Tribute is an act of remembering in order to reawaken.

Eighteen years ago, we ascended a mountain.

There are times when you hold a book in your hands, and with each turn of the page, it feels like you have slipped into a secret portal that might not be possible if the book did not exist.

It quickly becomes clear that what Williams has done with her recounting is in many ways place-based but above all it is collectivist and wildly artful as, of course, was Toni Morrison.

The canon is a construct. It is also a war.

And yes, we follow—as if exiled ourselves—beckoned into the labyrinth of a yellow house.

This was us. This is us. Even in that foreign land, they were my home.

baba, could you stay a while longer?

building a room
for all your sorrow

The Bakongo imagined a house as one without walls, a space where the most important conversations concerning the community were to happen.

Nothing is more vulgar to me than the demand that
I accept indifference or disregard as a way of going about an undoing of myself

Where do we move? Inward to our we

Long time ago, I said to my oldest niece as she teared up at a dirty eraser, some things get dirty so other things can get clean.

we played and danced we raised the dead

and strangely through all the noise we made,

no one dreaming they were alive awoke

Tha future is ours [sssssssss], and we will create on our feet

not our kneess_sssssssss]

if i do anything i will commit this to memory time is imperfect measure knowing

this is nothing short of knowing god