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28 days --- 56 ways to be Young, Gifted and Black: Ayumahani Sigu


How do you spend your days?

Taking time to jot down my dreams, hopes and fears. Accepting what comes and goes. Collecting sounds. Feeling the ground, the winds, the moon and the suns. Cherishing my loved ones. Preparing to complete my undergraduate program in the late spring. Affirming my black life’s existence and legacy/heritage as eternal. Thinking about collective black struggle. Re-reading the story black creation.

What brings you Joy? 

The possibilities of love-making-documenting-creating-remembering. The genealogy of black love and knowing that I was made in/by/through love. Skating with cousins. Dancing with my cousins. Learning about my ancestor’s technologies of communication. 

What is Liberation to You? 

Liberation is love being made possible and infinite. I know that love isn’t a utopian conception or idea. But Maya once said that: “Love liberates.” And when I heard that I felt that. For more than 1500 years, black bodies/communities have been the subject of desire, speculation, capture and torture by outsiders. I see liberation as being intimately connected with pro-black love and survivance of that love, and black bodies/masses having the ability to be safe from outside interference and violence. Technologies have to be used/shifted to free black bodies from capture-hood, devices of anti-black mind-control, and self-hate. I stand on tops the same earth as my ancestors who made my breath, my body, and this pro-black liberation love struggle possible. Liberation would be me meeting with them across the stars and oceans and them greeting me with open arms, singing and dancing under the light.

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