Black Diaspora
Louis Chude-Sokei: “It was accents and curses, uncles and aunties, cousins and endless trips to Western Union.”
February 3, 2021
Diaspora was one of those words from my mother’s “word of the month” or “word of the week” subscriptions. What made it stick out was that I heard it repeated around the table. The word meant the scattering of a people across different lands and countries and languages. To me, this meaning seemed immediate, oppressively intimate. It wasn’t just about the Middle Passage and slavery in the New World. It wasn’t even about our more specific migration from Africa to Jamaica to America. It was accents and curses, uncles and aunties, cousins and endless trips to Western Union, and obligations of all kinds. Diaspora was mapped across the plates of ackee and saltfish