I Am Your Son,Baba

Our Black bodies have had colonial histories inscribed on them. This colonial project of inscribing Black bodies with colonial knowledge has fragmented our Black knowledge to the point of making us doubt our Blackness. In my effort to leave my Black children a road map for living a whole and healthy life as proud Black people, I engage my experience of being fathered in colonial Africa through a letter to my own Baba (father). This letter embodies the African orality structure of engaging, and reflects on how colonialism has fragmented Black families and traumatized our children as part of the colonial project. To expose this colonial trickery through dialogue is my way of beginning to re-establish my Black familial bonds. I also share this story to our diverse global community because our Blackness is a part of our common humanity. So in our global human diversity we center our relational humanity through storytelling. This means how we matter to each other is in the stories that we tell. I hope my story connects us so that we matter to each other without undermining the intersections of race, gender, disability, colonialism, class structures, poverty, and ageism. My story highlights the power of dialogue in healing fractured relationships, giving witness to colonial oppression and being a tool for engaging social justice.