Ofrenda

Ofrenda para las ancestras is a poetic ritual reconciling the crossroads of identities that compose Awoyemi's bloodline -- African, Indigenous, and European.

"what is the price of discovering your roots?

is it the $79 cheek swab?

plantation tours of the floors your family scrubbed?

a walk through hedges fertilized with your DNA?"


This offering explores the price of discovering one's heritage as a child of the Afro-Indigenous Diaspora, set against the composite backdrops of genealogy, mixed heritage, gentrification, internalized oppression, systemic racism, and spiritual awakening. The text spans the African diaspora: from West Africa to Brooklyn, Long Island, Virginia, North Carolina, and Barbados. Fasegun-Jones' poetics unravel colonized language and culture to remind the orphans of enslavement and genocide that the human spirit is unconquerable. It is a journey of healing expressed through prayer, blues poetry, ethnography, resistance, Orisha worship, and ancestral reverence.