Augusta University’s annual African American Read-in event on Feb. 13 featured an open mic session followed by a presentation delivered by independent journalist Neesha Powell-Ingabire.
Powell-Ingabire, author of “Come By Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia’s Geechee Coast,” spoke on bridging the gap between past and future through writing, recovering and preserving undertold Black stories and reclaiming ancestral traditions.
Powell-Ingabire read a selection from “Come By Here,” titled “A Brush with Magic or an Ode to Mrs. Cornelia,” which is about writer and historian Cornelia Walker Bailey, who worked to preserve the Gullah-Geechee culture of Sapelo Island, Ga.
Sankofa: looking to the future through the eyes of the past
She also highlighted the concept of “Sankofa,” a term that comes from the Akan Tribe of Ghana, which loosely translates to “go back and get it.” This tied in to the overall theme that learning from that past is important for both honoring the past and also learning from it.
She said that sharing “Sankofa” with the listeners on Thursday morning was important for her because it’s a concept that can be relevant to everyone’s lives.
“It’s something we can all learn from…I just feel like it’s something that’s applicable to all folks,” she said. “And I just think there’s so much that we can learn from the past.”
“I feel like a lot of our political climate and our social climate right now is, it’s a tough one, um, marginalized people are really struggling, and I feel like there’s so much we can learn from the past about how we fight oppression,” she added.
Her own journey in looking back to the past has influenced her writing and given her a clearer understanding of the Black history tied to her hometown of Brunswick, Ga.
“When I’m doing this research and this writing, I think about family members who have passed who never knew this history, who never knew how significant Black history in Coastal Georgia is,” she said.
Upcoming work by Powell-Ingabire
“Come By Here” touches on the Black stories of Coastal Georgia; Powell-Ingabire hinted during a Q&A session that she is considering writing another book with a focus on the Black history of rural Eastern North Carolina.
In her book, Powell-Ingabire briefly talks about a summer she spent in that area, a place she has connections to through her father and grandmother. She said she doesn’t know much about the history of the area, and is particularly interested in learning more about an old Black schoolhouse which has no information available online.
“I’m really interested in digging into that…I’d be really interested in kind of almost doing what I did with Coastal Georgia, doing that with rural Easter North Carolina,” she said. “That’s one thing I really do want to pursue.”
Amplifying Black voices through poetry
Students read aloud the work of Black poets from Lucille Clifton to Jerricho Brown to Gwendolyn Brooks during the first portion of the read-in.
“Students, I think especially, are more hesitant to participate…hesitant to approach the mic, especially spontaneously,” said Anna Harris-Parker, a composition and creative writing professor at AU who helped organize this year’s event. “But I think it’s very special because once people hopefully feel comfortable and they realize that it’s a safe space to share…the energy in the room just changes.”
