Toni Morrison once wrote, “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
Writing a book is no easy feat, especially when personal and professional commitments compete for your attention. At times, researching and reading can make a minute feel like an hour, and an hour stretch into a day. The process can be daunting. This book, in particular, challenges me because I am not writing history in a conventional way. When your benchmarks are Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, Marimba Ani, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and Toni Morrison, you set yourself a high standard.
My book is in six parts. Part 3 focuses on the Maafa. The introduction to the chapter on Punishments begins with a warning: “Dear readers of the words of the daughter of Delores, heed my words. Do not cross into this domain of violence, cruelty, and tyranny, unless you are sure your heart can bear it. You stand at the threshold of this book’s most shadowed chapter. You do not have to continue reading. You do not need to endure literary violence upon the body and spirit. This Chile has chosen kindness by locking the deepest darkness of the Time of Sorrow into a single place… Some terrors should never be faced alone. If you turn away now, consider it an act of wisdom.”
I cannot, of course, give myself this warning. I must, as they say, wade in the water. I must face each terror. I must navigate rage. I must be unforgiving, like Anna Harris, for whom forgiveness was never an option. Nearly seventy-five years after being freed, she told interviewers that she had never let a European person enter her home, explaining, “Dey sole my sister Kate. I saw it wid dese here eyes. Sole her in 1860 and I ain’t seed nor heard of her since. Folks say white folks is all right dese days. Maybe dey is, maybe dey isn’t. But I can’t stand to see ‘em. Not on my place.”
Writing, therefore, can demand that we find the “joyful thing” that keeps us moving forward. For me, that joy comes from music and dancing.
I am reminded of this need for joy as I journey through another deep reading of Njinga of Angola. I must read this book again with care—word by word, paragraph by paragraph, page by page—because it reveals so much about how Queen Nzinga’s resistance against the Portuguese prefigured many elements of the Haitian Revolution. Her life story contains so many stories: within her istwa (story) are the stories of the kings of Ndonga; her brother Ngola Mbande’s story; the story of Kisama; stories that evoke the proverb “The ruins of a nation belong in the homes of its people”; and the stories of the Kongo and Matamba kingdoms.
It also serves as a powerful blueprint for understanding how Europe underdeveloped Africa.
This reality makes the book difficult to read. Through its pages, you witness the forces that scattered your ancestors to the winds and the unimaginable resilience of those who survived. The Portuguese made parts of Africa become a slaughterhouse. The devastation and death were on an unspeakable scale.
Here are the songs that keep me going. I give thanks. I hope you find inspiration in them, too.
Ase
I was a whisper in a world too loud.
Trying to pray without making a sound.
Searching the stars for a piece of my name.
But every wish just burn like flame.
They told me silence keeps you safe, but silence only builds a cage.
So I began to hum my pain and the wind began to say my name.
Ase. Let the word find its way from my bones to the heavens today.
Ase. Every tear that ever fell was water for the spell.
Ase.
They Came With Chains
They came with a smile and a Bible in hand.
Say we bring you peace. Say we bring you a plan
We gave them our water. We gave them our land.
But hidden in shadows, they carried the chain.
We opened our doors, gave them a seat
Fed them a harvest, made sure they could eat.
They studied our tongues, they walked in our heat.
Then turned every welcome into defeat.
We saw brothers; they saw slaves
We built life; they dug graves
We gave truth, they gave lies
Now our history slowly dies.
They say, “heaven, heaven waits for you”
While they build theirs in plain view
They brought a cross, but it came with chains
And washed their hands inside our face.
Africa, you cried in vain, still dancing in the falling rain
They took your gold, your soul, your name
And left you bound inside the chain
Left you bound inside the chain.
They renamed kings. They erase thrones
Turn sacred drums into broken bones
Call our gods evil, our ways wrong
They made us kneel and sing their songs
They drew their borders across our skin
Divided the blood that once was one
Gave us a heaven we couldn’t see
While stealing the one we lived upon…
The Blueprint
They walked off the water, with the books in their hand
They say, show us the river, please show us the land
And we with the hearts of the warm summer sun
We welcome the strangers, we didn’t see the guns
They wrote in their diaries, they measured the stones
They smiled at our children, they sat in our homes
We offered them water, we offered them bread
But they were counting the gold underneath where we tread
It was psychological warfare dressed up as a friend
The beginning of a story we didn’t know would end
The explorer mapped the mountain and the mineral
The missionary mapped the spirit and the mind
The merchant mapped the market and the capital
And left the freedom of our father far behind.
They told us to look up to the heavens, let your worries fade
While they were down in the dirt, taking everything we made
They say, turn the other cheek, wait for the promiseland
We close our eyes to pray and they stole this land.
No, the ancestors didn’t fail
They were ambushed by grace
Before we could even say, Amen
The chains were already on the wrists of the men.
We’re Still Here
Dust don’t bury us; it polishes our names
Etched in river stones where your map shows no claims
You drew lines through our lungs, called it progress, called it law.
But my grandmother’s breath still warms this star.
I walk where wagons cracked under weight of lies
Where cornfields choked on smoke and children’s cries.
Yet here I stand. No ghost, no museum frame,
Just blood and bone that refuse to be erased.
We’re still out here from Canyon Echo to City Street.
We’re still out here with fire in our feet.
You try to drown our drum in silence deep,
but the earth remembers every step we keep.
Restore what was entrusted
(Parts of this song are difficult to discern clearly, especially the second verse)
Before the earth learned wound
Before iron beat the soil
We walked gently with the land
Hands clean, hearts loyal
The rivers knew our footsteps
The trees knew our names
We did not conquer the mountains
We greeted each flame
The land was not owned by men
It breathed under spirit law
What was sacred was approached
With listening order
Restore what was in the beginning
Restore the truth of the land
Restore the guardians of the mountains and water
Restore the ancestral head
Return the earth to her keeper
Return the shrines to their light
We command remembrance to rise again
Restore what was right
Thanks for reading/listening.
Ancestral blessings,
Meserette Kentake
PS. The featured image was AI-generated and features an unknown woman. I also AI-ed this piece, and apparently my introduction is 93% human-written, but the overall score is 46% human-written. Are the song lyrics AI-generated?