Took some shots of my grandmother while she was reading today with my smartphone. Nothing fancy. Edited with VSCOcam app.

“Critics don’t generally associate Black people with ideas. They see marginal people; they see just another story about Black folks. They regard the whole thing as sociologically interesting perhaps, but very parochial. There’s a notion out in the land that there are human beings one writes about, and then there are Black people or Indians or some marginal group. If you write about the world from that point of view, somehow it is considered lesser. We are people, not aliens. We live, we love, and we die.”
-Toni Morrison

Dad: Who are you?
Me: Yodith
Dad: Yodith who?
Me: Yodith Dammlash
Dad: Yodith Dammlash who?
Me: Yodith Dammlash Gebre
Dad: Yodith Dammlash Gebre who?
Me: Yodith Dammlash Gebre Aba-Shawel

In Ethiopia, there are no last names. So a child is referred to by their first name and their father’s first name, which then assumes the place of a last name. My father used to quiz us on who he is; who we are. While all those names are not on my birth certificate, he made it known who we came from. I’ve secretly always loved the fact that our family doesn’t have one last name, like a “Smith” family reunion. Only my sisters and I share the last name Dammlash. It’s like a little club that only his daughters belong to.

Yodith Dammlash

Dammlash Gebre

Gebre Aba-Shawel

“A call for justice shouldn’t offend or disrespect anybody. A call for justice shouldn’t warrant an apology.”
-Andrew Hawkins

“It’s completely necessary that we have spaces in which we can be in community and talk about issues without having to necessarily educate people about our lives. We need those spaces where we don’t have to explain everything about our lives to the people around us so that we can feel seen and reflected and heard…But we need that space in which we feel centered. We have to feel centered in some space in our lives.”
-Janet Mock