A Love Letter to Black People Everywhere
What We Gotta Resolve This Week?
“Damn, we got ALOT to talk about cuz I am triggered AF...but I see you and I love you.”
If there is any demographic in dire need of a love letter it’s every Black person on this planet (even the ones that don’t yet know that they are Black). A love letter, in its purest form, is a profession of one’s adoration of another. It’s an internal yearning confessed, because oftentimes there’s a risk in admitting one’s vulnerability in the presence of another. Sometimes in a love letter, a possible betrayal or even a series of betrayals are named, and it’s painful to name them but it’s more lethal to keep them hidden in one’s heart. It’s an unmasking that could very well lead to a rejection and unrequited love.
A love of this magnitude is a reckoning with one’s truth. It’s a messy endeavor offering no easy fixes. Usually there’s a complicated history in need of reconciliation, and a profound self revelation waiting to happen that will determine whether both parties decide to move together or apart. If we go our separate ways then it is what it is. But if we decide to move together then an honest conversation of any betrayal that occurred needs to happen. Love becomes about naming the truth and grappling with the realities that can make our goal to stay unified nearly impossible—geography, emotion, personality, societal expectations, miseducation, structures, and institutions. All of this rubble becomes love’s playing field playground. So if we’re going to profess our love, then inevitably, we will also profess our heartbreak.
With such a complicated history, many of us have developed a pecuilar nostalgia for each other. Our ideas are based on the fantasies of who we believe the other to be. But oftentimes...this has little to do with our realities on the ground. From personal experiences of talking to folks, misunderstanding folks, and loving folks, we assert that our actual relationship, the relationship between Africa and her Diaspora, is in need of repair and some serious truth telling. In order to address it, we must drive straight into the wound.
We are faced with an opportunity to reckon with the pain we experience existing in our specific geographies and identities. Colonization, the various slave trades we’ve survived (the Trans-Atlantic and Arab-Indian Slave Trade), institutionalized white domination, and anti-Black racism, have fundamentally disrupted our ability to speak across our nuances. A complex web of emotions drive our relationship—or lack thereof—to the African continent. Some look to Africa as a pinnacle of inspiration, others see Africa with ambivalence. Some see Africa as the place where our ancestors were stripped of their wealth and right minds, others feel indignation at the betrayal of our ancestors and current leaders selling out of our land, culture, and people.
So...this is why we’re launching AiSiYu; because we have centuries of heartbreak and misunderstanding to wade through. We may never find the answers but at least we can form better tools and resources to speak to one another. The magazine will be for anyone of African origin looking to regain a level of intimacy with those folks they may pass on the street, or see on social media, or watch in the news. Maybe the person you want to connect with is even closer, someone in your church, your family, your school, your organization, wherever. Maybe all you want to ask is, “Who are you?”
This publication will be a way for us to become pen pals, hiding love notes in boxes, writing run-on sentences that reveal our deep admiration for each other, our confusion, our anguish, the violations, all of it, all of it goes into the letter.
We are trying on this conversation as a heart to heart between lovers trying their best to understand one another after a huge relationship breakdown. There’s plenty of love mixed in with plenty of betrayal and confusion, some apathy, and definitely a high dose of exasperation in our quest to simply know one another.
Recently ‘I’ learned that, in some parts of Igboland, the term ‘Ihunanya or Ifunanya’ is how you express love. When you say to someone ‘A hụrụ mụ gị n'anya’, you are literally telling them, “I see you. I behold you with my eyes.”
So here we are, in the same room, facing each other, chests heaving… wanting to understand: What went wrong? How can we fix it? Can we fix it?
My love,
We know we can. And now we know that love means a lifetime commitment to seeing you. To beholding you. And even if that means we may falter in our attempt to connect, we will spend the rest of our life being here for it.
Okay, bye for now, until next time.With all Our Love and Hope,
Itoro Bassey (Co Editor-In Chief), Ugo Edu (Co Editor-In-Chief), Nkeiruka Oruche (Creative Director), Aroji Otieno (Guest Editor)
P.S. A hụrụ mụ gị n'anya
P.P.S We are also on a quest to rethink the way we look at power. We want to have power with folks, rather than power over folks. Power over does not give us the opportunity to see someone else’s humanity because we are too busy trying to control them, categorize them, and hurt them. Power with, allows us to see our mistakes, see the heart of the matter and see our complexity. If there’s anything true about people of African origins, it’s that our entire existence is made up of many universes. There are worlds within worlds when we talk about who we be and who we’ve become. So the ability to connect, even when it hurts, is vital.
P.P.P.S Want to share some writing with us? Contact Itoro.
Episode Take Aways
Love is complicated, and it’s only the beginning, but it’s an essential ingredient to healing.
After the love comes the conversation, and the conversation is the actual commitment
Damn...this sounds like a marriage.
Ok. I do.
Writers
Nkei Ugo Itoro Aroji
This magazine will roll out as an episodic series, since the conversation about the African and Afro-Diasporic series is centuries wide, we’re gonna do everything we can to cover the different angles that have birthed Black people far and wide. If an angle is missing, reach out and let us know. Or even better, reach out and contribute.