Kindred Creation
Parables and Paradigms for Freedom--Black worldmaking to reclaim our heritage and humanity
by Aida Mariam Davis
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Pub Date 3 Dec 2024 | Archive Date 3 Dec 2024
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Description
Creating a world worthy of our children requires recalling the dignity and distinction of the African way of life.
This book is not written for settler consumption. Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity—all (and always) on Black terms.
Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire—not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community.
Structured in three parts—Remember, Refuse, and Reclaim—Kindred Creation is a philosophical guidebook and a vital invitation to power and reconnection. Davis employs parable, poetry, theory, memory, narrative, and prophecy to help readers:
- Remember: By unforgetting the unending and cascading violence of settler colonialism and other forms of domination and exploring the ways that African land, language, lifestyle, and labor are stolen, distorted, and repackaged for colonial consumption to extract capital and sever ties to ancestral knowledge, lifeways, and dignity
- Refuse: By rejecting and interrupting death-making institutions and relationships and choosing kinship and self-determination in the face of settler colonial violence
- Reclaim: By revealing that freedom is within us—and within reach. Davis shares how the reader can birth new worlds and relationships and offers strategies for reclaiming land, language, lifestyle, and labor.
The colonial violence and dispossession of African land, language, and labor is inflicted intentionally—and by design. Reclaiming African lifeways and remembering what was forcibly forgotten must be by creation: a re-membering of our interconnectedness and kinship.
A Note From the Publisher
For event information, or to request an interview with Aida Mariam Davis, please contact: publicity@northatlanticbooks.com
Advance Praise
“For those of us who come to this text with a long history of struggle against racial capitalism, Kindred Creation presents us with a paradigm-shifting approach to revolutionary change.”
—Angela Y. Davis
“The parables in Kindred Creation show us the light on the walk of life.”
—NIKKI GIOVANNI, author and seven-time NAACP Image Award winner
“This book is a powerful testimony to the richness of African and Black knowledges. Both inspiring and poignant, Davis takes an incisive look at the past and invites us to reclaim our interconnectedness. A must-read!”
—ANNA TUBBS, author of the New York Times best seller Three Mothers
“All of nature, of which humans are a small part, is sentient. This precious book reminds us that if we, humans, refuse to acknowledge our individual and collective responsibility in caring for the earth and all beings on it, it is at our own peril. Love is the answer to every question.”
—ERICKA HUGGINS, author of Comrade Sister
“Kindred Creation is in the family way with languages, musings, musicalities, worldviews, ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies of free and ancient futures.”
—FANIA DAVIS, civil rights attorney and restorative justice practitioner
“Kindred Creation is both a revival and a revelation. Davis connects us to ourselves and reminds us of our spiritual inheritance as Black people. Deeply concerned with our interconnectedness and renewal, Kindred Creation shows us the magic, majesty and magnificence that is Blackness. A must-read for anyone working to create a future worthy of our children.”
—MICHAEL TUBBS, special advisor for economic mobility to California Governor Gavin Newsom and former mayor of Stockton
“This book is a masterpiece! Drawing from the best parts of our traditions, Kindred Creation is an offering of high art, radical political philosophy, and spiritual nourishment. Aida Mariam Davis has gifted us with a text that not only spotlights and challenges lingering colonial logics, but also provides theories, tools, and tactics that are necessary for audacious freedom, dreaming, and courageous worldmaking. Read this book and prepare to be unsettled, challenged, inspired, and healed.”
—MARC LAMONT HILL, author and BET News correspondent
“Writer, leader, visionary, and storyteller, Aida Mariam Davis has turned centuries of accumulated knowledge and wisdom from the victims of settler colonialism into a lyrical, audacious appeal to decolonize everything in order to preserve and repair our planet. A vital contribution that needs to be translated into every language.”
—ROBIN D. G. KELLEY, author of Freedom Dreams
“Here, Aida Mariam Davis presents the possibilities of dismantling settler colonial systems within design by imagining how Black and Indigenous belief systems, kinship, and solidarity will help us imagine new ways of being and belonging in the world. With its poetic style and rhythmic writing that only a Black woman can produce, Kindred Creation moves us in the direction toward decolonial futures in ways we didn’t know we needed . . . this book is a must-read!”
—KYLE T. MAYS, PhD, associate professor in the departments of African American studies, American Indian studies, and history at UCLA and author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
“Kindred Creation is an invitation to rip colonial borders out of our hearts and souls by the roots, and then rebuild, restore, and reimagine what lives lived together could look like. A future built on the ancient, collective roots of trees and relatives that have never stopped reaching towards us. It is an invitation to be made whole.”
—PATTY KRAWEC, cohost of the Medicine for the Resistance podcast, cofounder of the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation, and author of Becoming Kin
“This book is a marvel because it gives us a nonlinear, contrapuntal, and ancient-yet-contemporary way of comprehending the social and the wider world of today that can inspire a viable revolutionary praxis of tomorrow. As part of the storied legacy of African decolonizing and postcolonial writing, Aida Mariam Davis has given us a visionary’s insights into how the African diaspora and its complexly oppressive origins and history have, indeed, sown the seeds of radical emancipatory transformation of the modern world in our moment. Though this book compels us to reflect deeply, it just may be the spark needed to also compel serious transformative action.”
—DANIEL O. SAYERS, author of A Desolate Place for a Defiant People and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp
“In Kindred Creation, Aida Mariam Davis offers timeless wisdom to combat our most pernicious ills. In this era of rising individual and geopolitical isolation, Davis insists on the importance of collective work and vision, and on the centrality of Black and Indigenous communal ties and traditions. Kindred Creation is clear-sighted and precise, heart-centered and expansive. A balm.”
—ANGELA FLOURNOY, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Turner House
“Kindred Creation is an invitation to rip colonial borders out of our hearts and souls by the roots, and then rebuild, restore, and reimagine what lives lived together could look like. A future built on the ancient, collective roots of trees and relatives that have never stopped reaching towards us. It is an invitation to be made whole.”
—PATTY KRAWEC, cohost of the Medicine for the Resistance podcast, cofounder of the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation, and author of Becoming Kin
“I’m so glad our children are growing up in a world where this book exists. This is a must-read for all schools and for parents of Black children who can use Aida’s smart, decolonized lens as a tool to reimagine/create a revolutionary new world of freedom.”
—JESSICA MCKAY, New York Times best-selling author of Always with You, Always with Me and educator
“If America is to become a flourishing multiracial democracy where all can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential, it must realize that its path to an equitable future is inextricably linked to the people that this country has never loved. The soulful traditions of Blackness and indigeneity provide a path forward where this nation is compelled to see the humanity of all who reside here and to work in service of their thriving. Aida’s vision and voice are seminal and represent the leadership necessary to unlock the promise of the nation by unleashing the promise in us all.”
—DR. MICHAEL MCAFEE, president and CEO of PolicyLink
“The American experiment in democracy may be nearly 250 years old, but our attempt to realize a multiracial and pluralistic society of free and equal citizens has yet to be born. Aida Mariam Davis’s clarion call in Kindred Creation reminds us that we must look backward to reclaim and repair in order to chart any path forward.”
—Rob Reich, author of Just Giving and professor of political science at Stanford University
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Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9798889841364 |
PRICE | US$20.95 (USD) |
PAGES | 218 |