Where are you from? Oh, I mean, where are you really from?
As October comes to a close, we are lucky enough to be able to share a poem by our wonderful speaker Jesse Wilson; a storyteller otherwise known as a performance poet and writer.
He writes “None of us arrives where we are alone. We are the sum of all our decisions and the decisions made by those who came before us. Within those decisions live traditions, rituals, histories and communities that have carried us and made us who we are.
So Perhaps when we ask, “Where are you from?”, we are not just asking about place or geography. We are really asking whose labour, love and legacy live inside you.
Here is an invitation: where are you from, and who made your arrival possible?”
Where I am from
i am from a semi-detached
at the bottom of the hill
where the garden was small —
but the living room
was a dancefloor
where house parties and sound systems
with speakers stacked like skyscrapers
loosened cement and shook mortar
where feet shuffled and stomped
and pressed names into the floorboards
i am from kitchen-morning song
where my mother stirred love
into a steel Sunday pot
bubbling, boiling, blending
her heart poured into every spoon
like a secret seasoning
making every bite of Jollof rice
taste like home
her voice rising like steam
as she sang into the air
each note a blessing
each breath a prayer
each sound her melody
i am from where my grandad
packed his tobacco tight in his pipe
he would hold the stem
firm with his bottom lip
in the corner of his mouth
as he unbuttoned his pride
and puffed his chest
he would make
cardboard boats
with colours green, white and blue
and he would add bamboo masts
that reached for the sky
and stitch them together with folklore
that sailed from his mouth
i am from between two worlds
each pulling me towards itself
demanding that I learn
how to fold myself small
but at the same time stand tall
and not let one world
swallow another
i am from where belief systems run parallel
whisky libations, offerings of black-eyed beans
Sunday hymns in one ear, mouthed mythology in the other
symbolism and ceremony
rituals and silence
never touching, never merging
all poured
into both body
and earth
i am from where staying upright
is a miracle
against a world that tries
to tilt you toward forgetting
bend you towards believing
fold you away from honouring your heritage
and yet it is heritage that holds you up as a force
even when you must tuck away your mother tongue
or soften your laughter before it fills a room
or pull your shoulders in
to pass through corridors
never built with you in mind
i am from where aunties know how to arrive
with big news, big plates, and hearts so full
they carried them outside their chest
with uncles who teach you
there is more than one way to travel the world
more than one way to survive it
with brothers and cousins who understood
that mischief is a business and our duty
to keep the world bright
with communities that watch, weep, lift and hold
you in their story, so you can craft
edit and tell your story
so when you ask me
where i am from
i will take a breath
and i will remember
the floorboards shaking
the Sunday pot bubbling
the cardboard boats sailing
i will gather every sound, every ritual, every hand
that helped me shaped me
to stand upright and
i will answer
i am from a place made by people
seasoned with love that simmered
and stories that sailed
I will answer with all the above.
Read on Jesse’s Medium.
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