Homecoming, Jufferee
By Jacqueline Johnson

YaYa with the purple buba and glass beetle wide eyes
maybe you were the one that gave Alex Haley,
the connection between Kunta Kinte and
some great great great great grandfather
who remembered the moment Kunta was made a slave.
At least, it’s the story we tourists get today.

A man stands before us holding a framed picture
of LaVar Burton with a rope around his neck
playing an African, playing an American captured slave.
In this seemingly free Africa
we get the movie version of slavery.

I scan over faded concrete buildings,
hibiscus trees wildly in bloom
rusted tin roofs, and western style dressed children.
Among a sea of vendors and villagers
sits a drum school for renegade Europeans.

During our palaver a calabash filled with money
clothing and our hungry, American souls
separates us from Kunta’s generations.
Miles away from the ocean and any main road this
Gambian village is lush, fertile.

Reverently I kiss an old woman’s hand
and offer mine.
She leans to my ear and whispers “money mami?”
Large eyes rimmed blue
her grip surprisingly strong.

Copyright Jacqueline Johnson. Used with the permission of the author.

A multi-disciplined writer working in the areas of poetry, childrens books, non-fiction and fiction, Jacqueline Johnson is the winner of the 1997 White Pine Press Award for Poetry for A Gathering of Mother Tongues. She is also the author of Stokely Carmichael: The Story of Black Power (Simon & Shuster Books, 1990). Her recent publications include work in Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews (University of Akron Press), and Calabash: Caribbean Journal of Literature. Ms. Johnson has received awards from the New York Foundation of the Arts, and the Mid Atlantic Writers Association’s Creative Writing Award in Poetry. A native of Philadelphia and graduate of New York University and the City College of New York, Jacqueline Johnson lives in Brooklyn, and teaches poetry at the Frederick Douglas Creative Arts Center in New York City.

Copyright © 1997-2006 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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