Elders, Ancestors

On my father's side, my family is a bunch of old school afrocentrics. I mean, my paternal grandmother, the person who bestowed the gift of name to me, who I intrinsically know to be beautiful even though I have no conscious memory of having met her when she was alive, was a garveyite. Mama Oya (I'll call her here) was one of my grandmother's friends in tha struggle, raising northern afrocentric babies with afrikan names, participating in the very first kwanzaa celebrations, (re)introducing afrikan dance rhythms to american negroes smack dab in the middle of the era of U.S. southern apartheid.

She (Mama Oya) called me today. Out of the blue.

Unexpected, but so wonderful, having a chance to be able to commune in real time with this living manifestation of history.

As an elder who consciously created afrocentric space for self in the midst of extreme racialized oppression, I know she has much to pass on to me, even if some of it is superficially tainted by sexual conservatism.

I honor her experience. I learned this reverence for elders from my mother, whose best friend when I was growing up was an elder, one of the earliest african/american converts to islam that we know.

In our conversation, she chuckled to me that she and my grandmother knew every other person who was like them (afrika centered) in new york city, so small was the community even in such a diverse place. I chuckled back, reflecting how not much has changed- even today, afrocentric new yorkers have, what, a half-degree of separation between us? (I learned that from my Hampton friend Nai from Harlem, who I never met growing up but who seems to know ALLLLLL the same people I do...)

Talking with elders passing wisdom gives me such feelings of *warmth,* even if I feel somewhat erased by some of what they say (she asked if I had a boyfriend; she said that too many young black women/men dress in deplorable/thuggish ways, respectively). My job, I feel, is not to burn bridges based on ideology between myself and my elders, but to build new lanes on that same bridge, expand the pathways to authentic afrocentricity so that those who come after me have even more options, see themselves reflected even more in afrocentric paradigms for living life.

Speaking about my family specifically, I feel that each generation's task is to reshape this afrocentricity, to expand it so that it is more authentic, more inclusive of folks, less oppressive. My father and my mother did it by choosing a religious paradigm *other* than Christianity, thereby granting me space to even choose other than what they chose.

I feel that I am doing it by bringing an understanding that heteronormativity and afrocentricity are not one and the same. I am expanding options, creating space for future LGBT / sexually unconservative / binary gender transgressing / womancentered afrocentrics to breathe. Later generations will take it further still.

My conversation with Mama Oya was helpful.

She said that my nana, my granma Sadie, the beautiful person who named me, is looking out for me, but that when I have a request to the ancestors, it has to be a specific request.

I needed that.

I feel that my granma respects my work, understands my worth, and does what she can to help me from the land of the ancestors.

She also suggested that when I graduate and have entered the workforce, I should take one class in any field while working, just to be continually stimulated and connected to university, which despite its problems and bureaucracy/elitism is still a place where incredibly forward thinking folks tend to connect and concentrate. Also to figure out if I do want to eventually continue my (formal) education later in life.

I can be down with that.