Ofrenda - para las ancestras #401240

Ofrenda para las ancestras is a poetic ritual reconciling the crossroads of identities that compose Edwaujonte’s bloodline — African, Indigenous, and European. 

“what is the price of discovering your roots?
is it the $79 cheek swab? 
plantation tours of the floors your family scrubbed?
a walk through hedges fertilized with your DNA?”

This offering explores the price of discovering one’s heritage as a child of the Afro-Indigenous Diaspora, set against the composite backdrops of genealogy, mixed heritage, gentrification, internalized oppression, systemic racism, and spiritual awakening. The text spans the African diaspora: from West Africa to Brooklyn, Long Island, Virginia, North Carolina, and Barbados. Edwaujonte’s poetics unravel colonized language and culture to remind the orphans of enslavement and genocide that the human spirit is unconquerable. It is a journey of healing expressed through prayer, blues poetry, ethnography, resistance, Orisha worship, and ancestral reverence.