Festivals Like Home To Me

On this snowy first day of April, 2017, I find comfort in reminiscing about festivals in New York City - events that served as bookends to my summers for so many years.

Dance Africa - takes place during the Memorial Day weekend in the streets around the Brooklyn Academy of Music near the Atlantic Avenue train station. So much good food, Afrocentric books, kente and mud cloth, cowrie shells, incense, so many oils - Night Queen, Egyptian Musk, Coco Mango . . .

There have been so many times in my life that I've gone to stores and felt invisible - not enough books telling stories like mine, so many products designed for hair not like mine, clothes that didn't feel at home on my skin, smells that don't remind me of anyone close to me . . . but not at Dance Africa. The event carries my name and makes me want to move. The drums speak a language that is completely familiar to me.

Grant's Tomb

A little over a month later around July 4th, there was the African Street Festival at Boys and Girls
High School in Bed-Stuy, and a month after that was the festival at Grant's Tomb in Harlem. Harlem - where my parents come from. Same music, same laughter, same drums, same smells, same belonging.

Naturally, my novel takes places in Brooklyn. When I'm creating and recreating scenes, nostalgia will help me to transform the colors, sounds and smells that these wonderful memories give birth to into words.