Ofrenda: para las ancestras

By Timothy Prolific Edwaujonte

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. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Owo Foro Adobe
• Release date: Aug 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780977962396

Timothy Prolific Edwaujonte

Timothy Prolific Edwaujonte (formerly Veit Jones) is a poet, writer, educator, genealogist, healer, and organizer. In the continuum of the Black Arts Movement, Edwaujonte synthesizes ancestral traditions, creative practice, and Hip-Hop culture as an Afro-Indigenous folkloric praxis. Prolific has been a featured speaker at institutions including Cornell University, Columbia University, Rikers Island, STooPS, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, SOB's, and the Weeksville Heritage Center. Timothy has been published in African Voices, The Inquisitive Eater, Voicemail Poems, the Dancing While Black 2012-2018 Community Syllabus, 12th Street, the graphic novel Gunplay, the Penmanship Book anthology 30/30 Vol. 2, The Ferguson Moment, and YRB Magazine. Tim was a Riggio Writing and Democracy Fellow at The New School, and is a graduate fellow at The Watering Hole. He is the author of "Prolific," "Musaic: 40 Days, 40 Nights," and "Ofrenda para las ancestras."

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