Toni Cade Bambara Weekend Freedom School for Lor Liberators

On April 10th and 11th, LifexCode partners with Muse 360, African Diaspora Alliance & Black Women Cultural Workers Archive to honor the life, work, and political imagination of Toni Cade Bambara!

Grounded in Bambara’s 16 Lessons explored in the documentary film, TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 min), the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work features programming at Morgan State University, the 360 House, Blue Light Junction, and other community hubs to reach diverse audiences and ensure accessibility.

Below, we share details about the TCB Weekend // Lor Liberators // Toni Cade Bambara Freedom School Workshop (ages 4-12 only) event, happening April 11th. You can sign up for the entire lineup here.

This Freedom School session is an intergenerational space designed for children between the ages 4-12 to engage with the legacy of cultural worker Toni Cade Bambara. This session transforms themes highlighted in TCB –The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing into tangible activities through nature-based art, trust-building exercises, and collaborative poetry writing. Students will explore the interconnectedness of community while creating take-home keepsakes. A concurrent offering for children of caregivers attending the TCB documentary screening at the Parkway.

What: TCB Weekend // Lor Liberators // Toni Cade Bambara Freedom School Workshop (ages 4-12 only)

When: Apr 11, 2026, 5:30PM EST

Where: 10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab!

Keywords for Black Louisiana at Rice University

This week, Keywords for Black Louisiana (K4BL) presented at Rice University, hosted by the Center for African and African American Studies and Fondren Library. Kaillee Coleman (Tulane, Associate Spanish Editor), Daija Yisrael (Georgetown, Assistant French Editor), Zaria El-Fil (UChicago, Digital Curation Fellow and Co-Project Manager) and Director/Editor in Chief Jessica Marie Johnson (JHU) represented the collective, and the audience included Alex Lee (@creolegenealogy) a Keywords Community Circle and Advisory Board Member, as well as genealogists, public historians, students, faculty and librarians from across the city.

Thank you Rice University for inviting K4BL to share their work!

Learn more about this LifexCode project at keywordsforblacklouisiana.org.

New Book by DSL Mentor on Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies

Congratulations to our Diaspora Solidarities Lab Faculty Mentor Aurora Santiago Ortiz and her new book, co-edited with Jorell Melendez Badillo on the future of Puerto Rican Studies!

“Interrogating The Future of Puerto Rican Studies brings together emerging and established scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine the disciplinary and epistemic transformations that have given way to new understandings of the field of Puerto Rican studies. Documenting the intellectual contours that have shaped the field of Puerto Rican Studies in the last decade, a diverse range of contributors survey the field with new lenses that are attentive to gender, queerness, disability, and Blackness among other things. A foreword by Yarimar Bonilla situates the volume in the context of the field’s shift, specifically in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, while other sections, including “Queering Puerto Rican Studies,” “Centering Blackness,” and “Disaster Studies and Environmental Studies,” as well as “Puerto Rican Studies in Broader Fields of Knowledges,” “Prefigurative Politics and Social Movements,” and “Legal and Political Disruptions,” create a vibrant archive of conversations taking place within the field of Puerto Rican studies with the aim of interrogating its future.”

Contributors. José Atiles, Bárbara Abadía Rexach, Yarimar Bonilla, daniela crespo-miró, Marie Cruz Soto, Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, Marcela Guerrero, Gustavo García López, Mónica Jiménez, Lawrence LaFountain Stokes, Marisol LeBrón, Pedro Lebrón Ortiz, Beatriz Llenín Figueroa, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, Sarah Molinari, Marisel Moreno, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Karrieann Soto Vega, Daniel Vázquez Sanabria, Roberto Vélez-Vélez, Joaquín Villanueva, Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza

DTA Space Features New Spoken Word

New spoken word essay by Decolonising the Archive artist in residence Mutulu …will be dropping April 10th on our artist residency platform DTA Space. Mutulu is an artist, actor and aspiring community archivist on next Correcting our Collecting Reparative Archive Course.

Follow DTA on Instagram @de_archive or website decolonisingthearchive.com to witness and be part of something purposeful.

Decolonising the Archive is a community partner and collaborator on Repair Nation (a Digitizing Caribbean Archives project) with Black Beyond Data Co-PI and LifexCode Assistant Director Nadejda Webb!!

What is the Amistad Research Center?

The Who Owns Black Data? team recently announced that WOBD III: The Fight For Black Futures will be happening in New Orleans in May, hosted by the Amistad Research Center. So what is the Amistad Research Center?

Learn more through the videos below and follow LifexCode on Instagram at life_x_code) to hear when registration for WOBD III goes live!!

If you’re a part of the ecosystem and have a note you want shared, drop us a line at admin@lifexcode.org!!! See you next week!

Subscribe now

Grounded in Bambara’s 16 Lessons explored in the documentary film, TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 min), the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Workfeatures programming at Morgan State University, the 360 House, Blue Light Junction, and other community hubs to reach diverse audiences and ensure accessibility.

Below, we share details about the Irresistible Revolutions of Cultural Work // The Toni Cade Bambara Zine Lab event, happening April 11th. You can sign up for the entire lineup here.

A hands-on workshop with Jen White-Johnson introducing zines as a tool for storytelling, documentation, and cultural memory. Participants will create their own zines while engaging Toni Cade Bambara’s lessons from TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing as prompts for reflection and creative expression.

When: April 11 | 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Where: 10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab.

Grounded in Toni Cade Bambara’s assertion that “sister is a verb,” and as Alexis Pauline Gumbs reminds us, “sisterhood is built by action, not by biology,” we approach sisterhood as an intentional practice of showing up, holding space in love, and tending to one another. Guided by Black Women Cultural Workers Archive founders Nadejda Webb and Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, with a collective poetry collaboration led by Julia Mallory, this space invites participants into a lived practice of sisterhood rooted in presence, responsibility, and care.

We call in the healers, the poets, the gardeners, the artists, the educators, the cultural workers, the ones the community names into the role. Communally, we consider what it means to live into that naming, to “sister” each other building shared forms of care that are accountable and sustaining. We ask in consideration: what has Mama Toni Cade Bambara taught us about deeply supporting those we hold dear?

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm est

Where: 3100 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab.

Welcome to Ecosystem Notes, where we share updates on what is happening across LifexCode labs, projects, and members! If you like what you see, please support LifexCode by sharing this newsletter, attending events, or just dropping a note in the comments!

Friday April 10: COLLEGE STUDENTS + YOUNG PEOPLE // Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue on Toni Cade Bambara

Join Ms. Moriah Ray, Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson, and Ms. Sharayna Christmas at Morgan State University for an intimate meeting of the minds as Black femmes and gender expansive folx gather to discuss best practices for leading while ensuring we are caring for each other. Sign up here!

This intergenerational dialogue will focus on defining our evolving roles within liberation work and lessons learned from the legacy of Toni Cade Bambara. It will also be an opportunity for students to learn about Toni Cade Bambara before the screening of TCB – The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing on Saturday, April 11 at The Parkway Theatre. The conversation will be anchored in her radical vision for community care and creative labor.

This event is presented by Muse 360 in partnership with LifexCode and African Diaspora Alliance.

What: TCB Weekend // COLLEGE STUDENTS + YOUNG PEOPLE //Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue. Sign up here !

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 12:00PM - 2:30 pm est

Where: The James E. Lewis Museum of Art, Morgan State University (2201 Argonne Drive, Baltimore)

For more information on other “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work events, click here!

Look for more drops from “What the Plan?” next week!

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Spring 2026 LifexCode Research Celebration Guest Announced!

Please join us for the bi-annual LifexCode Research Celebration and Black World Seminar takeover!!! Our semi-annual Research Celebration showcases the work happening across our ecosystem. In past years, this event has featured lightning presentations from lab members highlighting progress made throughout the semester and conversations and workshops with scholars including Marisa Parham, Alex Gil, Annette Joseph-Gabriel, Yomaira Figueroa, Laura McTighe and Women with a Vision’s E.D., Deon Haywood.

This spring’s research celebration we celebrate Dr. Amaka Okechukwu, Associate Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Okechukwu is the author of the award-winning To Fulfill these Rights: Political Struggle over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (Columbia University Press, 2019). She is also an award-winning AADHum Scholar and the creator of Black Belt Brooklyn: Mapping Community Building and Social Life during the Urban Crisis, an irL Humanities Lab digital project exploring community and gentrification in Brooklyn.

Also celebration presentations from Leana Mason (JHU), Black Beyond Data Fellow and creator of the liberation in abundance Writing Retreat, and pedagogy updates from the K4BL Collective (Keywords for Black Louisiana, worldwide) on their progress towards a K4BL Undergraduate Course Curriculum, with support from a Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation Grant.

This event is co-sponsored by the JHU Center for Africana Studies and the Billie Holiday Center for Liberation Arts.

Members, look out for more details over the LxC listserv. This event is free and open to the public and also hybrid. If you are not a LxC member and would like a link to join the discussion, please email admin@lifexcode.org.

Did you miss the recap?

Black Beyond Data and Diaspora Solidarities Lab members had a ball at the fifth annual CumbreAfro in Puerto Rico. Explore the recap post below:

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What is Who Owns Black Data?

The Who Owns Black Data? team recently announced that WOBD III: The Fight For Black Futures will be happening in New Orleans in May, hosted by the Amistad Research Center. But what is Who Owns Black Data? Relive the experience through the videos below (What is Who Owns Black Data? and WOBD Volume 2: The Black Past in Danger) and for more, follow LifexCode on Instagram at life_x_code)!

Interested in becoming a LifexCode member?

The seasonal call for researchers is closed, but look out at the end of the summer for the next term of antiracist and decolonial research and community opportunities.

If you’re a part of the ecosystem and have a note you want shared, drop us a line at admin@lifexcode.org!!! See you next week!

Grounded in Bambara’s 16 Lessons explored in the documentary film, TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (2025, 105 min), the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work features programming at Morgan State University, the 360 House, Blue Light Junction, and other community hubs to reach diverse audiences and ensure accessibility.

Below, we share the line up of events spanning the “What's The Plan?” // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work, with links to sign up!

TCB Weekend // COLLEGE STUDENTS + YOUNG PEOPLE //Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 12:00PM - 2:30 pm est

Where: 2201 Argonne Drive, Baltimore

Sign up here

TCB Weekend // Sisterhood is a Verb: Black Women Cultural Workers Discussion Circle

When: Apr 10, 2026 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm est

Where: 3100 Greenmount Avenue, Baltimore

Sign up here

TCB Weekend // Irresistible Revolutions of Cultural Work // The Toni Cade Bambara Zine Lab

When: April 11 | 11:00 am - 1:00 pm

Where:10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

TCB Weekend // Lor Liberators // Toni Cade Bambara Freedom School Workshop (ages 4-12 only)

When: Apr 11, 2026, 5:30PM EST

Where: 10 E North Ave Suite 5, Baltimore

Sign up here

The Maryland premiere of TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara will be held on April 11 at 6:30 pm as part of Maryland Film Festival 2026. The founding Director of Muse 360, Ms. Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, will moderate a post-screening conversation with director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. You can find tickets here.

We look forward to sharing further details about each event throughout the week! We send many thanks to partners Muse 360 (Lead Organizer), Maryland Film Festival (MdFF)/Parkway Theatre, Black Women Cultural Workers Archive (BWCWa), African Diaspora Alliance (ADA), Jen White-Johnson and The Diaspora Solidarities Lab.

Founded by writer and professor Mayra Santos-Febres and hosted at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras campus for the last five years, this year’s CumbreAfro honored the legendary Afro-Puerto Rican activist and scholar Miriam Jiménez Román.

As reported in El Nuevo Día:

“La cumbre, explicó Santos Febres, también celebra su permanencia en un contexto difícil para la universidad pública. “Estamos celebrando porque hemos sobrevivido hasta ahora en estas condiciones de ataque continuo a la Universidad de Puerto Rico, sobre todo al recinto de Río Piedras”, dijo. “Este es un recinto de pensamiento crítico y de humanidades, y por eso esta cumbre es sobre las humanidades afro”.”

Below, Guesnerth Josué Perea, Executive Director of the Afrolatino Forum, explains the important role humanities, humanism, and Black humanity play in our activism and our research.

Presentations from Eduard Arriaga-Arango, Alexandre White, Jessica Marie Johnson represented Black Beyond Data alongside scholar and researcher, Maria Cruz Soto, who discussed archiving Vieques resistance to U.S. military occupation. Valeria Acevedo, doctoral student at JHU, assisted the panel with interpretation and translation. The panel was moderated by Mariluz Franco Ortiz, scholar and professor and Co-PI of the Centro de Investigación y Archivo Digital en Afrodescendencia (PRAFRO).

Black Beyond Data is honored to have an opportunity to be part of this historic event! Despite travel issues that prevented the Amistad team from joining us in person, Executive Director Kathe Hambrick submitted a video on behalf of the historic research center.

Enjoy the images and short clips of the team presentation and follow LxC on IG (life_x_code) for the latest updates.

Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson:

Dr. Alexandre White:

Dr. Eduard Arriaga-Arango

Who Owns Black Data III: The Fight for Black Futures is scheduled for May 20th to 22nd, 2026

WOBD III will be hosted by the Amistad Research Center as part of its 60th anniversary festivities. The Amistad Research Center is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most comprehensive independent archives specializing in the history of African Americans and other ethnic, religious, and cultural minorities.

More details soon! Join us!

Who Owns Black Data? (a part of the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem) is a historic series of convenings held at institutions around the country that gather a distinguished group of scholars, librarians, and archivists invested in Black history, humanities and Black life to discuss, elucidate, and provide public answers to the question: who owns and controls the Black historical and cultural record?

We cannot wait to celebrate with the Amistad Research Center!

Learn more about WOBD covenings at wobd.blackbeyonddata.org.

Thank you as always to our Digital Artist-in-Residence for this featured art: Constellation #3// Cosmographs of Belonging Series by Soraya Jean Louis, 2023 (@ancestralalchemyarts on IG)

La Cumbre Internacional de Afrodescendencia es una conferencia internacional del Centro de Investigación y Archivo Digital en Afrodescendencia (Centro PRAFRO) de la Universidad de Puerto Rico Recinto de Río Piedras, financiado por The Andrew Mellon Foundation y liderado por su investigadora principal y directora, la doctora Mayra Santos Febres.

Cumplimos cinco años, y durante este tiempo nuestra Cumbre Afro ha servido como una plataforma digna y merecida para todos nuestros pensadores, generadores de conocimiento, productores de saberes afrocentrados en el Caribe, Afrolatinoamerica y nuestras diásporas. A lo largo de estas cuatro ediciones de la Cumbre, hemos recibido líderes desde Ecuador, Perú, México, República Dominicana, Colombia, Estados Unidos, Cuba, Nigeria, Sudáfrica, las diásporas africanas, el Sur Global y Puerto Rico. You can find out more here!

The WOBD Team will present on Wednesday March 18th!

Panel Title: Ecologas de Datos Negros: Archivo, territorio y redes comunitarias

Kathe Hambrick, Amistad Research Center

Eduard Arriaga, Clark University

Alexandre White, Digitizing Caribbean Archives y Jessica Marie Johnson, Black Beyond Data

We cannot wait to hear about Marie Cruz Soto’s research (Archivo Histórico de Vieques) and be in conversation with our moderator Mariluz Franco Ortiz!!!

Who Owns Black Data? is a convening in the Black Beyond Data ecosystem. Learn more about WOBD at wobd.blackbeyonddata.org.

This newsletter is too long for email, but you want to read it all! Go ahead and click the title of the newsletter to open it in your email browser. love, dr. jmj

A Year (and Two Months) in Review

In 2019, Tina Campt offered the following keywords while reflecting on the brilliance of Simone Leigh’s art, the genius of maroon strategist and enslaved ancestress Harriet Jacobs, and the radical miracle of Black femme insurgency:

vessel:
a container for holding something;
a person into whom some quality (such as grace) is infused.

surface:
the outside part or uppermost layer of something
(often used when describing its texture, form, or extent);
to rise or come up to the surface of the water or the ground.

touch:
the feeling generated by contact of an item
with the exterior of the skin;
to come so close to as to be or come into contact with it.

formation:
an act of giving form or shape to something or of taking form;
an arrangement of a body or group of persons or things
in some prescribed manner or for a particular purpose

insurgency:
an active revolt or uprising;
insurrection against an existing government (usually one’s own)
by a group not recognized as having the status of a belligerent;
rebellion within a group, as by members against leaders.1

Since 2020, LifexCode has used these keywords as a guide and framework for the work ahead.

What a different world we live in now—and yet not.

We continue to fight for our breath, our bodies, our students, and our neighbors. Whether on screens or in person, in Signal chats or on paper, we continue to do the best work we can to bring safety, love, and knowledge to our worlds.

We have grown softer, quieter—including with this newsletter—and more reflective in this work, honing our skills at collaboration, collectivity, community, leadership, and analysis.

How do we fight the drive for data, the commodification of our attention, the pressure to give our choices, our critical thinking, our creativity, even our joy over to those in power? As Black, Caribbean, queer, trans, insurgent digital humanists, we have a superpower. We know how to do this. The best of us have been doing this.

Toni Morrison, after the 2004 election of George W. Bush, described feeling despondent. A friend called her, and when she tried to explain the paralytic feeling of helplessness, she describes her friend cutting her off and shouting: “No! No, no, no! This is precisely the time when artists go to work — not when everything is fine, but in times of dread. That’s our job!”2 This quote is often attribute to her directly, but it feels important, as director of an ecosystem, to note that it was her friend, “a fellow artist,” who called her back to herself. adrienne maree brown and Sonya Renee Taylor, two thinkers whose work has guided the LifexCode Guides this year, also described the importance of togetherness in this moment, of calling to check on each other, of calling out to each other to witness the pain of this moment and find joy. In the most recent episode of How to Survive the End of the World, Taylor explains:

“The only way through this is actually in relationship, right? And part of it again, when I think about like, what would love have me do? Love would have me do the opposite of what’s happening. And so what’s happening is secrecy and shame and disconnection of human relationship. Then moving toward love looks like saying out loud, like connection, like unapologetically being not that.”3

Getting into FORMATION against enclosure has never been more important.

The Ecosystem @ Work in 2025

The Black Press Research Collective Gives Us the “Freedom to Create”

Led by Kim Gallon (Brown University) and Michael Guy (Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins University). The Black Press Research Collective, brought by Gallon and the Black Beyond Data Ecosystem to the Center for Africana Studies and Sheridan Libraries at JHU built a new educational tool for exploring the Black press archives collected on its website.

The New Directions in Black Press Studies book series, stewarded by Gallon and with Johns Hopkins University Press continues to accept submissions—if you have a book on the Black Press, please consider submitting!

The Community Health Informatics Data Lab at Brown University pressed send on two publications, “Tech Trusted Us” and “Voices for Health Equity.”

“This booklet, Voices for Health Equity, is the result of a year-long effort to listen deeply to health leaders in Providence—public health officials, clinicians, community advocates, nonprofit directors, and researchers—who are working every day to address health disparities in our city. Through semi-structured interviews, we invited them to share their insights on the patterns they see in health outcomes, the root causes of inequities, and the systemic barriers such as housing insecurity, food access, systemic racism, and uneven healthcare access that shape the health and wellness of our neighbors. Each conversation was reviewed collaboratively to ensure accuracy, respect, and the authentic preservation of the speakers’ voices.”

Download the publications here.

The lab also partnered with AS220, a Providence, Rhode Island community arts organization, to host a year long Technocultural Futures workshop This workshop offered arts education and leadership programming for artists ages 18–25, in Providence, allowing youth to explore the intersections of art, AI, leadership, culture, and social change.

Lab member Breanna Villarreal also published an essay in the Brown Journal of Medical Humanities about ways to use technology to fight racial bias and health disparities in women of color with breast cancer.

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab Continued To Center Community, Art, and Connection

The seeded lab Remains // An Archive offered a balm, with Slavery in Motion at the Baltimore Museum of Art in January. A collaboration between RAA, the research of Jessica Newby (Doctoral Candidate, Johns Hopkins University) and four artists, this event offered a touchstone for how slavery scholars, artists, and institutions can heal from broken pasts. Read the recap below.

The seeded lab Taller Entre Aguas celebrated the publication of its first edited volume, Water Proof: Olas de Memoria with Centro: The Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. TEA (directed by Sarah Bruno, Michigan State University) also hosted a summer retreat and sponsored a teaching institute on Black Puerto Rican Studies in collaboration with PROPA. Get your copy of the issue below:

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab participated in the fourth annual Cumbre Internacional de Afrodescendencia. The Directoras (Yomaira Figueroa, Centro/CUNY and Jessica Marie Johnson, JHU) presented alongside now co-Director of the Puerto Rican Studies Hub and DSL Faculty Mentor Aurora Santiago-Ortiz (University of Wisconsin). Joined by Katsí Yarí Rodríguez Velázquez and Joniel Pacheco.

The gorgeous art exhibition, Diasporic Collage, a curation by the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, found its way to a new home—Centro!!! The Center for Puerto Rican Studies welcome the exhibition home with an exciting opening, a healing reboot after its first opening. Read more below.

In the fugitive digital space, Taller Electric Marronage released its most recent dossier, a collection of writings and reflections on the theme: In a Time of War. Edited by Yomaira Figueroa and Nadejda Webb, the dossier also featured a launch and reading with the contributors. The dossier is available for reading here.

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab also hosted its annual writing retreat and Director’s Retreat bringing mentoring, networking and professional development to academics seeking guidance in managing large-scale research and institutional project.

Keywords for Black Louisiana (K4BL) Continues to Pave the Way (No, I’m not Biased!)

Keywords for Black Louisiana’s Public History Fellows (“Street Team”), a public history collaboration with Xavier University in Louisiana (XULA), participated in GenFest 2025 for the first time, at the New Orleans Public Library.

K4BL also hosted its first K4BL Incubator, an intensive one-day in-person at XULA where team members engaged in conversations and deep learning with invited Scholar Specialists.

This was also the first public presentation from the Keywords for Black Louisiana Teaching Fellows, a collaboration with the Xavier University Honors Program. Gratitude to Dean Shearon Roberts who has been a massive collaborator and co-sponsor, and to XULA one of our beloved institutional partners.

K4BL also hosted its fourth annual Black History in Louisiana Summer Workshop, building on our partnership with Xavier University. Our excursion this year to Baton Rouge brought us in direct connection with documents at archives and repositories across the city. We finished with our workshop and gathering with our Community Circle and Advisory Board, charting out the next phase of K4BL, building new strategies for sustainability.

The K4BL Community Team spent last fall supporting these same KCCAB members at events around Louisiana. Some of those events included the naming of Queen Dianne Honoré as a Louisiana Folklife Tradition Bearer, Phebe Hayes in her book launch at Octavia Books, participation in the Charles Deslondes Branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (current President, Malik Bartolomew, a KCCAB member), and presentations by Freddie Evans and Eva Baham at the 2025 ASALH in Atlanta, Georgia. Online celebrations of Denise Frazier, whose work with Jazz Generations New Orleans sparked joy all around the city and Kristina Kay Robinson, who released a short film in collaboration with Denisio Truitt and multiple publications including in the Katrina anniversary issue of Southern Cultures, also continued. Pick up Phebe Hayes , Were You There?: A Biography of Emma Wakefield-Paillet (University of Louisiana, 2025).

Last but not least, CONGRATULATIONS again to Keywords for Black Louisiana, awarded a Digital Projects Legacy Award from the American Studies Association’s Digital Humanities Caucus!!! Founding Digital Curation Fellow Ellie Palazzolo joined current Digital Curation Fellow Zaria El-Fil to accept the award.

Who Owns Black Data

Not far from New York, the mad genius Dr. Alex Gil (Yale) and the organizers of Who Owns Black Data, a Black Beyond Data collaboration, hosted their second convening—Who Owns Black Data II: The Past in Danger. WOBD II featured a slate of invited guests from the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, Louisiana to DigBlack: The Center for Black Digital Research at Penn State University to the Puerto Rican Organization for the Performing Arts (PROPA), and closed with a stellar keynote panel conversation with Tamara Lanier (Author and Activist), Marisa Parham (University of Maryland), Alondra Nelson (Institute for Advanced Study) and Yeshimabeit Milner (Data for Black Lives), moderated by Black Beyond Data’s own Kim Gallon (Brown University). The knowledge we need now—right now.

We Live Language Lab Unites Baltimore Through Art and Culture

Back in Baltimore, the We Live Language (directed by Nadejda Webb, JHU), a Black Beyond Data ecosystem lab, partnered with African Diaspora Alliance, JHU, Goucher College and Morgan State University to host a series of evenings of film and conversation around the work of Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando. The screenings featured speakers like Angela Carroll, Dr. Amaka Okechukwu, Dr. Guadalupe García, and Sharayna A. Christmas.

Underwriting Souls Research Memorializes the Slave Trade

Across the pond, Alexandre White (JHU), director of Underwriting Souls, made his way to London for the unveiling of a historic marker acknowledging Lloyds of London’s role in underwriting the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The work of Underwriting Souls (available here and hosted by Sheridan Libraries) played a key role in the research that supported activists in securing this memorial to lives lost over capital and commodities.

Learn more about the plaque below:

Hip Hop Rx Enters its Flow State

Working across institutions in Indiana, New Orleans, California and beyond, HipHop Rx, directed by Pyar Seth (University of Notre Dame), brought sound, mind, and body together. HipHop Rx hosted a creative retreat, Flow-States, and supported FocusRite in filming a short documentary about the experience.

At Loyola University in New Orleans, Rayne Antoine of HipHop Rx hosted a music camp with Loyola students, bringing recording artists Deanté Hitchcock and LEALE into the studio with them.

The lab also continued to put pen to page, including a special issue on the Hip Hop South by Southern Cultures (Summer 2025) edited by lab member Corey J. Miles and featuring a piece by Pyar Seth. In 2025, Seth’s work also appeared in The Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships and Transforming Anthropology. Catch up on the faculty spotlight on Seth below.

Last, but not least—What We Published in 2025

• Ryan Cecil Jobson and Christen A. Smith, “Black Anthropology and Its Archives,” Transforming Anthropology 33, no. 2 (2025): 61–63, https://doi.org/10.1086/738166

• Pyar J. Seth, “Black Screens, Real Dreams: Love, Hip-Hop, and the Streaming Economy of Difference,” Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships 12, no. 1 (2025): 15–34.

• Sarah Bruno, Essah Diaz, Daniel Morales-Armstrong, Jessica Marie Johnson, “Introduction: Entre Aguas/Between the Waters,” Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025).

• Water Proof: Olas de Memoria, Centro Journal (2025) (Taller Entre Aguas special issue)

• Hip Hop South, Southern Cultures, (2025) (HipHop Rx Member Corey Miles, editor, Pyar Seth, contributor)

• The Community Health Informatics Data Lab, “Voices for Health Equity“, edited by Breanna Villareal and Clarissa Thorne, Brown University, (2025)

• Breanna Villareal. “Black Women, Pink Ribbons: Representation and Care to Fight Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer.” The Brown Journal of Medical Humanities 3, no. 1 (Spring 2025): 26-27

• Alex Gil’s Aimé Césaire and Brent Hayes Edwards, ............And the Dogs Were Silent/......Et Les Chiens Se Taisaient, trans. Alex Gil (Duke University Press, 2024) received Honorable Mention, 2025 Lois Roth Book Award, presented by the Modern Language Association

• Zophia Edwards, “Colonial States and Passive Revolutions: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago,” Critical Sociology, December 25, 2025, 08969205251398534, https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205251398534.

• Zophia Edwards, “W. E. B. Du Bois on the Logics of Settler Colonialism,” Sociological Forum 41, no. 1 (2026): 32–36, https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.70025.

• Zophia Edwards, Fueling Development: How Black Radical Trade Unionism Transformed Trinidad and Tobago (Duke University Press, 2025).

• Yomaira Figueroa and Nadejda Webb, “[Letter from the Editors] In a Time of War,” [Taller] Electric Marronage, October 4, 2025, https://www.electricmarronage.com/war/2025/10/2/letter-from-the-editors.

• Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez, “NUEVAYol: Afterimages for the Diaspora,” CentroPR, August 13, 2025, https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/publications/nuevayol-afterimages-for-the-diaspora/.

• Daniel Morales-Armstrong, “Cimarrones, Rebels, and Plaintiffs: Strategies Enslaved Africans and Their Descendants Used to Resist Slavery in Puerto Rico (Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries),” Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025).

• Kiana González-Cedeño et al., “Forging Afro-Diasporic Bonds: Black Feminist Worldmaking After the Storm in the Greater Caribbean (1965-2017),” Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025).

• Yafrainy Familia, “Curating Transnational Feminist Solidarities in Born in Flames: Feminist Futures,” Meridians 24, no. 2 (2025): 357–78, https://doi.org/10.1215/15366936-11864081.

• Lauren Klein, Meredith Martin, André Brock, Maria Antoniak, Melanie Walsh, Jessica Marie Johnson, Lauren Tilton, David Mimno, “Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research,” arXiv:2502.19190, preprint, arXiv, February 26, 2025, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2502.19190.

A Living Ecosystem

These celebrations barely scratch the surface of what we tackled, created, and dreamed up in 2025. And, yes, this “round up” of the 2025 year of LifexCode work is two months late!

But we deserve to celebrate what we’ve grown—and that is a we. The LifexCode guides, all ten of us, hail from big state schools and elite private ones, Catholic institutions and med schools. Assistant Director Nadejda Webb told me once: “LifexCode is a living ecosystem.”

And it is. LifexCode is a living, multi-institutional, international, beautiful, breathing entity, its Guides ready to hit the ground running when needed, its Vision & Practice sessions fortifying its members against toxins, its community and institutional partners infusing it with nutrients, preparing it for the coming hurricanes.

The keyword FORMATION is the last one of Campt’s keywords for us to explore. It comes right on time.

We are in formation. We aren’t going anywhere. We are just getting started.

More soon,

Jessica Marie Johnson

ps. Subscribe to this newsletter to follow us here and keep up with realtime updates on IG @life_x_code

Established in 2015 and expanded in 2019, TALLER ELECTRIC MARRONAGE (EM) began when a group of Black/Latina, queer, writers, and artists decided to plot points across their escape matrix. Inspired by the petit marronage of our ancestors, we steal away on the electric platform, share our journeys and offer what we find along the way. EM is the Winner of the 2020 Garfinkel Prize from the Digital Humanities Caucus of the American Studies Association and is part of the Diaspora Solidarties Lab Projects led by Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez and Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson.

Please join us on Dec. 12th for a virtual reading with [Taller] Electric Marronage Writers, as they share pieces from the new microdossier, “In a Time of War.”

Edited by Lead Editor Dr. Nadejda Jahi Webb and Co-Director Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez.

As shared in a letter from the editors, “In a time of war, our writers declare, ‘I want to live…look for me everywhere’ CM). From wartime Punjab to Bahia, ‘pedagogies of endurance’ (GK) remind us of what is possible, even as they contemplate the enclosures we collectively exist within. May this microdossier root the affective whirlwind of this moment. May we look to each other and know, we are still here. With names. With stories. With proof of lives lived. With survival at the fore. The writers underscore the truths: ‘War doesn’t bypass universities’ (KM) and mothering is a radical praxis that is laden with grief, fear, and hope: ‘we birth a guerrilla-war-like way of survival, a théâtre de résistance’ (SC).

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Join us to hear from writers Gabriel Pascua, Janet Arelis Quezada, danah alfailakawi, Dr. Kimberly Monroe, Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, Dr. Gurpreet Kaur and Cristina M, and experincd in each piece in full💐

Use the QR code [or this link] to register and receive the zoom link!

If you’re in San Juan for the annual American Studies Association conference scheduled for Nov. 20th - 22nd, check out the following panels featuring LifexCode members!

For more details, see our panel listing below and the ASA Program here.

• Thu, November 20, 9:45 to 11:15 am, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 203 (AV) | Sarah Bruno, Yomaira C Figueroa-Vasquez, Kiana González Cedeño, Jessica Marie Johnson, Yafrainy Familia, Chair: Nadejda Webb | Non-paper session, “Visioning Practice: Spaces of Hope and Labor”

• Fri, November 21, 9:45 to 11:15 am, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 204 (AV) | Rosa E. Ficek, Natalia Hernández Mejías, Natalia M. Betancourt Malavé, Anais Couvertier Garay, Lauren Prince, Sarah Bruno, Chair- Kiana González Cedeño| Roundtable Format, “Digital Solidarities: Archiving Caribbean Lives in the Face of Empire”

• Fri, November 21, 1:15 to 2:45 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 202-B (AV) | Kiana González Cedeño, Shantee Rosado, Melanie Rodríguez Vázquez, with comments by Isar Godreau | “Feeling Empire and Facing the Future: A Reckoning and Rupture”

• Fri, November 21, 4:45 to 6:15 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 204 (AV) | Aaron Katzeman, Gabrielle Tillenburg, Dalina A. Perdomo Álvarez, Chair: Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez, with comments by Taína Caragol | Paper Session, “Islands, Invaded: Contemporary Art, Film, and U.S. Empire”

• Fri, November 21, 3:00 to 4:30 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 207 (AV) | Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Marie Cruz Soto, Cruz Soto, Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes, Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Chair: Marisol Lebron | Roundtable, “Interrogating the Future of Puerto Rican Studies Pt. 2: Resistance and Multimodal Avenues for Activism and Self-Determination”

• Fri, November 21, 4:45 to 6:15 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 207 (AV) | Amarilys Estrella, Paul Joseph Lopez Oro, Omaris Z. Zamora, Ashley Coleman Taylor, Moderator: Petra Rivera-Rideau, Chair: Yomaira C Figueroa-Vasquez| Roundtable Format, “15 years of The Afro-Latin@ Reader: Past and Future Directions”

• Sat, November 22, 9:45 to 11:15 am, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 103-A (AV) | Jonathan Toro, Pedro Noel Doreste Rodríguez, Adriana De Persia Colón | Constructed Paper Session, “Literary and Digital Puerto Rico”

• Sat, November 22, 1:15 to 2:45 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 207 (AV)| Petra Rivera-Rideau, Vanessa Díaz, Luis Rivera-Figueroa, Chair: Aurora Santiago Ortiz with comments by Jorell Meléndez-Badillo and Jade Power-Sotomayor | Roundtable, “DTMF: Bad Bunny and Sounds of Resistance in Puerto Rico”

• Sat, November 22, 4:45 to 6:15 pm, Puerto Rico Convention Center, 208-C (Analog) | Julián Posada, Lauren Klein, Jessica Marie Johnson, Nadejda Webb, Chair: Nikko Stevens | Roundtable: “Imagining Computing After American Empire”

See also presentations from one of our seeded out labs, Taller Entre Aguas!

@tallerentreaguas

Taller Entre Aguas on Instagram: "We invite you to join us this…

Congratulations to Keywords for Black Louisiana, winners of the 2025 American Studies Association Digital Humanities Caucus Digital Projects Award for Legacy Projects!!! Congratulations to Founding Director and Editor-in-Chief Jessica Marie Johnson and the K4BL Collective, past, present and future!!

Congratulations to the winner of the Digital Newcomer Award, Melanie Walsh! Thank you ASA!

Keywords for Black Louisiana is a collective of teachers, students, researchers, culture bearers, scholars, artists, and more building digital portals into histories of Africans and people of African descent along the Gulf Coast. Thank you to the National Historic Publications and Records Commission, Johns Hopkins University, JHU Sheridan Libraries, the Louisiana State Museum, the New Orleans Jazz Museum, the Amistad Research Center, the Midlo Center at UNO, the Historic New Orleans Collection, and all of our sponsors and collaborators, past and present, for your support for the work!!!!

Visit keywordsforblacklouisiana.com to learn more and find the links to our Document (docs.k4bl.org) and Story Sets (stories.k4bl.org)! K4BL is part of the LifexCode ecosystem (lifexcode.org).

Join us for a conversation with Mvskoke scholar and Indigenous digital humanist Dr. Laura Harjo (U. of Oklahoma) and an ecosystem celebration of lightning talks from Digitizing Caribbean Archives and The Open Boat Lab about on-going research across the ecosystem.

Dr. Harjo’s Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity won the 2021 On the Brinck Book Award. We encourage you to check it out beforehand if you can!

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When: Tues, Dec 2, 12-2 pm EST

Where: Gilman 308 & Zoom (QR code by request)

What: Dynamic conversations, w/ food and swag

We welcome you to COME IN Person if you can!

Dr. Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Community Engagements Method Mentor:

Aurora Santiago Ortiz is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Chicane/Latine Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on antiracist feminisms, decolonial perspectives, popular education, and participatory action research. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a Juris Doctor from the University of Puerto Rico’s School of Law, and a B.F.A. in Film and T.V. from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been published in the Michigan Journal for Community Service Learning, Tracce Urbane: Italian Journal of Urban Studies, Curriculum Inquiry, and in Chicana/Latina Studies Journal. She has also been a contributor to Society and Space, NACLA, The Abusable Past blog of the Radical History Review, Electric Marronage, Open Democracy, and Zora magazine. She is also a co-founder and member of the community organization Colectivo Casco Urbano de Cayey.

Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, Community Liaison:

I am Sharayna, an entrepreneur who has created pathways at the intersection of creativity and business, a cultural worker committed to world-building that centers community ingenuity, and a multidisciplinary performance artist exploring memory and regeneration.

My work emerges at the intersection of strategy and transformation, shaping ecosystems where art, community, and sustainability converge. Rooted in a restorative praxis, I cultivate spaces that foster innovation and collective growth, designing accessible, fluid structures that connect people and resources.

As an artist, I move through archival research, choreography, film, and assemblage to illuminate the temporal journeys of the diaspora past, present, and unseen. My creative practice informs every facet of my leadership, embracing the unknown as a space for discovery.

I have dedicated my work to creating ecosystems that empower creatives, foster intergenerational knowledge exchange, and reimagine sustainable artistic futures. Through Muse 360, the intergenerational institution I founded in 2004, I cultivate radical artistic development through civic engagement, interdisciplinary training, and diasporic youth study abroad. In 2017, I launched Necessary Tomorrows, a platform uplifting Black and POC artists by integrating advocacy, curation, and funding to create space for bold, transformative creative work. As founding director of the Baltimore Creatives Acceleration Network (BCAN) at Maryland Institute College of Art, I helped shape a framework that resourced Baltimore-based artists, equipping them with the tools to scale their practices and build mindful enterprises. I hold a B.S. in Finance from Morgan State University.

Dr. Tacuma Peters, Professional Development Mentor:

Tacuma Peters is an Associate Professor in the Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies Department at City University of New York, Hunter College. He has a PhD in Political Science from University of California, Berkeley. In his teaching and research he examines a variety of phenomena at the intersections of race, slavery, colonialism, and political thought.

Welcome, Dr. Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Ms. Christmas, and Dr. Peters!

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab is part of the LifexCode ecosystem. Learn more at dslprojects.org.

Since 1991, Gloria has created and published a series of documentaries she calls “Histories and Images of Our People” (AfroCubaWeb), including Oggun: An Eternal Present (1991), My Footsteps in Baraguá (1996), Eyes of the Rainbow/Ojos del arco iris (1997), Raices de Mi Corazon/Roots of My Heart (2001), and Reembarque / Reshipment (2014).

We welcome you to gather with us to screen and discuss Gloria’s films, intended to “plant a seed in the consciousness, mobilizing the minds of viewers within and outside of Cuba” and intervene in the continued erasure of Black histories.

Johns Hopkins University, Nov. 11th

Where: Gilman 50, 6:00 pm - 8:00 PM | Sign up here.

A panel discussion, ft. Angela Carroll, Dr. Amaka Okechukwu, Dr. Guadalupe García, and Sharayna A. Christmas, and moderated by Dr. Nadejda Webb, will follow the screening.

Angela N. Carroll is an accomplished writer, curator, and art historian who is deeply dedicated to exploring the legacies and cultural expressions of the African Diaspora. With an MFA in Digital Arts and New Media from the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and a BA in Visual Arts from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), Carroll’s academic and professional journey is marked by her commitment to amplifying the voices of dynamic artists. Her writing appears in key arts publications, including Hyperallergic and ARTS.BLACK, Sugarcane Magazine, Black Art in America, Saint Heron, BmoreArt, and FOAM. She brings an insightful, critical voice to issues of art history, culture, and archival.

Dr. Amaka Okechukwu is an Associate Research Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar engaged in research on social movements, race, Black communities, urban politics, and digital humanities. She is the author of the awards-winning To Fulfill These Rights: Political Struggle Over Affirmative Action and Open Admissions (Columbia University Press, 2019) and various articles. She has worked in public history and community engagement roles, as well as in social movement organizations. Her current book project concerns grassroots organizing and Black social life in Brooklyn during the 1970s and 1980s.

Dr. Guadalupe García received her Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Prior to her appointment at UC San Diego, she was an associate professor of history at Florida International University in Miami and Tulane University in New Orleans. Her research examines the intersections of colonialism, empire and urban geographies. Her work is also focused on free Black and enslaved peoples in Havana, Cuba. Garcia is the former President of the Society for American Regional Planning History. At UC San Diego, Garcia teaches courses on the cities and geographies of Latin America and the circum-Caribbean, as well as on digital and archival methods.

Sharayna Ashanti Christmas is a mother, womanist, abolitionist, multidisciplinary performance artist, and cultural worker whose practice exists at the intersections of memory and regeneration. Rooted in Harlem and shaped by more than two decades of artistic evolution, her work treats the archive as a living entity, using choreography, film, and assemblage to chart the temporal landscapes of the Black diaspora—past, present, and the yet-to-come. As a cultural producer, Christmas has cultivated intergenerational spaces that bridge history and futurity. She founded Muse 360 (2004), an institution dedicated to fostering creativity through civic engagement, artistic training, and Black diasporic study abroad exchanges. In 2017, she launched Necessary Tomorrows, a platform supporting Black and POC artists through advocacy, curation, funding, and strategic support.

Dr. Nadejda Jahi Webb is the Assistant Director of LifexCode: Digital Humanities Against Enclosure and an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Digital Humanities at Johns Hopkins. She is currently a 2025-26 Digital Humanities Mellon Seminar Regional fellow in the Price Lab for Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Webb’s teaching and research interests include 20th- and 21st-century African American and Caribbean literature, digital humanities, imaginaries, and representation. She earned a joint Ph.D. in English and Comparative Media Analysis and Practice from Vanderbilt University and a B.A. in English Language and Literature from CUNY Hunter College

Morgan State University, Nov. 13th

Where: Carl J. Murphy Fine Arts Center (2201 Argonne Drive Baltimore), 6:00 pm - 9:00 PM | Sign up here.

A welcome from Director of The Office of Study Abroad Moriah Ray will precede the screenings.

Moriah Ray is the Director of The Office of Study Abroad at Morgan StateUniversity. She completed her undergraduate career at the University of Maryland College Park where she studied Government and Politics with a minor in International Development and Conflict Management. She completed her Masters at New York University in Latin American and Caribbean Studies where she completed her thesis titled “Havana Twists: Negotiating Race, Power, and Hair of Afro-American and Afro-Cuban Women.” Her thesis research examines topics such as transnational solidarity, black hair politics, and colonial legacies. Moriah has had various travel opportunities throughout the globe studying and researching the African Diaspora including Barbados, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, and various other countries.

Goucher College, Nov. 18th

Where: Pinkard Community Service Center, Athenaeum, 5:00 - 7:00 pm. Please reach out directly for more information.

A discussion with Professor Irline François will follow the screening.

Irline François is an Associate Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Goucher College, Maryland. She teaches courses on transnational feminist theory, Latin American women’s social movements, Haitian history/culture of resistance as expressed in the arts, and Brazilian gender and migration. She was a Fulbright teaching/research award recipient in Brazil 2010-2011, at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She was also a FMS Mellon fellow at Cornell University in 2009, and a research fellow at the Women’s Center (Archivio delle Donne) at the University of Naples, Italy in 2007. Her areas of expertise include Pan-Caribbean women writers, Afro-Latin, Afro-diasporic media and film studies, and diasporic/women of color feminisms. Dr. Francois recently edited a volume on narrations and contemporary forms of historiography entitled Writings on Caribbean Writings, History, Literature, Art and Culture One Love. (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK, 2018.) She has translated from French into English, Mémoire d’une Amnésique (Memoir of an Amnesiac) by Jan Dominique (Caribbean Studies Press, 2008). She has also published several articles and a book chapter on Francophone, Caribbean, and Latin American women writers.

These events are sponsored by LifexCode: DH Against Enclosure, Diaspora Solidarities Lab, African Diaspora Alliance, the JHU Center for Africana Studies, the JHU Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism, the Black Women Cultural Workers Archive, the JHU Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, Morgan State University and Goucher College.

EM now debuts a new microdossier, “In a Time of War,” edited by Lead Editor Dr. Nadejda Jahi Webb and Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez. Below, we share a letter from the editors.

In June 2025 we invited submissions for a microdossier on the theme “In a time of War” which at the time seemed pressing and is now even more so as we bear witness to the geopolitical shifts that have left the worlds most vulnerable populations exposed to the disabling forces of war, white supremacy, genocide, enclosure, famine, disappearance, and destierro. We wanted to create a space to share reflections on the contemporary moment, from distinct points of view and lived experiences. We feel honored that the authors have entrusted us with their works and we hope that find the time and space to read these words with the sustained attention they deserve. Storytelling, after all, is a central feature of human life, a way through which we mark the world we live in and reflect on the phenomena of the ordinary, extraordinary, and unimaginable.

In a time of war, our writers declare, “I want to live…look for me everywhere”(CM). From wartime Punjab to Bahia, “pedagogies of endurance” (GK) remind us of what is possible, even as they contemplate the enclosures we collectively exist within. May this microdossier root the affective whirlwind of this moment. May we look to each other and know, we are still here. With names. With stories. With proof of lives lived. With survival at the fore. The writers underscore the truths: “War doesn’t bypass universities” (KM) and mothering is a radical praxis that is laden with grief, fear, and hope: “we birth a guerrilla-war-like way of survival, a théâtre de résistance” (SC).

Electric Marrongage (est. 2018) has always been a digital space for experimental writing, insurgent thought, and reflective collages, moodboards, and digital exhibitions. Through the digital we cultivate the cimarrón technologies that render us opaque, keep us vigilant, and expands our communities. The writers in this dossier stand clear, “Writing is never neutral” (GP) and that in practices of solidarity it “takes work to embrace vulnerability” (JAQ). Together, the writers in this microdossier remind us about the power of learning each others histories, of holding on to one another in a time of war. Across seas and geographies, by reading and relating we gather; “you gather me” says an author (da). Indeed, we feel for each other’s presence, breath each other’s air, celebrate our holy days of rest, and mourn each other’s loss.

In fierce solidarity and with love,

Dr. Nadejda Jahi Webb, Lead Editor

Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, Kin Curator and Co-Director

You can check out the microdossier here, with contributions by Gabriel Pascua, Janet Arelis Quezada, danah alfailakawi, Dr. Kimberly Monroe, Sharayna Ashanti Christmas, Dr. Gurpreet Kaur and Cristina M.

Taller Electric Marronage is directed by Kin Curators Drs. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez and Jessica Marie Johnson. It is part of the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, a member of the LifexCode ecosystem. Learn more at dslprojects.org

Read part one here:

The following conversation unfolds among members Awa Diagne Lô, Chinese Calhoun and Afua Baafi Quarshie, who held space for the exchange in St. Louis (Senegal), New Orleans, and Minneapolis, respectively. In Part One, they discussed the first of three lessons they’ve gathered along the way. Now, they explore joyful synergies and the cultural specificities of emotion.

2. Welcome unexpected joyful synergies: While translating across cultures can be challenging and introduce us to the unique aspects of a culture, sometimes, as Awa found in translating the quote below, you encounter unexpected similarities and synergies between cultures that spark joyful connection.

“When her grandmother was all dressed in her starched cloth that made the most intriguing noises when she walked, she came to ask her, ‘Please let us sit down, my lady.’”

Awa: There’s a little segment. I mean, this first one was like in terms of accuracy, I wasn't getting to the meaning, but there were some things I had fun translating into Wolof, like one of them was the starch cloth, because Wolof has a term for it. So I was laughing when I saw it. We have a term for it. Yeah, we say it. We say yere yu ñu gome: clothes that are starched. And I asked my mom what sound it makes. My mom said it's the kàdd kàddaaral. We put the product in the batik cloth. In Senegal, people wear a bazin (batik cloth). You cannot worship without putting it on during Eid and other celebrations. You see, when the men wear it, it's almost like it's a structure by itself. And it gives the clothes' shape. It doesn't just drape, it has structure. So yeah, you need it. And if you wash it without starching it, it looks bad. Yeah, for sure we have the expression. Same for the sentence, “Esi’s heart sank,” that’s also perfect in Wolof. We have an expression for your heart sinking. You would say xòl bu ne rës. If we say, jom, it means to have courage. So it's like your courage is down on the floor. It was really nice, guys. I had fun. It was really cool translating those parts.

3. The language of emotion can be very culturally specific: How many words and meanings exist in different cultures for specific emotions? In the exchange below, we discovered the many ways one can express hate, love, and attraction in Wolof, Twi, and Swahili. The English text is deceptively simple: “So exactly what was it about Oko that repelled her so much, and what was it about Ali that attracted her?” A straightforward question in English ignited the rich conversation below.

Awa: The other word I had questions about was the choice for repel. “Repelled her so much.” I thought, 'How am I going to translate" repelled "?' That's such a strong English word. I didn't want to do anything with the person, but I felt I was cheapening it if I said 'bañ.' Because bañ is closer to hate. In Wolof Bani is to hate. It also means to refuse something. But I felt that wasn't enough to cover what was said here, you know? So curious about you approached it?

Afua: So, for me, the word that immediately came to mind is this word, nyan. It's an expression of like, ni ho yɛ mi nyan. And it's like, I'm disgusted by this. Like, it's not necessarily hate. Something about this person, just …  it's almost … actually, the word nyan, literally translated, means it smells bad. Like food that has gone bad.

Awa: Wow. Yeah, that's some hate right there. 

Chenise: Literally, they repel, like, it's like making you want to move away from it.

Afua: Move away from. Right? Because she uses repulsion and attraction, right? Which in English are actual opposites. If you're thinking about the magnetic. And it's physical in a certain way, but it's also like: eew nipa wei ho y3 mi nyan, so there's nothing about this person I like.

Awa: So Wolof is weirdly precise in some cases. And this is one of those cases, because depending on the brand or level of hate, it will think. So again, I think I will not use the word “bañ”, but another one that is even stronger. If you say, for example, this, this makes me feel outraged. You would say “lif, dafay buddi sama xol”,  like it uproots my heart. Basically ... But still, I feel like this is not like 100% fit in the meaning, the way I feel in English. Yes, it's a profound disgust, but I'm not finding it in Wolof. I don't know why.

Afua: Because I think that she uses hate later on in the text, right? Like when she talks about how the sisters and the mother and whoever feel about her, they hate her, right? It's different. So she uses repel, then hate. And so the reason why I went with it is that the repel gives it a physical connotation. Because then we move into attraction for Ali, which again is like I'm attracted to Ali, not so much to Oko, because, ew, you know?

Awa: Yeah, that part will be really hard to grasp. I mean what I had before, when I mentioned it today; I said something like “Lan moo ko mèttiwoon,” if you remember. Like “Lan moo ko mèttiwoon dëgëntaan”? Uh, what was truly hurting her? And because in my culture, when you ask somebody like, let's say I'm sitting moping and I'm sad, somebody will ask me “Lan moo la mètti” ‘what is hurting? What is hurting in you? And it's not necessarily a physical hurt. Basically, what's wrong? And then, if I say it's “Lan moo ko mèttiwoon dëgëntaan” “tell me, like for real, what is exactly the problem now?” So you're getting at the essence of it. So that's what I did, because I try not to look too much at the English and just naturally visualize myself in a situation where I would say, but yeah, I don't know. Yeah, that physical aspect would be hard for me to put in Wolof for sure. Yeah, that's brilliant. English allows you to do it here really well with the double meaning.

Afua: And I think if you factor in the fact of the rape, it makes it even more so. Because it’s his final sin, it wasn't his only sin. But his final one was raping her. It was very physical, as if he was saying, you think you have a better job, you think you do all these things. But physically, I'm a man and I'm stronger than you. I can overpower you, and I can do what I want.

Awa: And maybe something else that would work in Wolof would be “soof”, because, do you know, Chenise, you remember. It means “annoying.” If I say soof’, it's like you're annoying. But it has another figurative meaning, for if you're eating a meal and you start feeling disgusted, you know that feeling where you're like, ‘oh, I can't eat it anymore?’ That's the “soof” feeling. So, if you say a person is like that, it can mean either that the person is annoying or that you're done with this person.

Afua: Oh, I think that's the one. Yeah. That's the one.

Awa: I'm going to tell my mom and see if she's going to catch both meanings.

Afua: Chenise, what did you use?

Chenise: Because the word repel, like, I mean, yeah, I know it's English, but it's the. If we're thinking that this is a conversation, then it would be the grandma who asked it and not Esi. I don't have a word for repel. I skipped over it. I have a word for 'attract,' but the word for 'attract' is actually the word for 'interested,' kuvutiwa na. To be interested in. What made you so interested in him? So I was thinking, what's the opposite of that? And so I was thinking, maybe I can use the verb for what bores you so much about him, or what makes you tired, kukuchosa. I think that would work. But I just feel like in the context of the book, maybe those words don't work the best, but I'm thinking in terms of, what's the best opposite for attract? I'm not entirely sure what I would put. It's just empty.

Awa: It's funny you chose that, because the word I chose in Wolof is loaded. Definitely. Like I use the hemmeem. Which is used only when you're infatuated with the person. That's what also distinguishes it, just like Arabic, it has a very specific word for being in love with a person, being infatuated with a person, or simply liking a person. So those are three different words in Wolof. I'm not sure. But I wasn't sure if that was also appropriate. 

Afua: I think so, because I think up until this point, they're not taking her interest in Ali seriously. It's like they're genuinely baffled. Like, what is this thing? That's interesting, because now I'm going to reconsider what I used for the attraction.

Awa: What did you have for that word?

Afua: I was not sure what word to use. So I used a phrase: dɛn na ɛsɔ w’ani wɔ ni ho? Like, what is it about this guy that makes you happy, like, satisfies something in you?

Awa: We all three went in different directions. We had, like, a different flavor.

Afua: I like the slow translation.

---

The Translation Lab enacts diasporic solidarities and witnessing through a translation practice rooted in Afro-feminist ethics, African intellectual traditions and knowledge ways, and decoloniality. The Translation Lab is housed in the Community Knowledge Lab in The Diaspora Solidarities Lab (DSL).

The Diaspora Solidarities Lab is part of the LifexCode ecosystem.

We are also excited to announce the publication of our catalogue highlighting the art exhibitions, Diasporic Collage: Puerto Rico and the Survival of a People and Coastal Relations: Enacting Diaspora. This limited-edition catalogue includes high resolution digitally printed photographs of the artworks accompanied with essays written by acclaimed scholars and researchers in the fields of Puerto Rican and Ethnic Studies to reflect on the work of each artist. ¡Cómpralo ahora - while supplies last!

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Additionally, be sure to RSVP for our upcoming events related to our exhibitions on view. On October 7th, the Data Hub team will be hosting a virtual session discussing their findings from their latest report on Lincoln Square and San Juan Hill. On October 22nd, Martin Espada alongside a multi-generational cohort of acclaimed Nuyorican photographers including Máximo Colón, David Gonzalez, and Erika P. Rodriguez will be joining us to honor the legacy of Frank Espada and the practice, vision, ethics, and futures of Nuyorican social documentary photography.

Finally, if you haven’t yet, plan your visit to come see our exhibitions before they close! ¡Te esperamos!

Plan your visit to CENTRO Gallery

CENTRO is the host institution, with JHU, of the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, co-directed by Drs. Yomaira Figueroa and Jessica Marie Johnson. Learn more dslprojects.org. The DSL is part of the LxC ecosystem.

“Water Proof”: Exploring the Spring 2025 CENTRO Journal on Afro-Puerto Ricans

In a moment when histories of marginalized peoples are being deliberately erased—alongside the ongoing erasure of Black Puerto Ricans—this webinar dives into a special issue of the CENTRO Journal offering a multidisciplinary approach to thinking about Black Puerto Rican pasts, presents, and futures.

Join moderator Sarah Bruno, and panelists Daniel Morales-Armstrong, Milagros Denis-Rosario, and Isar Godreau, as we dive into the Spring 2025 CENTRO Journal Water Proof: Olas de Memoria, guest edited by members of the Black Puerto Rican collective Taller Entre Aguas,

Water Proof: Olas de Memoria elevates and invites scholars of Afro-Puerto Rican history and memory to remind readers that we are part of a Black intellectual tradition of cimarronaje (marronage) and world-making. Throughout this collection, we expand on “Black Rican studies” as a subfield that adjoins Puerto Rican studies to broader discourses in Africana (Black studies in the US and in the larger diaspora) and Caribbean studies.

Image Credit: Cuánto aguanta una columna, Nitzayra Leonor, 2023, Digital Collage and X-Ray

Join us TODAY for a conversation exploring the special issue, moderated by TEA member and Co-Editor Dr. Essah Diaz, and with Dr. Daniel Morales-Armstrong (TEA, Co-Editor) and Dr. Isar Godreau, one of the contributors.

Free Event - Click here for tickets

Click for Tickets

CENTRO JOURNAL

SPRING 2025 • VOLUME XXXVII • NUMBER 1

WATER PROOF: OLAS DE MEMORIA

GUEST EDITORS: Sarah Bruno, Essah Díaz, Daniel Morales-Armstrong, and Jessica Marie Johnson

Introduction: Entre aguas/Between the Waters

Sarah Bruno, Essah Díaz, Daniel Morales-Armstrong, and Jessica Marie Johnson

Recuerdo: Blackness, Memory, and the Racial Contract in Puerto Rico

Shantee Rosado

Colorismo en la educación: colonialidad y blanqueamiento en textos escolares

Isar Godreau, Mariluz Franco Ortiz, Gabriela Ortiz Laureano, Andrea M. Texidor Cintrón, and Rafael Capó

Pioneers in Their Own Right: Afro-Puerto Ricans at Tuskegee Normal School and Howard University

Milagros Denis-Rosario

Cimarrones, Rebels, and Plaintiffs: Strategies Enslaved Africans and their Descendants Used to Resist Slavery in Puerto Rico (Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries)

Daniel Morales-Armstrong

Forging Afro-Diasporic Bonds: Black Feminist Worldmaking After the Storm in the Greater Caribbean (1965-2017)

Kiana González Cedeño, Lauren Prince, Anais Couvertier, and Teona Williams

Lessons in the Water: Late Nineteenth Century Afro-Puerto Rican Survival and Ancestral Memory

Ashley Coleman Taylor

Painting Rematriation: Reflections from Year Ten in Borikén
Yasmín Hernández

BOOK REVIEWS

Invisibility and Influence: A Literary History of AfroLatinidades, by Regina Marie Mills

Reviewed by Rebeca L. Hey-Colón

La otra Julia, by Mayra Santos Febres

Reviewed by Vanessa Pérez-Rosario

The Story of What Is Broken Is Whole: An Aurora Levins Morales Reader, by Aurora Levins Morales

Reviewed by Jessica N. Pabón-Colón

Raising the Living Dead: Rehabilitative Corrections in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, by Alberto Ortiz Díaz

Reviewed by Caroline Parker

Taller Entre Aguas is a seeding microlab of the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, part of the LifexCode ecosystem. Learn more at dslprojects.org.

Over the Spring 2025 semester, the Translation Lab has been reading and slowly translating Chapter 14 of Ama Ata Aidoo’s Changes: A Love Story. Changes is set in 1980s Accra, Ghana, and follows the story of Esi, a young, professional woman navigating the tensions between societal expectations and personal ambitions. These tensions are thrown into sharp relief during a conversation between Esi and her elders, particularly her grandmother, who struggles to understand Esi’s life choices. Particularly baffling to the old woman is Esi’s decision to remarry and become her lover Ali’s second wife after divorcing her husband, Oko. We’ve been making our way through the first 300 words of the chapter, which read:

“While Ali was trying to sort himself out in Accra, Esi had decided to go home one weekend and be with Ena her mother and Nana her grandmother. She had set out very early from the city and arrived to find them getting ready to go to church. So she was thinking that after the usual commotion that greeted her arrival had died down and everybody had gone she would just go and get some sleep. But that’s not how things worked out. When her grandmother was all dressed in her starched cloth that made the most intriguing noises when she walked, she came to ask her, ‘Please let us sit down, my lady.’ Esi’s heart sank. She realised that her grandmother had decided that this was the morning to get some confessions out of her. And she was not going to wait until after the morning service was over. She was familiar with the line. So exactly what was it about Oko that repelled her so much, and what was it about Ali that attracted her? So far, she had succeeded in not yielding much at interrogations. Not because she hadn’t thought those issues through. Deep down in her being, she feared that whatever her reasons were, they would not be considered respectable enough to tell anybody else about. But then, throughout her reasonably long life, Nana had never before given up on anything. She was determined to get something out of Esi, and this morning she did. Esi told her that Oko had been the only man in his home, or at least, one of the few men there. So there were too many women around him who did not like her. They hated her, she told the old lady. Who were these women, her grandmother wondered? According to Esi, it was his mother, his other mothers, his sisters.”

Over many conversations about the text, we have ruminated on the cultural specificities of language, the differences in translating genres, and the richness of linguistic expressions. As Changes is a literary work, we have found that beyond the words written on the page, the emotions, imagery, and essence of Aidoo's message are even more critical to understand. In other words, the textural depth of the story demands a corresponding depth of engagement. Individually and communally, we have engaged and wrestled with the text, sometimes painfully, sometimes humorously, and always enthusiastically. Here is the first of three lessons we’ve learned.

1. Translation happens in community: At the Translation Lab, we approach all text communally. While we engage with our chosen text individually and asynchronously, we cement our translations in our weekly discussions, where we share the unexpected challenges and joys of translating texts that include language and cultural subtext and textures that are sometimes familiar and unfamiliar. Translating in community provides space for us to broaden and deepen our thinking about the text, walk through the ethical and practical aspects of translation, and learn the specificities of the languages in which we work—Swahili, Twi, and Wolof. Ultimately, we translate in community, recognizing and respecting the nature of language as constructed and embedded in communities and cultures. The excerpts from our meeting notes below serve as a testament to the richness of the exchanges and learning that occur within our community.

Awa: I had a question about the segment where the grandma said she was not going to wait until after the morning service was over. And then “she was familiar with the line.” The “line” part was creating issues for me on how to translate it.

Afua: That was hard for me, too, because I was like, does she mean she knows that if she doesn't get the answers now, Esi is going to evade later, or she's going to miss her chance. Which is how I eventually was like, yeah, I think that's what she's saying. And again, this is something that Ghanaians often say. And they say things like, oh, mi nim saa line no. You know, like I know that line. So it's basically like I'm onto you.

Awa: Okay. Well, that confirms my suspicion.

Afua: Because if you also link it to the fact that Esi felt like she could sleep, they'd go to church, and then they'd come back, and then maybe they'd talk. And consider that up until this time, when they asked a question, she'd been evasive and hadn't answered questions. And so the old woman thinks, 'Okay, I know this is your plan, and I'm on to you.' So we're talking right now. That's how I read that.

Awa: I also had the idea cross my mind about who was saying she was familiar with the line. Who's the she? I also thought for a second that it was Esi who was familiar with the line. If you go up to the line “please, let's let us sit down, my lady,” one can tell that she's familiar with that line, which means that she's gonna get a verbal beating. I couldn't tell who the “she” was. The other thought I had was what you said, as in the grandma can sense that she might evade. So I don't know which one it is. Who's the subject?

Afua: That's interesting, because I hadn't thought about the second possibility at all.

Awa: I may need to see it in the book because my translation management system divides it into segments. So, that disconnect is sometimes in my head. Maybe in the book, it shows a different iteration.

Afua: No, it doesn't, it's the same. It's the same thing because I used the book.

Chenise: I'm rereading it because I'm like, wait, how did I interpret this before? And I think for me it read: “She was not going to wait till after the morning service was over. She was familiar with the line.”

Afua: Because she's on Esi now, because she says “Esi’s heart sank. She realized that her grandmother had decided that this was the morning to get some confessions out of her, and she,” the grandmother, “was not going to wait after the morning service was over. She was familiar with the line.”

Chenise: Also, realizing that in my translation, that sentence is just not there. I jump over it. And then I'm talking about Oko. Because I really missed that whole sentence.

Afua: Because I think right afterwards, the grandmother is asking, okay, so what is it about Oko that repels you so much? What don't you like about him? Who is the object?

Awa: It's so ambiguous to me. I think my gut is telling me Esi is familiar with the line. And that line here is “sit down, my lady”. It is possible that I'm also projecting. Because in my culture, if an older person tells you, “Come, I need to talk to you,” you're done for! Your heart would sink immediately. So when I read it the first time, that's what came to my mind because that line meant that, yeah, Esi knows her time of reckoning has come and she needs to provide explanations to her grandmother, she needs to account for her actions.

Chenise: So you think the ‘she’ was the grandma? I guess what I was thinking was, what is she familiar with? Like what was happening on repeat. And so when she said she was not going to wait till after the morning service was over, it made me think maybe she's used to waiting until this morning service is over. She's [Esi’s] used to just being able to arrive and sleep, right?

Awa: That line, that line. What is that line? That's why it makes me think it might be that. That was the sentence the grandma told her.

Afua: So I don't think “that line” refers to “Please let us sit down, my lady.”

Awa: Which one do you think it refers to?

Afua: See, I sort of detached it, but the minute I just said this, I'm like, oh, I get what you're saying. But then I feel like if she were saying that, wouldn't she have written it differently?

Awa: If it's an inner thought of Esi, it would be written like this, because, depending on where I start reading, the interpretation changes. If I start with, “but that's not how things worked out.” And then, when Nana came and asked her, “Please let us sit down, my lady.” Then, I am Esi, and I hear that, so my heart sinks, and I'm realizing my grandma had decided to do this this morning, and she's not going to wait.

Afua: I agree with you. Do you know why I agree with you? Now, this part, “she realized that her grandmother had decided that this was the morning to get some confessions.” And I think that sentence is because of the line, “Please let us sit down, my lady,” because it's a benign sentence. So why would her heart sink? And then she's like, oh yeah, this one is not going to let me go until she has gotten all of the tea out of me. So then it's like okay, she knows this is what's going to happen because she's heard this before.

Awa: Yes.

Afua: I agree with you.

Awa: The challenge is that she changed the point of view (POV). One is third person, and I was so confused reading it because when you say “when her grandmother Nana,” that's the narration voice, right? And her narration voice, she realized that it's a narration voice in relation to Esi. And then it was not going to wait. That's a P.O.V. of the grandma.

Afua: But is it though? Because if you're reading it the way you're saying, then “she was not going to wait until the morning” is Esi's perception of what her grandmother is doing.

Awa: What is meant here is that her grandma was not going to wait until the morning. But Esi herself was familiar …

Afua: … is familiar with the line.

Awa: But this is very awkward. I'm going to say, if I were the editor on the English translation, I'd be like, this is so confusing. Let's remove this everywhere, but maybe the author did it on purpose. And that's a linguistic tool.

Afua: I mean, this being her, I can see why it's like that because, until I was translating it, I've never actually clocked it. You know, like I, you just sort of go over it like okay, fine, they’re about to have a chat.

Awa: All of it depends on how we interpret the following line. After she was familiar with the line. “So exactly what was it about?” This is the inner thought again of the grandma. But from the POV of Esi, right?

Afua: No, actually. So this was confusing for me as well, right? Because it sounds like she asked the question. It's not in quotation marks, right? But yeah, but then at some point Esi tells her.

Chenise: I see what you're saying, though. Because it goes into the dialogue back and forth when she starts saying, like, you came to me with a question. Yeah, that's when you say in quotes. But all before then.

Awa: Oh, my God. I just reread it, and it removed everything in my head. I'm as confused as I was before.

Afua: Awa, after I agreed with you? Stop it!

Awa: But really, I do. My heart is divided over the issue because, just by reading it, there's no text indication for us.

Afua: I will ask two friends who studied English literature in Accra and are very familiar with Ama Ata Aidoo’s work. I'm going to ask them what they think about it. And I'll tell you what they say, because I was pretty convinced, because people say it a lot: oh mi nim saa line no. Just trying to tell people like, “I'm on to you.” So, I immediately translated it that way. But then once you started, actually breaking it down, I'm thinking, I'm wrong. It's Esi who's onto her grandmother instead of the other way around. Or maybe we are meant to see that they are both onto each other.

Awa: Yeah, yeah, maybe that's the intention.

Afua: It's a chess match, and both of them know what the other is doing, and we're just not supposed to really know for sure.

Awa: To be honest. It crossed my mind that it might have been a linguistic tool used by the author. Authors do these things sometimes, and they choose ambiguity carefully. But also sometimes people just don't clarify. It happens, too.

Afua: I actually just translated “she” as “ɔno,” like “the person,” and I didn't try to break down who it was.

Awa: Yeah. Me neither. It doesn't show in the translation, but depending on who it is, I might say it differently. If it's the grandma, I would say something like, she was familiar with the line. I would say she maybe suspected, or felt a sense of foreboding, like when you're set up for something, or it's loaded with meaning, or something. I would phrase it differently. That's why I wanted to know.

Afua: But I think it's curious. Because the decision any of us could make at some point is to just leave the ambiguity in the translation. Like, okay, it's ambiguous, we don't know why it's ambiguous. So then, do we just leave the ambiguity in the translation so that anybody picking up the translation has to sit with that ambiguity too? Because if we straighten this out for the reader, the Swahili reader, the Wolof reader, the Twi reader, we've interpreted it for them in a specific way. Whereas if we don't know what this author was thinking, why it's this way … Because, to your point, it went through edits.

Awa: And I'm sure because the author is big, too, you know, it's not like they cheapen out on these things.

Afua: So I mean, I'll ask my friends what they think about it, but I think in the end I'll probably just leave the ambiguity and keep the ambiguous pronoun.

Chenise: I'm now picking up the scene that's being created in this particular part of the chapter. I feel like this metaphor with yielding an answer and interview and things like that. I feel like with the scene that's being created, somebody is getting a sit-down and somebody's going to have a talking-to. Mhm. But at the end of the day, I do agree with you, Afua, that the conversation starts in this paragraph. But even in their speculation, I don't know what's actually being said out loud because that question after she says everybody in Oko's family hates her, “Who were these women her grandmother wondered?” In Swahili, the verb is uliza: to ask yourself. Like in French, when you say, Je me demande? Like you're posing yourself a question. So, it's like, is she asking why? So it's almost like they're talking …

Awa: Like, different narrators are being presented. But you don't know whose brain is being presented at some moments. That's what it felt like to me. Like, whose POV is it? … It's funny how the cultures are almost the same.

Part two of this series will explore lessons two and three. Check back with us on September 15th for more on joyful synergies and the cultural specificities of emotion!

The Translation Lab is part of the Diaspora Solidarities Lab, which is part of the LifexCode ecosystem. Learn more at dslprojects.org.