How I started the research

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Over the last 10 years (Started 2014), I’ve been slowly piecing together a story—one that began with the decision to learn how to read, write, and speak Yorùbá fluently. As fewer people become fully literate in the language, I felt a personal urgency to reconnect with it as a gateway to understanding my culture. I still have interest to get to the Phd level in Yoruba language.

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The places I’ve visited throughout this journey have played a significant role in shaping the perspective I bring to this work:
 

Abeokuta, Nigeria
My mother is from Abeokuta, and I’ve visited several times. I have ancestral ties to fabric weaving (aso oke) and dyeing there, and I was able to visit a site where these traditional practices are still alive—just as my mother remembered them from her youth. During one of my trips, I recorded the oríkì (lineage praise poem) of her idile (family compound). The woman who recited it passed away a year later, in her 70s. Her original voice is included in this project.
 

Oka Kosoko Palace, Nigeria
While on a tour of the Oba’s palace organized by Loving Lagos, I encountered letters from the transatlantic slave trade era—written in Portuguese and documenting the number of enslaved individuals and corresponding payments. I also learned that the Kosoko family had longstanding ties to photography and documentation, helping preserve relics and records that still exist today.
 

Lagos Island (Ìsàlẹ̀ Èkó), Nigeria
I explored the geography and architecture of this area, particularly the buildings constructed by formerly enslaved Africans who returned and rebuilt in the style of the countries they had been taken to. These architectural details echo European influences and tell layered stories of displacement and return.
 

Usher Fort, Accra, Ghana
During the Chale Wote Art Festival, I visited Usher Fort—one of the preserved sites where enslaved people were held. Being inside those rooms offered an intense, emotional insight into what it might have felt like to be taken. That embodied experience became a lens through which I started to understand the trauma and resistance woven into this history.
 

Tampa Bay History Center – Navigation & Ships
I was researching the types of ships and navigational tools used by the Spanish and Portuguese during the so-called Age of Discovery, which brought them to Africa. I was struck by the fact that many of those sailing were convicts given life sentences in exchange for colonization efforts. These voyages weren’t isolated—they were part of global operations of conquest and expansion happening simultaneously across continents.
 

The Menil Collection – Artifacts
On a more recent trip, I began visiting museums in search of Nigerian artifacts—most of which are no longer at home. What shocked me was not just the sheer number of pieces taken, but also the realization of how prolific and artistically rich our cultures were to begin with.