dates or entering relationships solely because it feels like I should date or be in a relationship. That nonsense is no more.

Feeling the Need to Defend My Choices — Relinquishing the need to explain myself for external validation has added more years to my life.

Fighting off the Fertility Demons — What I decide for my womb is between me and my womb. Simple as that.

Preoccupations with Aging — I actually want to grow old, and I won’t go into a long diatribe into why at my age, I prefer it. I have a bunch of grey hairs on my head and I will not get rid of them. There are wrinkles on my face now, and I no longer look as cherubic as I once did. Yes, I am beautiful, but not because anyone says so, or because I’m fretting to be beautiful for someone else’s standard, (certainly not in a world like this). This beauty that I have, my beauty, belongs to me, and I’ve walked with it in the most gorgeous and cruel circumstances and decided that I love it anyway, so how I adorn this beauty, is up to me. I want everyone else to stay out of it, and let me have my wrinkles, crows feet, and the weight around my stomach, in peace.

Not Feeling Young or Hip Enough — I feel more vibrant and alive, less emotionally heavy and anguished than I did ten years ago. It’s easier to know when my yes is a yes and my no is a no. This is hip enough for me.

The term “aging out” has made me feel the need to redefine it because it’s usually not a term that captures the complexity of being alive. It doesn’t pay respect to all that we’ve come through and all that we are, and who wants to be subjected to a phrase so limiting?

So…here’s to those who are aging out of the nonsense and hopefully aging into something that is, I don’t know, humane.

Photo taken at an apartment in Addis Ababa, 2019

Writer’s Note: I began writing this around 2019, when I was traveling in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa specifically), and then went on to live in Nigeria (Abuja). Looking back, I realize I had romantic notions about moving from the West to an African country. Over time, however, the romance slowly chipped away as I began to embrace more textured realities with their contradictions. I was also on a search to understand the conditions that had shaped my parents, so I could piece certain aspects of my experiences together. The beautiful thing is that I met people along the way who were on a similar search. That period of my life was incredibly fluid, and this writing seems to reflect that. I have left this piece mostly as is, to reflect my thinking at the time.

Who Am I?

Before deciding to live in Nigeria around 2019, my initial ideas about the country came from my parents’ values and practices. Their constant prayers for health, wealth, and prosperity, accompanied by their singing Nigerian gospel songs, were something I figured they’d done back home. As they would often say to me when I’d grumble at having to survive another long session of beseeching God, “I don’t have silver or gold to give you, but I do have prayers.” What I took as their Nigerianness—the religion, the food, the music, their exuberance when discussing politics—was just the surface. The truth is that one has to go beyond these markers to really make sense of who we are in relation to our parents. That’s why asking someone — Why did you leave the West?— is a crucial question, because it’s no longer about how we view our parents; it’s about how we view ourselves in relation to our parents. We become actors in this dance between generations, trying to bridge gaps of understanding; no longer are we observers looking at our parents and assessing their habits as out of place. So again, when someone asks you that question — Why did you leave? — it’s a question that speaks of a willingness to be uncomfortable while contending with one’s history. Leaving for Africa did not make all my problems go away. But I walked down many streets with no worry, laughed raucously in many public venues, and wore many Ankara dresses and felt my body’s tension dissipate. I was now introduced to a world of new challenges, and though it wasn’t easy, I had space for new realities. I interviewed three people on their decision to relocate to a country in Africa after growing up abroad. Here are some entries weaving together their interviews and a bit of my analysis.

Chime in Abuja

Over a drink to celebrate Chime’s new role as a policy analyst in Abuja, he spoke about the “tight leash” his father had kept him and his siblings on to ensure they remained focused on their education. He was always looking sharp, this time dressed in a blazer with his suitcase, which was a habit he had taken with him from the windy city of Chicago to Abuja. Some might judge and call it an obsession with being respectable, but he observed that people took him seriously when every crease was smoothed over with an iron and he looked about his business. And in a country like Nigeria, where people can quickly throw you away simply by the look of you, he learned how to dress to attract attention and respect in both worlds. He never could fully immerse himself in a single culture, which meant that somehow he was always kept outside of it. “I felt like I was at an intersection growing up with my experiences.” He said, rubbing his forehead and sitting back in his chair.

“Being in the West is like living in constant antagonism,” Chime said as he reflected on his time in Chicago after having now lived in Nigeria for seven years. “There’s some sort of assault on you in different ways every day. You might see a statue that doesn’t honor your ancestors, or you might be in class and be presented with a case study where a white woman is scared of Black people, which was an actual case study that happened in my law class.”

While growing up in Chicago, Chime was funneled into activities like soccer and chess where he was the only Black kid. He got bullied for not being Black enough, while surviving daily assaults from racist white folks. In one of America’s most segregated cities, he learned how to fend for himself, becoming confident and bold. And yet, he reveals what propelled him to leave a place he had fought so hard to survive. “No one will understand that this space does not feel welcoming. No one will understand that I just don’t feel comfortable here. No one will understand that I had a mental breakdown because stuff is racist. There’s still stress in Nigeria, but it’s a different type of challenge. Maybe one is more psychological while the other’s more material?”

I understand Chime completely, and the interesting thing is that being Black in America can largely be about learning how to breathe through multiple breakdowns. No surprise that so many of us want to use the energy we have left for a possible breakthrough.

It seems like we can’t talk about our relationship to the African continent without reconciling our relationship to the West. Which means our choice to return might largely be defined by what we chose to leave and what we are longing for.

Reconciling the Fantasy from the Reality

When I watched Black Panther, I was on the couch on a snowy day in Boston, Massachusetts, saying, “Wakanda forever!” This was right before I had left the U.S. I had a yearning to leave the U.S. and live “my best African life.” Watching all the beautifully melaninated characters on the screen made me feel like that was possible; perhaps I was naive but that’s what I desired. When Black Is King came out, this desire I had was tempered with the reality of finally living on the continent for two years, between Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. I danced to the song “My Power” and felt the energy move up my spine, but something in my spirit was tempered with the reality that comes from having experienced a place on its best and worst days. In Nigeria, a country where almost half the population lives on about a dollar a day, hawkers were on the street amid the COVID-19 pandemic selling everything from apples, belts, and insecticide. The banks still had lines out the door, and no matter where you lived, the electricity was bound to shut off at some point. The greatest myth I had used as solace when it was rainy and cool in California was that when I get to Africa, it’ll be hot. But July in Abuja was rainy and chilly, and I wore sweaters outside and took hot showers (when I could) inside. My relationship to Africa, like any relationship, required a commitment that went beyond the honeymoon stage. After the honeymoon, your love is tested and must become rooted in accepting a person or a place for what it actually is. I’ve always believed that true love emerges in the reckoning of a truth revealed.

Heran in Addis

I met Heran in Ethiopia. She generously allowed me to crash at her place while I was waiting out my visa in Kenya. Heran teaches Kemetic and African yoga and works as a breastfeeding counsellor. She has always expressed her fierce love of her homeland while acknowledging the effects of a painful legacy.

“I was born in Addis Ababa in the year 1984...the year of the great famine, when the world’s best musicians sang for us, the year that forever branded us with the scarcity mentality, the image of famine and dependency culture deep in our bones and identity.” At age three, Heran was adopted and brought to a Dutch family in the Netherlands. Although she didn’t grow up in Ethiopia, she felt compelled to trace and dig deeper for her roots. Her return journey brought her to Ghana, Kenya, Egypt, and Ethiopia, encouraging her to eventually repatriate as she began connecting with her biological family. In true Heran fashion, her love for the continent is still front and center as she exclaims, “I have a deep love for Africa. I even have the map tattooed on the side of my head!”

Heran and I met at a time when I was focused on my spiritual journey as an African woman committed to acknowledging my own complicated history to move forward. We had left the West not only for practical reasons—wanting more vitamin D, wanting injera or swallow, and wanting to see people who looked like us as the norm; we had relocated to heal. Often Heran spoke of the necessity of healing as an international and transracial adoptee. “Having faced racism daily in Europe, it took many years to purify and heal from the pain and hate, to move from victimhood to leadership and responsibility. I do feel grateful to have lived in the West, to have travelled, to broaden my horizon and keep an open mind.” Many Ethiopian adoptees were returning from the West, in search of their biological families, and an identity that wouldn’t break them down. We met in cafes, in coffee ceremonies, and at poetry nights, drinking honey wine and Ouzo, while laughing and talking frankly about our need for a home that dignified us.

It was a gift observing how Heran and some other Ethiopian adoptees I knew were learning Amharic while navigating various ethnic and tribal differences, gender expectations, cultural norms, and dress codes.

One of the things I liked to do was walk around the capital with Heran. Once, I had taken the bus to meet her in front of the German Embassy. We met up and walked about an hour to Bole to meet up with another friend. We passed people having coffee ceremonies and eating samosas. At least two people stopped us on the street and said, “African. You’re African.” Both of us are dark-skinned women. She wore her hair natural with a cowrie shell placed in the middle of her forehead while mine was in rasta braids. Although I thought Heran was clearly Ethiopian, she shared her experience of always being mistaken for Kenyan. As this happened to us often whenever we walked, sometimes I’d get snarky and ask, “So I guess Ethiopia isn’t in Africa?” I learned that the reality of living at the intersections of a place that you’re from but not completely of, a place that you show up for despite how you’re received, is a courageous undertaking.

Jerry in Ghana

I’ve been in Nigeria for seven months, and whenever I’m on the phone with family or friends from the U.S., someone will nervously ask, “So...you’re still not coming back, huh?” For two years, I’ve been trying to live beyond the American Dream. I simply tell them, “I don’t think so.” I met someone named Jerry Johnson who has lived on the continent for nearly 20 years. After having travelled extensively in West Africa, he resettled in Ghana, where he now owns a guesthouse and has founded the Ancestral Wall Project. His mother was a Civil Rights activist, and during the 80s, he took African-American Studies courses in college where he read Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. After studying Pan-Africanist movements extensively, he eventually decided to take a trip. “I was in Senegal for five minutes and decided to live in Africa. I was in L.A. and doing fine, but it was a no-brainer for me…it went from the theoretical to how I felt. And it felt good.” When we share stories about whether we get a pull to return to the West, Jerry says. “I don’t go back between Ghana and the States like I used to. I miss two things about the U.S.; I like the access to quality jazz and restaurants in L.A.” Jerry brought his mother to the continent and was not sure how she’d feel about the inconsistent electricity and cold bucket showers in their hostel. Her response relieved him of this fear after he heard her splash around and she came out saying, “This is the way I bathed until I was 20 years old. I grew up Black and poor in the South with a big family. What do you think?”

Beyond the American Dream

In a span of ten years, from fantasizing about Africa to actually living on the continent, I’d say that though I’m in love with being here, it’s become a love that is more balanced and attentive to the nuances of a people while keeping the bigger picture in mind. As Chime so eloquently said, wherever you go, “people are people.” It took me a year of traveling in East Africa to figure out that part of my healing was to be a bridge between all these intersections and let the folks on this land know that not everything worked out as planned. The American Dream; that dream our parents clutched to when they landed on Western soil came with a lot of loss. Perhaps the economic opportunities made the trade-off bearable, but when you’re constantly trying to prove that you deserve a seat at the table, after a while you may not want to fight for a place anymore; you may very well want to find a chair with your name on it.

I have also had to explain to people in the US that although Africa as a whole is a beacon of hope to many of us, there’s a reality on the ground that cannot be bypassed. This is the work we have been given: to reconcile these post-colonial realities in what often feels like insurmountable circumstances. The question emerging through all of this is: Is any of this reconcilable?

We are now in the midst of the second Trump administration, something that shocked some of us. But this time around, I don't think it surprised many of us that we were back here again. And so I wonder: what should we read now?

There are so many books to read, almost too many. So many voices to listen to about the times we are in now, and I’m thinking, well, it’s always a good time to read, to listen, to act in a way that turns the tide in the direction of something more humane.

Right now I’m reading Yewande Omotoso’s An Unusual Grief. I’m almost done, and it has taken me on such a trip full of highs and lows; I relate deeply to it. And again, it circles me back to the major themes of my life, especially when it comes to the mother-daughter relationship.

Who would our mothers have been if they had been given the chance to become themselves? Light spoiler alert. The titular character in this story, Mojisola Olowabi, becomes, well…what can I say…very dominant in a way I would have never expected! But then again, when I think of it, so many of our mothers carried what I can only call a Big Madam energy. If you know, you know.

But often, as the daughters of such mothers, we always knew that this energy was formidable and not to be trifled with, for it was the potent force that kept the world as we knew it running, despite all its complications. We learned to tread lightly, mind ourselves, bite our tongues, and allow our mothers—especially when they were tight-lipped about certain subjects—to simply be.

But oh! The way the author writes the character of Mojisola is interesting to see unfold. She shows the reader where such energy—if allowed to be channeled in the service of self and recovery rather than in the service of being the mule of the world—can go. And it yields such unusual possibilities. I won’t give too much away because it’s a book that would probably be good to read if you want to know more about how people (especially our Big Madam mothers?) grieve, particularly within contexts that have difficulty articulating how to express such big feelings.

Again, it’s never a good time to stop reading, I suppose.

I write this dispatch from Ghana, somewhere along the coast. It’s cooler today, and the breeze is blowing through my sitting room. The air smells as if something in the distance is burning, and on the steps leading out from where I’m staying, a man is strumming a guitar.

In the courtyard there are women laughing, talking, and soon there will be children playing, crying. I have a new name now. Udale (I hope, I pray, that I spelled this correctly!?). This is the name given to me to show that I am now someone who is part of the family home. Now I get what the person who let me stay here meant when he said: The community is security. From sunup to sundown, someone is here, someone is watching, and I’m happy that, though I am alone, I’m not really alone.

If I were hungry and needed something to eat, someone would feed me. In fact, two days ago, the Mama of the house knocked on my door to eat banku with her, but I was asleep.

But though I am here, I am constantly thinking of the U.S. The distance helps put some things into perspective for me about the land where I was born and raised and my relationship to it, which I can only describe as vexed. As I scroll through my social media feed and see the viral picture of the Black woman surrounded by white nationalists on the metro—a train I have ridden many times—and then, a few days later, learn about the Nolan Wells story (may he rest gently in peace) and so many other stories of Black people gone missing, I think: here we go again. It’s this never-ending merry-go-round that one cannot get off.

Even the woman sitting on the metro, minding her business, is now the face of something—a movement, I guess? She’s an entire human being, a person, and I wonder: is she alright? At least I find out that she has a family that loves her deeply, and I breathe a sigh of relief because now is not a time to be without love or without people who see you. Her name is Bernita Bowlding. May we know that she is a person, and may she be protected while alive...and left alone, maybe. Did she even ask for her image to be taken?!

We’re on this merry-go-round together, and if you’re Black and, as James Baldwin said, conscious, you might be in a perpetual rage, or grief, or both, having to navigate what I call the many D’s: denial, deflection, distortion, disruption, destruction, desecration, dismissal, derision, delusion. We have decades of data, research, and people—literally people, dead and alive; people murdered; blood, so much bloodshed—pointing to what’s happening with a big flashing arrow, and yet the D’s continue. I have always wondered: how does one not lose their mind in all this? And then I think to myself... discernment. And that discernment is bear-hugging my dignity, telling her that she has a right to self-respect and a right to be who she is, with clarity about what has been happening for centuries, whether or not someone is wishing me just to shut my mouth, or quietly wishing me dead, or diminished because my being alive with clarity makes them uncomfortable, or even a bit angry, or just way too defensive.

I have a right to exist without assault for being alive while Black and a woman. I wish I could say that if you don’t like me, then please, just leave me be, but it has never, ever been that simple because, well... we are in a relationship—an epically fraught relationship with so much water under the bridge. All I can say about it is that this is the first time in my lifetime that I’ve seen more Black folks making moves to opt out of this relationship entirely, for peace and for self-preservation. But this is another post, for another day.

A few days ago, someone told me about the new book by Eddie Glaude Jr., America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. I had also watched him on Democracy Now! speaking about his book and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and it felt serendipitous that this colleague mentioned the scholar and author. It was our first time meeting on Zoom, and we were sharing all the things that inspire us to do the work we do, to keep going. He had the book next to him and, after saying it was a must-read, read me the first lines of Glaude’s book: “I do not love America, and never have, especially now.”

It’s definitely an important time to read (and act) amidst the chaos.

Reading the scholarship of storyteller and associate professor of West African Literature and Cultures, Dr. Olaocha Nwadiuto Nwabara, has deepened my thinking about the essay I published in Brittle Paper earlier this month. Her work offers a framework for extending my discussion of Black writers finding their “happy place” in uncertain times. At the same time, it reminds me that the questions I’m asking are not new to the Black experience or to Black writers.

Dr. Nwabara examines Black global literature and argues that Black writers—particularly Black women writers—are “reimagining notions” of what it means to be Black, African, and human in the world. Often through solitude and distance, they are, as she puts it, “writing home.”

In her essay, "Becoming, Writing Home: The Journey Towards Self for Community in Under the Udala Trees and the Binti Trilogy," she builds on the work of the pioneering Black feminist scholar Dr. Carol Boyce Davies, whose scholarship theorized the concept of "writing home."

“’Writing home’ comes from scholar Carol Boyce Davies, who writes that Black women effectively ‘write home’ as a process of self-definition when they find ways to locate home through memory, thought, experience, negotiation of identity, and especially when she can write it into existence. Whether it is a result of physical migration, or even the separation between one’s mind and their environment, writing home is a migratory experience where Black women write their epistemologies and their narratives into existence.”

When I think about this enduring yet delicate tradition of Black writers creating through impossible realities—sometimes risking life and limb over words written on a piece of paper—I am struck by how fragile and resilient writing can be. Paper can be ripped or burned, yet the stories somehow survive. They continue to be read, remembered, and spoken aloud to friends and communities decades later.

I also think about what it has meant for me to encounter stories that reflected my own experience or showed me new ways of thinking about the biggest questions of my life. Reading those words affirmed that I had a right not only to exist, but to create.

When I first read Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, bell hooks’ All About Love, and Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter, each of these writers shifted something in me that I hadn’t even realized needed shifting. It was then that I understood I belonged to an ecosystem of writers interrogating notions of refuge, home, and displacement, while also daring to reimagine them. Their work gave me the courage to imagine another possibility on the page.

As I began writing, I wasn't sure I was always happy, but I was delighted to have the option to create a narrative that could account for the people I cared about and for myself. It was freeing.

You can read my full article in Brittle Paper here.

Photo Credit: Netflix

Winter is here, the days are cool in the morning and a bit cloudy, but when the sun creeps out, there’s something that makes me want to go outside. This has been a social time filled with friends, conversations, laughter, and many times, there’s much grief and exasperation expressed about one’s personal life, the state of one’s country, or the state of the world. These conversations tend to happen along a continuum, which lets me know that these major events in our lives, big or small, are inextricably linked.

Market Theatre

This week was the anniversary of the Soweto Youth Uprisings on June 16,th and today is Juneteenth, so it’s quite a powerful week already. Last week I went to the Market Theatre and saw the play “Rise ‘76: The Story of June 16” and I was so moved, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The play is haunting, and I don’t think I have the language to articulate what it has stirred in me. All I can do is thank the playwrights, the actors, the crew, and everyone who put this on and helped contextualize and humanize a complicated country without flattening the realities of Black life.

So often our realities get flattened to appease power and comfort those who don’t want to be uncomfortable for too long, but this play...wow! It was deeply uncomfortable to sit through, and I was thankful for that, actually, because it was pointing to something real...there’s still so much that hasn’t been reconciled and repaired in South Africa, and when I think of my life growing up in the US, I come to a similar conclusion that brings about so many questions:

What does it mean to atone?

Really atone?

What does one have to repair within themselves to do the hard work of a collective repair that moves policy, structures, systems?

Are we there...yet?

Sigh...I don’t think so.

I feel like we are mountains and rivers away from it. I feel like the long arc to justice is indeed very, very, long. And that’s why I deeply respect anybody who dedicates their life force to trying to inch us there, to repair, to atonement, to a possibility of a world that is kinder, truer, and not looking to erase those who have been erased for far too long. To all those out there who have attempted this, living and passed on, thank you. A million times, thank you. It ain’t easy work.

Touring JoBurg

I was given a tour of some parts of Joburg. We drove through the areas that were ultra-wealthy, like Westcliff, and we can already guess the predominant demographic of those who live there, so I won’t tell you. But what I will say is that these places are incredibly clean, tidy, gated, and from what I could see, sprawling. And then we drove to parts that are the opposite, like Yeoville, a place that was Jewish working class and now is Black, and has many Black immigrants living there. You can guess, I hope, what Yeoville looks like compared to Westcliff. I won’t bother telling you this either, but it’s drastic.

I went to the downtown area, which felt much like a city—tall buildings, compact streets, lots of shops, people walking—and saw statues commemorating the history of mining in the country, and the labor whose sweat has built the wealth that has made South Africa what it is today. A few weeks ago, I visited Chinatown, and it’s interesting to see the diversity and complexity of a nation, especially as xenophobia heightens. On June 30th, there will be anti-immigration protests and a national shutdown targeting undocumented immigrants in the country. This is the official message I’ve read in the news. But the unofficial message I'm hearing in conversations and seeing on social media feels somewhat different. I’m hearing and seeing that, specifically, African foreign nationals are the ones who must go, and whether they have their papers or not, it won’t necessarily stop them from becoming targets.

I’ve spoken to one African migrant who is planning to leave on June 28 after living in South Africa for twelve years. He says he is tired. He wants to go somewhere he can have more dignity and less stress. I almost laugh, because he’s going back to Nigeria. Nigeria will always be his home, and of course, as a man of some means, he will be afforded more dignity than most. But the thing is, anyone who has lived in Nigeria knows that living there means accepting a life of constant negotiation and stress management.

At some point, an activist sends me a WhatsApp message. In the message is a statement from community organizers in Jozi condemning xenophobia/afrophobia and saying that African migrants are not the cause of the economic crisis South Africa finds itself in. So how does one begin to sift through all these stories and histories careening into the moment we find ourselves in?

One South African scholar described things to me this way: South Africa is unevenly developed...from what I saw on my tour, I’d say this analysis checks out.

The Polygamist

First, before I begin this haphazard pop-culture analysis, I want to give high praise to the novelist who wrote the book that sparked this hit Netflix series, Sue Nyathi. Zimbabwean-born and now living in Johannesburg, her creativity and commitment to African storytelling have sparked so many important conversations about our families, betrayal, gender, patriarchy, class aspiration—all of it. And to think her book was rejected by major publishers, only for her to go and self-publish the thing herself!

I’m also going to shout out Lorraine Sithole, founder of BookWorms Book Club, who voraciously reads, uplifts, and curates literature—especially African literature—and who has been supporting Nyathi’s work since as far back as 2013.

So I can’t possibly talk about The Polygamist without talking about the literary ecosystem it’s coming out of. And by literary ecosystem, I’m not talking about traditional structures. I’m talking about the structures so many of us create when the gatekeepers tell us our stories aren’t good enough.

So to all the Nyathis and Sitholes of the world, I say thank you.

Overall

Note: There will be light spoilers.

I could not rest after watching the first episode because I knew I would have to stay sat for the entire series. Even getting up to use the bathroom became a distraction as I consumed this series. For the hours that I watched The Polygamist, it genuinely became my reason for living.

What made The Polygamist fascinating to watch was that it felt like so many crises were converging into one. The biggest crisis I could see emerging was a crisis of masculinity: what it means to be specifically an African man in a world like this. And then there is the crisis of what it means to be an African woman. And then what all of this means when you are trying to “aspire to success.”

Which means we are now talking about colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, marriage, respectability, heteronormativity, white supremacy—all of it. All of it creeping into our most intimate interactions: how we love, how we have sex, how we desire, and how we betray or uplift one another within a family.

So I will focus on the two titular characters who kept this interesting and diabolical world spinning on its axis: Joyce and Jonasi.

Jonasi

While watching Jonasi’s constant cheating, I kept thinking: this is about so much more than cheating.

I’m not a therapist, and I can’t diagnose him, but there is something deeper going on here. This is someone who fundamentally cannot talk about anything of emotional substance, or even face the harm he is causing others and himself. It’s as though that entire universe is inaccessible to him.

His appetite—this sexual desire, this compulsion—appears to be about conquering and domination. But conquest is terribly fleeting and ultimately unfulfilling, because to dominate means you will always want more, which means the compulsion must constantly be fed. The thing you desire loses its power almost as soon as you’ve obtained it.

Don’t you know this, Jonasi? Goodness!

I found myself speaking to these characters, trying to give them advice when something would happen that made me jump out of my seat. I know, specifically, that Jonasi would never be interested in what I had to say. I mean, when his daughter tried reading him a letter about how his actions hurt her, he simply turned up the volume on the television, ignoring her tears entirely.

They didn’t matter to him.

Oh, Jonasi. Does anything matter to you???

What I’ll say to whoever cares to read my thoughts is that Jonasi’s need for more required an ever-expanding body count.

It was like watching a hungry ghost in action.

Until something finally took him out.

Yikes.

Or... finally?

I don’t know.

But at one point during the series, I found myself thinking: Jonasi, please. Abeg. Just relieve me of your treachery. It’s okay now. Go and see your Maker before you finish my eyes, because apparently, I cannot turn away from this screen. It’s okay. It’s okay to walk toward the light now, Jonasi.

I forgive you.

Joyce

Joyce reminded me of so many African and Black women I know who are curated and successful on paper, but who are often running around trying to keep everything together at great cost to themselves and their children.

What happens when you are trying to maintain an image of what the ideal successful family is?

A great deal of Joyce’s life force was devoted to managing a particular image. It was as though she were in a constant state of PR crisis management, trying to manage the crises of her marriage, her mothering, her relationships, and life itself.

And as I watched Joyce, along with the other women in the series, play out their tragedies, I found myself thinking: wow, I know these people. I know them so well.

I know them in the United States. I know them in Nigeria. I know them in Kenya and South Africa too.

I’ve met them, loved them, hated them, walked away from them, and walked toward them. And if I’m honest, I’ve also done some of the things they’ve done to maintain that image.

How delusional.

But also... how human.

That’s what makes it triggering. It’s triggering because it reveals something true about who we have become to one another, and the foolery we continue when we think we are out of options. How often are we wearing the mask that grins and lies?

It’s a performance, and Joyce truly played her part.

And when I look at what this performance involves—being well-spoken, wearing nice clothes, making sure people know you have aged whiskey imported from somewhere in France, curating an Instagram account where everyone is inspired by your life and your brand—well.

Who gave us this yardstick to measure our humanity and worth against?

The feeling I get from many African women I speak to about marriage is that they often feel trapped, especially when children are involved, and there is a great deal to lose if they walk away.

There is so much to unpack here because the conversation is untidy. You have to unravel internalized notions of success, ideas about right and wrong, years of conditioning around “acceptable” gender norms, and a lifetime of bad advice spoon-fed to all of us from the moment we emerged from the womb.

So I completely understood why Joyce stood over Jonasi’s grave and called that man a “motherbleeper.”

But Joyce’s problem doesn’t start with Jonasi. It precedes him.

By no means am I blaming her for the predicament she found herself in, but when ruptures like this happen, I always ask: what are the conditions that allow this?

And to invoke Tsitsi Dangarembga, we are certainly the inheritors of some nervous conditions.

And that’s the troubling thing about abuse. We are often talking about inherited habits and norms, and how those habits and norms shape perception and ultimately shape how we love—or think we are loving.

I’m thinking about bell hooks here, a scholar who dedicated so much of her work to understanding love within Black communities, our yearning for it, and the many things that have distorted it.

Conclusion

I don’t know, actually.

It’s not my style to offer tidy answers. These conversations are messy. Healing is messy. Reconciliation is not linear.

So I’ll simply say that I’m glad I watched this series, and I’ll definitely be reading the novel it was based on.

Keep watching. Keep talking. Keep lifting up the creatives, thinkers, writers, and scholars who are helping us imagine reconciliation.

At the very least, it’s good that many of us are talking.

Hi friends,

As my birthday month comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about what feels meaningful to share.

I landed on something unexpectedly personal: an illustrated zine I created nearly a decade ago, long before my forthcoming short story collection Ajébutter Women, long before I spent five life-altering years living across parts of Africa, and long before I fully understood that I’d keep returning to questions of daughterhood, migration, family inheritance, belonging, and what it means to build a life that feels honest.

Back then, I was trying to make sense of being a second daughter in an immigrant family, birth order politics (very real in many of our households), cultural expectations, healing, and the quiet art of not losing yourself.

So naturally… I made a zine.

As one does.

Into the Light: A Meditation on Growing from the Middle is part personal reflection, part guided journal, and part visual storytelling project.

Looking at it now, I can see many of the questions that still animate my work today. In some ways, this little project was an early blueprint for the themes that would eventually find their way into my fiction, essays, and forthcoming books.

It includes original illustrations and journal prompts, and it’s for:

• Black women

• African and Afro-diasporic women

• daughters of immigrants

• second daughters

• educators and teachers

• people navigating complicated family dynamics

• anyone who has ever thought, Wait… who assigned me this role, and how do I respectfully unsubscribe?

If that sounds like you—or someone you love—you can grab it here for $12:

Into the Light

Thank you for reading, supporting, and accompanying me on this journey. It means more than you know.

What Does It Mean to Be an African Daughter?

Last week was the week of my seminar talk at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study asking the question: What Does It Mean to Be an African Daughter? For two weeks, I found myself preoccupied with fear. Not fear of standing up in front of people, though it’s not my preference to do that, but more so: how do I do my part in honoring all the African daughters I know and walk alongside? How do I celebrate our daughterhood while also talking about how impossible it has been for so many of us to deal with all these nervous conditions we have inherited?

I listened to the many voice notes I got from different African daughters through WhatsApp, revealing themselves. Some cried. Some took days to answer. Some admitted the unadmittable about what it has meant to be an African daughter.

One African daughter, who was also the first daughter in her family, spoke about how she’s learning that being an African daughter must also mean that she gets to be part of the equation of healing and receiving care too. After so many trials and heartbreaks, she’s learning how to be there for herself.

Daughterhood is where so many of us are first socialized into how to be “proper women.” It’s in the intimacy of the family unit, which, if we look more closely, is a political space. Out of the role of daughter, we become everything: a sister, a mother, a wife. Some of our key qualities, the ones that last a lifetime, are forged there. It’s also from this role that we can deviate.

On the actual day of the seminar, it felt like I was surrounded by friends, or at least people who could understand why it’s important that we talk about daughterhood within global Black life.

What were the things that made it possible for me to stand before everyone and say what I had to say?

I would say it was the feedback session I had with my cohort two days before, because it was really them I was trying to impress, or maybe relate to: a group of Black women who have committed their lives to preserving, protecting, and caring for Black women and the Black girls who will become them.

I think after that session, where we sat on couches and talked, and they gave me feedback on what to consider, I felt something in me settle. I felt enough strength to do my best and let it go.

Kingsmead Book Fair with Yewande Omotoso and Sipho Hotstix Mabuse

I can’t convey how much this panel moved me, but it seems that May is a big month for talking about family.

Motherhood, as it was Mother’s Day not too long ago. Daughterhood, considering my seminar. And then fatherhood, because as the moderator said when opening a conversation with panelists Yewande Omotoso and Sipho Hotstix Mabuse, you can’t speak about fatherhood without speaking about motherhood.

So there we were, in a chapel, talking about grief and looking deeply at the relationships that define us.

As both panelists spoke about their relationships to their fathers, it was as if something in the chapel was shifting. Hotstix, while speaking about his father and one of the ruptures that happened within his family, began to cry.

And then the tears seemed to pass on to other people in the room. It was as if he had given those of us holding a well of grief inside us permission to release it.

And to see a Black man weep, an African man reach for a tissue to wipe his tears…well, this made me think.

Africans ought to weep more.

There ought to be a week of mandatory weeping for all that we’ve been through, for all that we’re holding. This might help soften something in us that has hardened.

The Unsayable

In a panel I went to, a question was raised about the history of Mahatma Gandhi — really that he was undeniably racist and spent a great deal of energy in South Africa trying to prove that Black people were lower than Indians, and that Indians were closer to whiteness and should be afforded more advantages.

Then there was the other matter of his sexual politics being quite predatory. It’s common knowledge among many in South Africa as I speak to folks. It might not be said outright, but it is known, and felt.

The question was about why this panelist would use Gandhi as someone whose philosophy and work were foundational to the way he thought about his relationship to Blackness. Isn’t there a contradiction there?

To answer it, he said, well…people are complicated. Then moved on.

I remember feeling jarred, because I’m of the mind that while excavating and studying Blackness as a non-Black person, it’s even more vital that you excavate and study your own history deeply: its contradictions, its particular brand of anti-Blackness, and in this case, one’s caste system and class contradictions.

All these things are determinants in how one relates to the other, and so often these contradictions live in our most intimate and intuitive spaces.

We must do the work of exhuming them because this actually is the work.

How are we responsible to one another? And what are the things we need to say to unravel this colonial grip that clutches our minds?

But the panelist couldn’t seem to engage with this, and instead dismissed it entirely, which gave me pause.

Then I spoke with poet and healer, vangile gantsho, about this and asked something to the effect of: how do you deal with this? People who don’t want to look at their history but are eager to look at yours?

And she said something to the effect of: there are tiny violences Black women must manage every day. Every day we’re asking, which part of my tongue will I have to swallow?

And I thought to myself: damn. Damn. Damn.

Wine

I’m drinking red wine these days, maybe more than usual because it’s my birthday month.

I can often handle two glasses, sometimes one, at a time. It depends. But I’ve noticed that I’ll always take a sip if it’s available.

I’m in wine country, and the wine here is very good.

To live this kind of life, with all its beauty and contradictions, I think one needs to have their Big Girl drink.

For the time being, I have mine in abundance.

There’s almost too much to write. But today, so I don’t lose what I want to say to whoever is reading, I am taking the time to write from my balcony. It is fall here. The sun is shining directly on my face, making the season feel like spring somewhere in the U.S.—a light wind, birds chirping. This is Johannesburg.

A few days ago, it was my birthday, and what I felt most grateful for was the fact that, despite everything, I am still alive, and life is such a gift. I write this as I reflect on the anniversaries of two people I knew who have passed on, their lives cut short during such a chaotic time. A few nights ago, I learned that another person I knew had passed away, and for the rest of that night, I could no longer sleep without thinking about how fleeting life is.

As each birthday passes, something feels like it’s accelerating. Time feels faster. All I want to do is grab hold of it a little longer—the laughter, the friends I love, the peace I’ve finally found, even the tears. Yes, even those too.

All of these revelations I’ve been having here in Joburg—as I write, reflect, and get better at accepting that my life, my existence, is a good one.

These days, I grow tired of constantly needing someone else to reinforce that I matter. That defined so much of my twenties and early thirties, and as I approach 40, I’m relieved that the particular people-pleasing grip that once held me is loosening. Somehow I am also celebrating my womanhood, or my femme-hood, because I think it is every woman’s dream to no longer care what humanity thinks of her.

I matter to myself because I say that I do, and my word is enough.

I can live alone. I can exist alone. And what’s even sweeter is knowing that I can also love deeply.

Which brings me back to the complicated and beautiful city that is Joburg.

In Uber rides—often with women drivers—I learn so much about what is stirring people here.

The potholes that seem to litter the streets. When will this get fixed?

Then, as a driver and I banter, she tells me about all the things in the country that need fixing: roughly 8 million young people are unemployed. For the first time in its democratic history, the African National Congress is sharing power with the Democratic Alliance, South Africa’s center-right opposition party, which many critics say still protects structures that have historically benefited white South Africans, even though it publicly rejects apartheid.

And you hear the collective lamentation: What do we do now?

Corruption is high. Has anything truly gotten better? There is a Black elite—but can we even call them an elite if corruption is rampant? And the material conditions of many Black South Africans remain deeply unequal after more than three decades of this post-apartheid experiment.

Yoh.

Then another driver tells me she was born in 1992 and remembers her mother working as a domestic worker for a white family, and how vastly different her life has been from many white South Africans.

“This is South Africa,” she says. “Can you believe it?”

And I tell her that because I am from the United States, I absolutely can.

That’s why being in Johannesburg—being on African soil during this wild and consequential historical moment—feels vital to me.

She pauses and says, shocked, “Oh, I thought you were from here because of all the questions you were asking.”

It was nice to know that I sort of blended in, but I guess what mattered more between us, is that though we were from different parts of the world, we understood each other’s experiences and desires for a country that can actually respect and dignify people who look like us.

When I speak to many residents, they tell me that while they may want to travel abroad, they ultimately want to live in South Africa. They just wish it worked for the majority.

That’s a prayer, I suppose.

Outside of Uber rides, in everyday conversations, I often find myself discussing Nelson Mandela—who he became after leaving prison following 27 years of incarceration on the notorious Robben Island.

Did he have the best interests of the majority at heart, or did he give too much away?

When speaking to another writer about whether the rainbow nation experiment had failed, she quipped:

“Failed connotes an end. We are not at the end yet.”

It has only been 32 years since South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.

That number seems to matter here.

And then we talk about Winnie Mandela, who is either beloved or loathed depending on who tells her story.

In the States, I learned very little about her beyond the label “militant.” But when I speak to Black women here, many tell me:

“She was a Black woman who knew who she was.”

And somehow I know exactly what that means without needing them to explain further.

So, naturally, I’ve begun studying her life more deeply, starting with the documentary Winnie.

And then there’s Steve Biko.

His iconic text, I Write What I Like is now being translated into isiXhosa—marking, I believe, the first time the book has been translated into an Indigenous South African language. It has long been available in European languages and remains foundational to understanding Black Consciousness, and yet here we are in 2026 ensuring that his words can be transmitted in the languages of the land he fought for.

It was exciting to be in the room and hear people ask: How do you translate one’s being into words?

It was equally moving to hear Nkosinathi Biko speak about efforts to also translate his father’s work into Kiswahili.

He said something that stayed with me: that the life of Steve Biko and his commitment to Black Consciousness teaches us what it means to be bold and to stand firmly in who you are.

The goal, when you do that, I suppose, is never to be likable.

It was also fascinating to hear a scholar challenge the idea of English as the center of thought when he said:

“English is quite euphemistic and limiting.”

That makes sense to me. Many African words cannot be translated into English, which means consciousness itself cannot be confined to one language or way of knowing.

At dinner with new friends, I was told I need to visit where Steve Biko lived before I leave. I hope I can.

When I first read I Write What I Like, it taught me something about speaking plainly and standing by my words.

Given where we are right now in the world, it feels like a book I need to return to.

And there are more books to read by South Africa’s great writers.

In another conversation, someone told me that every South African winner of the Booker Prize has been white. They spoke about how difficult it can be for Black South African writers to gain international recognition outside of figures like Zakes Mda.

That bothered me.

And then I could feel time running out—not in some dramatic sense, but in the daily sense that there is simply so much to do, so much to write, so much to read, so much to witness, and so much to love.

These are some of the writers I want to read before I leave: Fred Khumalo, vangile gantsho, Pulane Mlilo Mpondo, Mosa Phadi, Shahana Rasool—and many more.

Joburg is complicated and beautiful.

And being here is making me want to grab hold of time and wring every bit of goodness I can from it.

It’s Mother’s Day, and today, I’m celebrating all mothers—biological and chosen—who show up every day in ways both seen and unseen for the families and communities they love.

I’m also aware that many of us carry mother wounds, and on days like this, it feels important to bring attention to this and do what we must to heal so the next generation can know a love that doesn’t diminish them.

The essay I’m sharing today from my archives reflects my own journey. I’m not reposting the full piece here on Substack, but more information on how to read the full article will be posted below.

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“Bless the daughters who sat carrying the trauma of mothers. Who sat asking for more love and not getting any, carried themselves to light. Bless the daughters who raised themselves.” ~Questions for Ada by Ijeoma Umebinyuo

“I failed you…”

My mother said this to me after I confronted her about my childhood.

That day, I had a clear image of the young girl I was, the girl I had tried to ignore in the hopes of moving forward. But pain shouts when it demands attention, and the suffering was palpable.

A memory flashed within my mind. I had tried telling my mother I was hurting somehow. All children have hurt they can’t quite explain, even if it turns out that it’s just an itch or a bruised feeling, but the need to have the boo-boo kissed means everything to the child.

That day I had found my mother occupied with something more pressing. And I, being the sensitive girl I was, figured that she hadn’t heard me or that I had disturbed her.

It seemed that I only existed to be cautious of the adults in my life who, at best, were preoccupied with a mysterious something and, at worst, cruel without reason. I existed in a world where children were things you spoke to. Tell them what to do, and they’ll simply do it, because what else are they there for?

The idea that children had inner lives, breakable hearts, and ideas of their own making was quite dangerous in my childhood. I’d soon learn that it was better to take a vow of silence and say very little. I was starved for the hunger all children have—the hunger to be seen.

Love requires attention.

It seems like the older we get, the more we have to reflect on those days when we were at our most vulnerable. We have to look back at the beliefs, habits, and people that shape us if we want to grow.

When I finally talked to my mother, I was attempting to grow out of a destructive habit I had learned in childhood: denial. If you don’t talk about a thing or name a thing, then maybe the thing never happened. Perhaps it wasn’t that bad, or maybe it was just a dream.

I was no longer talking as a child in need of her mother’s attention; I was talking as a woman in need of the truth. I was now an adult who hoped to be a mother someday, and a healer committed to breaking the generational curse of mothers failing daughters, women failing women, and humans failing themselves.

I poured out the heart of that little girl over the phone. She had needed protection when she was called names, or when someone hit her, or when she was touched inappropriately. She needed to know that whether she was a child or a girl becoming a young woman, she had a right to her body, mind, and spirit.

My voice cracked through the phone, but I told her anyway. To me, you have never been trustworthy.

She took a long breath and then spoke almost rapidly, like her life and our fragile bond depended on it. “I’m human; I falter. I never said I was a great mother. I know I failed. It looks like I’ve failed you many times. Forgive me.”

The pus ball that had always festered in my soul—that sore that kept reddening with anguish—burst.

My mother revealed something that I think all parents fear showing their children: humanity. At least I know for her generation, showing children a semblance of an emotional life was secondary to putting food on the table, and when you’re not raised on showing your feelings, you forget you have them.

It’s scary to admit you’re full of contradictions, possibly wounded, and that raising a child, no matter what the circumstance, is difficult.

In that moment, I understood what the word “grace” meant. It’s such an elusive word, and much better to experience than explain, but I know that my heart broke, love flooded in, and a burden was lifted.

Her honesty freed me from having to second-guess my existence, and it helped me understand the hardship of hers. The mirror I was looking through was no longer foggy. I could see my life clearly; it had texture, color, clearly defined lines, and a burst pus ball that needed cleaning.

I saw a clear picture of the precariousness in my childhood. It was like my spirit whispered in my ear and confirmed, Yes. It was terrifying.

So what do we do in the wake of failure?

My mother’s admission gave me a little taste of what it means to become a mother. You can love a thing and hurt a thing at the same time. I deeply love and adore my mother. I can only imagine the people and circumstances that failed her. I have a softness toward her and a softness for myself that has made my heart grow more space to hold the things I’ll never fully understand. Sometimes, it is what it is.

After ten years of doing what survivors of any trauma must do to clean their wounds—meditating, numbing, praying, therapy, journaling, blaming, finding community, practicing yoga, raging, and crying—I have come to accept the unacceptable.

We don’t tell our parents the truth about our experiences to condemn them; we tell them our experiences because we must contend with it. No matter how painful the purge, this raw material from living is the grist that reminds us to do better the next time around. And there’s always a next time around.

“I’m a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers.” ~Audre Lorde

This is what I’ve learned.

Sometimes you must mother yourself. In the wreckage, you learn how to give yourself the love and affection you hungered for in your most powerless moments.

This essay was originally published by Tiny Buddha and republished with permission from tinybuddha.com. Read full article here.

Over breakfast, I am speaking to two people about whether South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission actually restored the material and spiritual conditions of the Black people in the country. We then happen upon a conversation about forgiveness and the conditions for which forgiveness, one that uplifts and resolves, can heal.

This is South Africa.

Apartheid ended legally in 1994, and it occurs to me that the women I’m in conversation with still remember living in apartheid. I, too, am coming from a country that has not been able to fully atone for its numerous sins, which is clear from its recent refusal to acknowledge that the transatlantic slave trade was the gravest crime against humanity. All they had to do was acknowledge what happened in a historic UN vote, but even that seemed to ask too much of those in power. If my homeland can’t even acknowledge the depth and breadth of this transgression, and how it has pervaded everything we touch, see, and feel, I wonder, what does healing and justice require beyond the comfort of those in power refusing to do the decent thing?

And here we are in South Africa, this beautiful and complicated country where you feel a joy and a grief that you can’t quite explain. Forgiveness, I think, and the hopes for a rainbow nation, haven’t been the salve that was hoped for. I ask the people I’m speaking to: What do you think of the TRC and this idea of forgiveness? They mention that the TRC took the question of land rights off the table and that many Black people have been displaced from their farms. They also speak of the Black people picking grapes from white-owned farms. They talk about large plots of land for sale as they ponder who will buy it, likely someone with pounds, euros, or dollars. How much does the average Black South African make? I wonder. I can hear the disappointment and the grief.

We often talk about forgiveness as if it were a transaction. Show me how moral you are by absolving me of my guilt to prove we have gotten over this conflict. It becomes more about the performance of forgiveness, rather than an actual shift in policies and structures, which means it certainly doesn’t prioritize the mental health and emotional safety of those who must spill their guts to get the implicated party to see how wretched their actions have been. It’s a performance of appeasement rather than the work of restoration, which will never be a comfortable process for those used to comfort and rationalizing cruelty to secure it.

Honestly…how do you make a human realize that they are human, and therefore should not be brutal or dismissive of other humans that they, or their ancestors, have terrorized?

It’s a conundrum.

Another point is raised in our conversation. A woman says that she doesn’t even think forgiveness is a question that should involve white folks right now. An inflammatory thought, I guess, but I also know that it’s probably a sentiment people feel quietly. She says something to the effect of: “I think we need to talk to each other (each other being Black folk) as a people and sort ourselves out there, first.” And then I think of those times I was able to really heal and forgive, and it seldom involved the people who had a hand in almost ruining me. It involved people who could relate to me and were committed to loving me while they were trying to love themselves better. It was in those spaces that I had the chance to say what I needed without mincing my words to appease the conscience of the implicated party. That was the freeing part that led to a steady recovery. It didn’t resolve everything at once, but I was still able to taste the sweetness of life and recognize that whatever cruelty I had faced did not define me.

It was in that pressure cooker that I learned what actions were needed to make the structures of my life equitable and fair. And the truth of it, is that my recovery process never centered on those who had done egregious things. I had an awareness of them, even a love of their humanity, and an understanding that yes, they were on their path and eventually, life would meet them where they were at, however low or however high they were. But forgiveness for me was no longer a feel-good platitude. It was discerning. It was measured. It was clarifying, and it often released me from the relationship entirely. That’s where my freedom was.

But what to say of forgiveness as a political and social tool for an entire country? A history? A legacy of violence? I don’t know. But then again, I don’t think Black people would be where we are today if we didn’t have the insight to look at reality and say, I will not be devoured, I will not be erased, I will take what you have done and transmute it into something that will free me.

It was reading Tsitsi Dangarembga’s seminal book, Nervous Conditions, and finding that I identified closely with the characterization of Nyasha, the headmaster’s daughter, that made me think more deeply about what it means to be an ajébutter or a coconut. Many of us—children of immigrants who grew up in a different country than our parents’ homeland, who were sent away to boarding school, or who remained within our communities but found ourselves doing something different than the norm—can relate to having these labels foisted upon us as we were growing up. It’s the idea of being born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth, of being white on the inside and Black on the outside, and entirely unrecognizable to the people you pray will love you.

For me, I’ve always had this desire to belong. As I became more aware and attuned to the various power dynamics that seemed to grip my life, my desire shifted from hoping to find acceptance in the predominantly white world I had grown up in, to finding acceptance with those who looked like me and my family—the ones I knew, no matter how complicated our relationship, that I loved. This is the kind of predicament I could see with Nyasha.

She grew up with everything someone not in her position would hope for: an opportunity to live in England, a father who’s the headmaster of a mission school and has received favor from the “well-meaning” whites, an educated mother, and the golden ticket to leave her homeland if she should want. And since she’s already been abroad, it’s assumed that she will likely leave again. When we speak of post-colonial ruptures—the mess that colonialism left behind—we are often talking about fragmentation and dispersion, which means we are talking about those who get to leave and those who don’t. So, when reading about Nyasha, many would say that she has happened upon good fortune and should seize her opportunity, which means she should be grateful for what has been handed down to her by no real effort of her own.

So it’s no surprise that whenever Nyasha returns to visit the homestead, her cousin Tambudzai—Tambu for short—reads her as someone who behaves strangely. Nyasha is sullen and distances herself from her cousins, refusing to play with them as she did when they were younger. She is forgetting how to speak her mother tongue, Shona, barely conversing with her extended family in a way that shows kinship. Tambu’s mother—Ma’Shingayi—is a woman who has never once gotten to leave the homestead and is keenly aware of her position as a Black woman who must till the land to feed. She has seen her children get taken away to pursue “advancement,” which always means that they will learn white ways and grow more distant from her. She has endured the will of her husband and the various men in her life for years, and with all this to consider about her existence, the way Nyasha behaves is inconsiderate at best, disrespectful at worst.

Nyasha, who many in her community note as depressed, has a fragility that grinds on those who have already endured so much. So when Ma’Shingayi says that Nyasha suffers from too much Englishness, she’s not entirely wrong in her assessment. Nyasha’s behavior definitely reads as excessive if you see her through the eyes of Tambu and her mother, who are operating from a different center. In fact, in Nigeria when I was living there, people said this often: “forgive my excesses,” or “we will allow your excesses,” which was a recognition of a community having to bear too much of one’s individual habits and proclivities. And Nyasha—well, she is the queen of excess. As much as I care for her and know her ways intimately, I also acknowledge that there is something deeply unlikeable about all of this, and depending on who is assessing her, her very being could grate the soul.

I won’t say Tambu and Ma’Shingayi are wrong to feel this way, nor will I say that Nyasha is wrong to be the way she is. This tension reminds me so much of what we find in the Black diaspora today—the tension of whose center are we considering here, and whose particular history and ways of knowing are being validated? And what does it take to hear each other across these differences?

I’m thinking of all the South African and Nigerian films I’ve watched in recent history that have parroted how those of us from abroad—especially those of us from the U.S.—sound when we speak (sadly, like Valley girls with no sense). And I can never forget the experiences I’ve had with people on the continent mimicking how we sound to them. And I think, if I sound this way, I’d have a hard time listening to myself. And the sadder thing is that, if this is the way I sound to you, then that means I must sound like a stranger—an arrogant stranger…dear God…dear God…

Now imagine if one has never visited a homestead or their parents’ homeland. What if even visiting is a rare event? What then would someone like Tambu and Ma’Shingayi say privately after meeting these people?

In the past year, I have been surrounded by the death of ajébutters and coconuts. Not only within the African diaspora, but also within other diasporas—children of immigrants who became adults amid the contradictions of late-stage capitalism in the U.S., weathering the 2008 economic crash right after college while riding the high of seeing the first Black president win an election, while also seeing the backlash to that presidency, and the contradictions of living in an economy where wealth is concentrated at the top and imperialism is global. I’m thinking of the Occupy Movement and the Black-led movements I witnessed emerge around this time.

Similar to Nyasha, who was well-read and observant of the world she inhabited, many people I knew couldn’t turn away from the contradictions that colored every facet of life. Some of us found our footing managing the constant social and economic instability, while others fragmented even further, trying to manage the compounding weight of a host of contradictions—the biggest being Black in America, not really belonging anywhere, and trying to find freedom within a society that can leave one so exhausted.

I feel like it’s dangerous to say, because this is not the kind of news any of us wants to send back home, but it wouldn’t be the complete story if we didn’t tell you that some of us didn’t make it. Some of us died because of all the separation, isolation, and confusion that can come from being alienated and well, depressed.

As my peers and I enter our late 30s and early 40s, our conversations are increasingly about those people we thought had made it, who actually weren’t doing so well internally. We talk a lot about external success but not necessarily internal stability. So would it shock you if you heard some of us suffered from homelessness and addiction, while others—yes—“made it,” but are now rethinking what making it even means, and are doing everything they can to learn their mother tongues, return to their ancestral homelands—not to romanticize the situation, but to retrieve a bit of what was sacrificed for achievement?

“My parents always taught me that if people ask me, you should tell them that you’re a British-born Jamaican, but having said that, yeah, British is stamped on my passport and that’s where I was born, but at the same time, I don’t feel like I belong here, and if I was to go back to Jamaica, I would for sure as hell not belong there either… it’s crazy for the kids of the diaspora, we’re displaced man, you feel like you’re in limbo.”

From Cecile Emeke’s Strolling Series, documenting the lives of Black people across the diaspora.

This quote reminded me so much of Nyasha’s predicament, for so many of us can relate to this feeling of existing in a destabilizing limbo, and how tricky it is to find stability within structures that weren’t built to support any of us, no matter where we fall on either side of the Atlantic.

But also, I thought deeply of who I consider to be Nyasha’s foil, Tambu, who grew up on the homestead as the eldest daughter and was selling maize to pay for school fees because her father didn’t think a girl’s education was useful to the family. She didn’t have the luxuries that Nyasha had been afforded, but through lots of effort and a bit of grace, she was sent to the same mission school as her cousin, and in my opinion, would go on to surpass her cousin with her acceptance into an elite convent school run by white nuns. She too would leave everyone, including Nyasha, her close cousin and friend, behind—but what insights would she bring with her?

In the novel, what we do see is how Tambu’s mother goes to great lengths to transmit what she knows to her daughter. She never presents going away from one’s home and moving up the socio-economic ladder as the thing that will save her. She implies that there is a cost to taking on the ways of someone else at the expense of everything you know, subverting the success narrative. But it makes sense for Tambu to go to the white school because this is an opportunity that could help her and support her family, but now she must carry this opportunity and the wisdom of her mother, who has given her the tool of discernment.

There are a lot of us who have been saved by the words of our mother, or someone who told us to proceed with caution and to remember our values. I wonder if Nyasha had this with her mother, or any elder close to her in her life. In the book, what we see is Nyasha and her mother managing the will of her father, and Nyasha challenging everyone in the household with her outspoken nature, but she can’t seem to connect with the thing that will actually stabilize her just yet.

Tambu is grounded in something that’s hard to name. It’s not perfect. She too is the queen of being a “good girl” and is usually well-behaved, which means she reveres her elders, especially the successful men in her life, and overvalues the ways of white folks, but there are enough tools there for her to build a sense of self beyond what she’s been taught to mimic, if she decides to choose that path.

In the end, both Tambu and Nyasha are battling their nervous conditions, but it’s clear that both of them are negotiating structures of survival.

I can see the Nyasha archetype everywhere these days, especially amid the second Trump presidency. I think of many Black immigrants and children of Black immigrants I know who lost their jobs last year, when the Trump administration effectively gutted the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and froze foreign aid funding. I remember friends and colleagues posting on LinkedIn about their new reality—facing widespread layoffs, losing contracts and jobs—leaving many in a state of shock.

Having these jobs was how many people produced generational wealth while sending remittances home. Like Tambu and Nyasha who had their families depending on them, they were the ones tasked with uplifting the material conditions of their communities while also elevating their social status. But I’m not sure we thought of what would happen if these options for class mobility were taken away.

And I’m not only talking about those of us in the West, but also people on the continent and in the Caribbean who were the first in their families to get a good NGO job and then were told it was gone. I’ve heard these stories too, and they’re devastating.

What we’re talking about then, perhaps, is the myth of a perceived state of ajébutterness or coconutness, or of having arrived at a “better” material and social condition. I’m not saying that if one isn’t given the opportunity to uplift themselves out of a precarious economic state, that they shouldn’t take it. What I’m saying is that class mobility is a conundrum and comes at a cost, and it’s wise not to attach one’s identity to it, especially as more of us move into uncertain times. We’re negotiating a system of survival that, at any moment, could become fragile depending on the whims of those who run it. These class divides between us are deeply entrenched and also much more delicate than we’d like to admit.

I’m not sure it’s safe to call this preoccupation with conventional achievement an arrival, especially as more of us question what we are arriving into, and search to build systems that will keep us intact without reproducing structures of harm and further isolation.

Author’s Note: This piece was written at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, in conversation with a number of thinkers, writers, and artists whose work and presence have shaped how I’ve been thinking through these questions in recent months: Andrea Hairston, Mlilo Mpondo, Vangile Gantsho, Veli Mnisi, Mosa Phadi, Danson Kahyana, Shahana Rasool, Otonye Whyte, Freda Epum, Donette Francis, and Chikah Oduah. Our work is in intimate dialogue, and my hope is that you engage with their ideas as well because we don’t think alone.

While these conversations have sharpened my thinking, I’ve been sitting with the idea of ajébutterness for many years now, trying to understand what it means to move through the world shaped by its contradictions. This essay marks the beginning of a series where I turn to literature across the Black diaspora to think through these conditions more deeply.

My forthcoming short story collection, Ajébutter Women, which won the W.S. Porter Prize, will be published by Regal House Publishing on April 27, 2027, and continues this line of inquiry in fictional form.

It’s a rainy day in Joburg after a fairly sunny weekend. There have been sunny days that brought me outside—to the market, to matcha, to a university, to a show celebrating the life and music of jazz trumpeter and activist Hugh Masekela.

He said something interesting in one of his interviews played during the musical tribute—something like, freedom is the ability to enjoy your life. Of course, he wasn’t saying this in a vacuum, unaware of the material conditions his people suffered. He was very much aware, and that’s why he was composing, writing music, and telling anyone who would listen: this is what’s happening.

I remember listening to a live version of his song Stimela in my Intro to Apartheid South Africa class with my professor, now deceased, Professor Louis Wilson, when I was an undergrad. Masekela spoke of the conditions of the workers onstage in the land mines—how they were in the belly of the earth, digging for gold.

And when I think of Hugh Masekela saying that his people need freedom, that his people need joy—that it’s a birthright, their right to their humanity—I think, of course.

It was brilliant getting to see such talented musicians honor his musical legacy. And I couldn’t help but feel happy to sit in the audience and witness how folks in another part of the world honor their history, their hope for total freedom and joy. My goodness, what will it take to get free?

While I ponder that, here are other things I’ve been talking to people about and reflecting on:

1. This fellowship I’m in being all women…wow. I’ve been having conversations about African intellectualism and how it can so often be male-dominated. So the fact that we’re together for this time and aligned in many ways is no small thing.

2. The fact that my breasts have outgrown one of my favorite dresses. I better not wear it anymore before I give a show!

3. South African wine and day drinking—bubbly while eating very tasty fried chicken.

4. The joys of malva pudding.

5. Speaking with a colleague about Caribbean women writers. Right now, I’m reading How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair.

6. Zoe Modiga. Zoe Modiga. Zoe Modiga. What she did on that stage was a ritual.

7. Hugh Masekela speaking of his love of all music, and specifically Black music. Speaking of learning a lot from Fela Kuti, seeing how Miriam Makeba—another South African musical giant—was a key figure and supporter in his life, and seeing how he was in conversation with so many other musicians, deeply aware that their music wasn’t just about selling records but about having something to say.

8. Speaking of birds, I hear about three different ones throughout the day. I can tell by their distinct birdsongs. It’s kind of awesome. What are they talking about?

9. How vast the different regions of Africa are. In South Africa, I’ve been in conversation with friends about what patterns and styles are distinct to a South African context.

I arrived in Johannesburg a day or two ago. I can’t keep track of time, really, but a close friend in Maryland told me that I was traveling into the future. It was one of those long flights that had a layover in Addis Ababa, a place I had visited way back in 2019 or 2020. What I remember of that time was the beauty and complexity of the country. First, I was a bit surprised that many of the Ethiopians I met didn’t look like the narrow image of what someone not from the country might expect. When you’re spoon-fed a certain image of a people over and over again, you have to do the work of reminding yourself: this is not the only story. When I touched ground, I actually saw many Ethiopian women who looked like me, looked really, like everybody, especially in a place called Wolaita Sodo, where I ate Wolaita food on a trip with a friend. This gave me hope that somehow, no matter where you go in Africa, we do not have to be anomalies to one another.

So there’s always this idea of what actually exists in a place and what gets marketed as the only truth of a place. I couldn’t help but think of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story. My goodness, it’s such a sharp framing for how one should look at life.

Anyway, I was in Ethiopia when there was political unrest, and the government shut down the internet for a bit. We couldn’t access any of the apps, until we could, and then we got VPNs, and things never really went back to being the same—but we sure did try. We would make it out to Fendika Cultural Center, drink honey wine, and listen to Ethiopian and Sudanese jazz. That was some of the best music I heard.

But back to Jo’burg. I’ve been here before in 2022, and now I’m back in 2026 at a fellowship. I could speak to all of the fellows here all day. On our first day of meeting, we covered a vast amount of knowledge and experience. I can’t tell you it all because it’s too much to say, but together we are creatives, poets, healers, journalists, and scholars—and so much more—thinking about what it means to be global and Black in the 21st century.

Somehow we began speaking about what it means to heal after you have been separated from yourself, from your source. I think the brilliant thing about being Black, African, and woman-identified at this time is that so many of us are asking ourselves this question of who am I at the same time.

I think of my time in Greece at another fellowship and how I met such brave Black women who were asking the same question and figuring out how to express it—through verse, through analysis, through a play. I mean, isn’t that wild? Because many of these women were based in D.C. and New York, but yet we had to travel to a small town in Greece to find each other. And now I’m back in Jo’burg… meeting five brilliant women asking the same thing in different ways.

I keep thinking… why do we have to leave to find each other?

Well… maybe my community is global.

I’ll leave you with this: a scholar here is working on finding W.E.B. Du Bois in South Africa. I’m probably paraphrasing their words foolishly, but basically they’ve been doing archival research investigating what Du Bois thought of the South African situation. As you know, this is a thinker who in the 20th century said that the problem of the 20th century was the color line.

The gem I’m taking from our conversation is that these thinkers and leaders were in dialogue with what was happening in other parts of the world. It makes sense, considering that Du Bois spent so much of his life in Ghana, and that the idea of Pan-Africanism has lasted for such a long time.

We are always in conversation with one another.

I’ve always loved Caribbean writers, especially Caribbean women writers. I’m not an expert in Caribbean literature, but I do know this: many of the Black women writers I hold closest either hail from the Caribbean or can trace their roots to its islands.

Outside of reading Jazz, by Toni Morrison, for the first time in high school—a canonical text that made me think, as a sophomore, this is how I want to write—the book that truly stopped the world for me was The Autobiography of My Mother, by Jamaica Kincaid. The novel follows a protagonist searching for a mother she will never physically meet, and in doing so, excavates colonial history, desire, and psychic inheritance with an intensity that felt almost unbearable.

What has always struck me about Caribbean women writers is the clarity with which they write about colonial and postcolonial realities. Their work is searing and unrelenting, emotionally exact without being indulgent. This list is not exhaustive. It is simply a gathering of books and writers who have shifted how I think about literature and the Black global experience.

I am also firmly of the belief that African and Caribbean writing are deeply linked. I don’t experience them as separate categories, but as an ongoing conversation. While reading Mariama Bâ, I was also reading Marie Vieux Chauvet and Staceyann Chin. Many of the writers here are Caribbean-American, which gives this list a U.S.-centric tilt. I encourage readers to seek out others and to name the writers shaping their own reading lives.

Marie Vieux Chauvet

Haitian novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Her trilogy Love, Anger, Madness changed everything for me. Set during the regime of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, the books explore political terror through intimate family life. Chauvet does not shy away from brutality, whether of war, class hierarchy, or color politics, yet her work remains deeply interior. Few writers have captured the psychic toll of authoritarianism with such precision and courage.

Jamaica Kincaid

Antiguan-American novelist and essayist. I have already spoken about my love for The Autobiography of My Mother, by Jamaica Kincaid, but it bears repeating. The novel examines the absence of the mother with astonishing psychological clarity. There is something deeply erotic in its language, in its longing to find identity and belonging. Through Xuela Claudette Richardson, Kincaid interrogates identity, colonial inheritance, and the cost of independence with surgical exactness.

Staceyann Chin

Jamaican poet, performer, and activist. I first encountered Staceyann Chin as a student at Smith College when she visited as a poet, and I was jolted awake. She asked hard questions about what it means to be an artist with something to say. Her performance, full of movement and urgency, stayed with me. I followed her work through Def Poetry Jam and later read her memoir The Other Side of Paradise, which does not shy away from what it means to be mixed, queer, and a woman in Jamaica. Her documentary A Mother Apart felt like a full-circle moment, an honest reckoning with ancestry, motherhood, and belonging.

Edwidge Danticat

Haitian-American novelist and essayist. There is not a single Edwidge Danticat book I have read that hasn’t made me think, this is writing. Krik? Krak! was my entry point. Through call-and-response structures rooted in Haitian and African traditions, Danticat writes diaspora, love, grief, and political rupture with quiet, devastating power.

Lenelle Moise

Haitian-American poet, playwright, and performer. I first encountered Lenelle Moïse in college and later had the honor of acting alongside her in an Andrea Hairston play. Her precision and lyricism, on the page and in performance, were formative for me. Her play Expatriate, which features original all-vocal music, reimagines migration, exile, and Black interior life in ways that felt radically ahead of their time when I saw it in the early 2000s.

Audre Lorde

Poet, essayist, and Black feminist theorist. Sister Outsider remains foundational for me, especially The Uses of Anger and Uses of the Erotic. Lorde taught me that anger can be clarifying rather than destructive, and that the erotic is a source of knowledge, power, and deep connection.

Walter Rodney

Guyanese historian, political theorist, and revolutionary. I read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa in graduate school, and it reordered how I understood history, power, and development. The book offered no abstractions or euphemisms. It named exploitation plainly and traced, with devastating clarity, how Europe’s rise was inseparable from Africa’s systematic underdevelopment. Reading Rodney alongside learning about his life made the work even heavier. His commitment to the liberation of Black people extended far beyond scholarship. He devoted his life to political education, organizing, and collective struggle, a devotion that ultimately cost him his life.

Other Writers I Hold in High Regard

Carol Mitchell — What Start Bad a Morning
I’ve heard her read in DC, and she captures place and emotional atmosphere with remarkable ease. I look forward to what she publishes next.

Marlon James
Author of A Brief History of Seven Killings. James writes violence, politics, and masculinity with ferocity and stylistic range, expanding the scale of Caribbean narrative.

Aimé Césaire
Poet, playwright, and theorist whose work remains foundational to understanding colonialism, language, and liberation.