Kentake Page Monthly Roundup 2

46 New Posts!

May 31, 2026

I have been on a rampage, as we would say in Jamaica. It feels as if I am making up for lost years. The first Kentake Page Monthly Roundup was published on April 21st. Since then, I have added 46 new posts to the website.

Reflecting on these myriad posts, what did I learn or what stood out for me?

Jacques Stephen Alexis and the Haitian Revolution

I loved the quote by Jacques Stephen Alexis: “The trees fall from time to time, but the voice of the forest never loses its power. Life begins.” This quote takes you into the heart of the Haitian Revolution. Alexis, who was a descendant of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, understood that Louverture fell, Dessalines fell, and that he too could be cut down—yet he believed the people’s forest would keep speaking.

Queen Charlotte and William Davidson

Writing Queen Charlotte Sophia’s biography reminded me again of visiting Queen Charlotte’s Hospital in Hammersmith in 2014 and coming across her portrait. I had first seen her picture in one of J. A. Rogers’ books. However, coming face-to-face with her portrait was a profound moment. Alongside her biography, I wrote a piece examining the “for” and “against” arguments regarding her Black bloodline.

Alongside Rogers, there were two other historical Jamaicans whom I learned about after moving to London. Both shocked and awed me. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Caribbean history when I left Jamaica at the tender age of 21, thousands of moons ago. When I came across J. A. Rogers, Robert Wedderburn and William Davidson, I felt betrayed by the Jamaican school system. How did they not teach a girl so thirsty for history about these “Jamaican” historical icons? William Davidson’s biography is one of the new posts in this monthly review.

Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy and Presence

Maya Angelou wrote: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” This rings true for my meeting with Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy, whom I met briefly at the BBC, where we were both scheduled for interviews. She had a gentleness that enveloped our conversation with an aura of stillness and quiet authority. Years later, I have forgotten our conversation—and even the reason I was at the BBC—but I have never forgotten how I felt in her presence. Chukwuogo-Roy is often remembered for her 2002 Golden Jubilee portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, which made her one of only two Nigerian artists to paint an official portrait of the British monarch. However, for me, she did not borrow her majesty from what she painted—she embodied it.

Elijah McCoy and Education

The first time my eldest son had to do homework on an inventor, I made sure his assignment featured a Black inventor. We chose Elijah McCoy. My son was so proud when he came home to tell me that his teacher had never heard of the real McCoy. This was in the 1990s. I wonder now whether a Black child in the UK doing an assignment on Elijah McCoy would still hear such a response. I hope not.

Dr. Caesar and Lunsford Lane: Love and Freedom

Dr. Caesar and Lunsford Lane were two African American men who secured their freedom during the Maafa through ingenuity. Lane’s story, in particular, captured for me the heart of the African American past. Whenever I reflect on that experience, I see it as a love story. In my debut book, I frame it exactly this way and explain why. Lane’s life embodies that story of love—not only did he secure his own freedom, but also that of his wife and children. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “the most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the newfound Eldorado of the West.” I agree. If we remember that African history stretches back some 90,000 years, then the Maafa—beginning in 1441 and ending in 1888—spans 447 of those years. If we imagine those 90,000 years as a single day, these 447 years would last just 7.15 minutes. This is not to deny the profound and devastating impact of those minutes. But within them are also remarkable stories of courage and resilience that are too often overlooked. Caesar’s and Lane’s lives affirm Du Bois’s insight.

Jane Cortez and Radical Integrity

Jane Cortez’s story as a revolutionary poet was also inspiring, especially for those of us who choose to self-publish in order to protect the integrity of our work. Too often, milk is poured into our coffee by agents of Western society to dilute radical thought. Her radical poem “There It Is” has already been featured on Kentake Page, but not the biography of the firespitter who raged against racism, injustice, and structural violence with fighting words. She is an example of the Rastafarian philosophy to “chant down Babylon,” using voice and rhythm to confront oppressive systems.

MOVE and Structural Violence

I had thought I had already written a piece on MOVE. However, after checking the website, I realized that I had only written about the MOVE bombing on the old Kentake Page Facebook page. This is a painful and terrible story—one that made me seek out moments of joy to balance its weight. MOVE was a radical group, and on that day, we lost fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters. It is one Black Atlantic world. What happens in Brazil happens in America, happens in Jamaica, happens in Haiti. The difference, at times, is that those who come to take your life do not always come with pale faces. The violence in our lives is rooted in the deep structural rupture unleashed on Africa and its people when European ships arrived in 1441. This remains a defining truth: if the ships had not come, what happened would never have happened.

Stevie Wonder: Singing to Life

Songs in the Key of Life remains one of my top ten albums. I used to listen to it daily, so it was a “joy inside my tears” to write a biographical piece on Stevie Wonder. I did not realize how iconic this album truly was. Released in 1976, Songs in the Key of Life debuted at number one on the Billboard chart, remained there for thirteen weeks, and earned the Grammy for Album of the Year. Critics have hailed it as a tapestry that encapsulates the vastness of the African American musical tradition more completely than nearly any other work. Yet Wonder not only lives up to his surname musically but also as an activist. He used his fame to advance political and humanitarian causes.

David Blackwell and the Roots of AI

As someone who now leans on AI technologies for research support, image generation, and editing, it feels quietly radical to learn that a Black man stands at the mathematical foundation of so much of this work. David Blackwell never wrote a line of code or built a chatbot, yet the theorems he proved in probability, game theory, and statistics now undergird the very systems that shape our digital lives. When NVIDIA chose to name its most advanced GPU architecture “Blackwell,” it was an acknowledgment that modern artificial intelligence rests, in part, on his brilliance. When I use AI tools to support my work on the Maafa and Black Atlantic history, I do so standing on the shoulders of an Afrikan ancestor of the mind.

Anacaona and Louverture: Golden Flower and Revolutionary Soul

As I read deeply into the story of the Maafa, it becomes clear that the Black Atlantic embodies not only the history of Africa’s people but also the histories of Indigenous peoples across the Americas and beyond. First Nation peoples also endured invasion, dispossession, and attempted erasure. I recognize that telling our story with integrity requires acknowledging these shared and intersecting histories. Therefore, Kentake Page seeks not only to honor African and diasporic experiences but also to respectfully engage with and highlight Indigenous histories. In many ways, this evolution honors the “little girl” in me who first recognized that Taíno and African histories met in struggle and survival.

This month’s posts include a biography of Anacaona, who is known as the “Flower of Haiti”. Today, she is honored as a foundational hero, a national ancestor, the island’s first known queen, and the original martyr to European invasion. Her execution by the Spanish in 1503 marked a pivotal moment in the history of Ayiti and the Black Atlantic world.

Haiti’s story continues with Toussaint Louverture, the commanding genius of the Ayitian Revolution. The Haitian Revolution is my favorite historical event of all time. As a young girl, I was perplexed by the question, “How did they survive, so that I could be born into the world?” As a teenager studying Caribbean history, I thought the Haitian Revolution was the singular reason we had survived. Back then, I believed that we Jamaicans were the greatest people on the planet. We had fought and fought and fought our way through the Maafa. Jamaica was the island of resistance, the land of Reggae, and Marcus Garvey was our son.

Then I met Toussaint Louverture. I met Jean-Jacques Dessalines. I met the Haitian Revolution. I met a people who held fast to an African spiritual system. Their defiance was like a thunderclap for me as a teenager. This was the moment I moved from being Jamaican to a woman of the African diasporic world. In the history of the Maafa, Haiti outshone all others, including Jamaica—at least for me.

Ryan Coogler and Emotional Vision

Continuing my fascination with Ryan Coogler, I wrote an exploratory piece on him as a cinematic medium. My first instinct was to write about his communion with the dead. When I discovered that someone else had already explored Coogler’s relationship with the dead, I thought about putting the post to one side. However, the following morning, in meditation, another approach came to me: empathy, and his gift for illuminating the interior lives of women, especially their tears. From Fruitvale Station to Sinners, there are moments when we are confronted with Black women’s grief. I immediately rose from meditation and wrote the piece. Upon completing it, I decided to check his astrological chart and was astonished by what I found. Coogler is astrologically blessed.

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson: Childhood memory and enduring admiration

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was the first Black man who fascinated me. I loved him as a little girl, and I still do. There is something enduring about first love. I used to practice tap dancing—or something that looked like tap dancing—trying to echo his joy. His iconic stair dance still takes my breath away.

It also surprised me that I had never written about him on Kentake Page before. Researching his life led me to discover that throughout his career, he is believed to have performed at thousands of benefits—reportedly as many as 400 in a single year—raising and donating significant sums to Black charities, schools, and individuals in need. Despite earning millions over his lifetime and being one of the highest‑paid Black performers of his era, he died in near poverty because of his generosity.

Maurice Bishop and Revolutionary Loss

Finally, Maurice Bishop. I researched far and wide for his biographical piece, wanting it to be one of the most comprehensive available online in honor of his greatness. This post made my heart bleed. As I worked, I kept hearing Bob Marley’s words: “How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?” Bishop’s tragic end was not only a personal loss but a communal one. He spearheaded one of the most ambitious socialist transformations in the English-speaking Caribbean. In just four years, his leadership introduced sweeping reforms in healthcare, literacy, and gender equality, turning the small “Spice Island” into a beacon of Black pride, participatory democracy, and anti-imperialist sovereignty. With his assassination, I was left wondering how these transformations might have grown—and what their wider impact could have been. Grenada did not lose its revolutionary son alone; the entire Caribbean did. I mourned all day after writing the post, my heart trapped in the thought of what could have been.