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I’m so at peace, cousin. How are you?
CJ is doing wonderfully. I’m so grateful for that. Thank you for asking and for caring. After his traumatic wrongful detainment in Savannah this past December, he’s still choosing to LIVE. He’s exploring Louisiana and Mississippi with friends, taking in various accents, foods, landscapes, and architecture. He don’t word it that way, of course, but it’s what I name based on pictures and stories he share with me.
Takes me back to me and my children’s roadtrip circa 2016. My funds were hella low, but I had a car, an imagination, and beaucoup faith. I’d post on social media asking where our next stop should be.
One stop in Biloxi, Mississippi, we stayed with someone I barely knew but God said was okay. His name is Shawn. I originally met him in Savannah at the Cloverdale park. He was offering free hot dogs and free fishing lessons to every single child who pulled up that day. I took my kids. He ended up moving to Biloxi. So he responded to the one of the posts and said we should come to Biloxi, so we did. His family had a birthday party at an arcade, which we joined him at. He taught my son how to shoot in the woods. And he let us stay at his house, even offering us his bed while he slept on the sofa.
Before that, we were in North Louisiana. I didn’t have anyone to stay with but I found a shared AirBnB space with a 50-something-year-old white woman name Janice, who ended up having the same birthday as me. It was our FAVORITE stay to this day! She lived in a gorgeous house on the bayou, owned horses and chickens, gave the kids free horse riding lessons, gave Kobe her first piano lesson, cooked us farm-fresh breakfast, gave us access to her canoe which excited the kids but terrified me but ended up being life-changing for us, and we got all of that for $25 a night.
God truly provides.
To know my son is out there living in this way brings me so much joy. So many of our people, black men especially, just don’t travel beyond neighboring states (if that). It’s oppression’s fault that we don’t have the funds, the courage, or the interest to fully immerse ourselves in other cultures. So, for many of us, we grow up and maybe do cruises and resorts, which ain’t nothing wrong with, but, let’s be clear, you don’t truly experience a place and its people and how time moves for them on cruises and resorts (even if you do excursions). That’s something I’m intrigued with lately: how time moves for different places/people.
I went to a hog killing (a hella southern, indigenous, and black treasure and tradition) in Ridgeville, South Carolina. Time moved there as it did in Casamance, Senegal. On Sapelo Island, Georgia, it moves even slower. That’s where our incarcerated cousins, who even black folk will argue deserves to be locked up, should be. Places where time move slow? They feed each other without charging, they know or want to know your name and your connection to the place, they make eye contact, and you have beaucoup space to reflect on the stories and questions that are most transformative.
Just finished reading Black AF History, which belongs on all of our shelves. Learned that the Department of Corrections has deep roots in South Carolina and Savannah. That enslavers who didn’t have the time or guts to whip the people they were holding against their will (our ancestors), they’d take to a facility and pay a fee to have it done there. They organized and renamed these facilities the Department of Corrections.
“…there has to be a process for reconciliation, acknowledgement of abuses, documentation of abuses, accountability, reparation, and an effort to establish the facts.” —Mutulu Shakur
Shakur is such a powerful surname. Though it long existed before Tupac, we know he, by way of his divine mama, is why I instantly gotta know everything about whoever carries the name.
We be so aligned. The “skills you’re learning to make yourself and your people more free this year” resonated. [I got this inquiry from my friend Morgan Dixon, and shared it with my penpal cousin in my last letter.] I’m revising the question to “this season” rather than “this year” for me. In the beautiful way that I flow, my response changes often.
One of my current offerings is live book readings. The first is this Saturday, March 6th. I’m connecting Harriet Tubman to Mary Ellen Pleasant to Zora to Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God to Sula to Shug Avery to Alice Walker to amina wadud, and I’m still shaping it so it ain’t finalized yet. Considering a close-out piece too. By me? Someone else? A poem, a folktale, something else? *shrugs* I’m using experiences and beliefs of untamed women whose ways teach us what it means to get and be free.
Niggas don’t read.
An old saying with a lotta truth. In this context, I mean everyone who needs to be reading ain’t or can’t. Either lacking interest, time, or ability. So I wanna curate material that center freedom via real-life and fictional accounts. I call this skill “making liberatory literature sexy.” I’m getting cute, setting the mood, keeping it cheap and accessible, feeding you, and bathing these stories in this gorgeous accent of mine, and inviting you to share whoever the readings remind you of.
Been wanting to do it for a while, but didn’t think folk would be interested. The devil is a lie! Sold out in 24 hours. Even more beautiful? It was marketed via word of mouth. I’m taking a year-long break from social media. I feared, before uninstalling the apps, that my offerings would suffer because “how will I market/advertise?” God (and J.Cole) was like “the same way we did before social media.”
I’m participating in Ramadan this year. My second time and studying black muslims and Islam in general, and it’s so intriguing. No interest in converting, but I’m a student of Islam, for sure. My friend who’s fasting with me is from Michigan. She mentioned that her family split back in the day (I’m guessing maybe the 1960s). Some became muslim and moved to Chicago. She noted that the muslim side did very well for themselves financially, and questioned why so. I think discipline plays a role. When I lived in the DMV and worked part-time at Delta, the best employees were the muslims. They stayed out the way, embodied team work, and got the work done regardless of circumstance and without complaint.
That made me think of Bilali, an enslaved muslim brother who was trafficked from Guinea, West Africa to Sapelo Island. Was literate, deeply spiritual, highly documented, and trusted by the white folk and thereby more well-off compared to his peers. This made me squint at him, still does honestly. Then there’s Mamadou Yarrow. Same story. Trafficked from Guinea but to Maryland (later migrated to DC). Like Bilali, he, too, was literate, deeply spiritual, highly documented (even painted), and trusted by the white folk, and thereby more well-off. Child, I’m Zora Neale Hurstoning my way all ‘round this rabbit hole.
One of my favorite elders—Dr. Patricia Stewart—passed December 2025. The last book she recommended to me before her passing was Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures. I remembered when you mentioned that you’re shuffling through books on Black imagination among other subjects.
Thank you for the Audre poem. Your poems are powerful. Thank you for Mutulu Shakur. Thank you for Jacquie Verbal, although I disagreed when she said “there’s no need for fiction writing when our lived experiences are what screenwriters could only imagine.” So badly did our people and culture need The Color Purple, Beloved, Crooklyn (I just rewatched and cried realizing the mama died of exhaustion), Insecure, Sinners, and all the powerful fiction before, between, and after that. Speaking of which, I’m glad you got your hands on Sky Full of Elephants. Hopefully it inspires you. Thank you for sharing your grandfather! For sharing your work and the acknowledgment of it. For being you.
Love you cousin,
Trelani Michelle
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