Yesterday Will Break Your Heart

Senegalese-American author Alcaly Lo started this project by reflecting upon his life as an undocumented immigrant.

One of the things that inspired the author in times of hardship was the lone book brought along for the journey, "Vie et Enseignement de Tierno Bokar." Out of sheer curiosity, Alcaly Lo decided to dig into the past of the Sufi mystic whose words he first encountered as a teenager, but about whom little was publicly known. A new world revealed itself, painted piece by piece from hundreds of manuscripts and documents: the fabled city of Ségou on the eve of its fall to French forces; the Tijani conqueror El Haj Omar Tall, Tierno Bokar’s great-uncle, who set out on a mission to "rid the land of spiritual pollution"; his son, King Amadou Tall, who ruled over the so-called Toucouleur Empire for thirty years before being displaced and mercilessly hunted by the French; Prince Abdoulaye Tall, kidnapped and shipped away to Paris; Samba N'diaye the Wolof, a polymath of extraordinary skill and intelligence whose accomplishments never got their due. It became primordial to tell these unsung heroes’ story.

Over the course of seven years of research Yesterday Will Break Your Heart developed into a multigenerational tale paralleling much of Senegal’s history, from the end of the 18th Century to the foundation of Dakar, and beyond.

To quote Alcaly Lo, “The ancestors were speaking to me.”