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Upon Returning to Jamaica in Search of the Undead

When Thomas Glave visited Manchester, Jamaica, with his family, he could not find his great-great-grandmother’s grave. She, Catherine Wright, a Black woman, most likely, did not have one. But his great-great-grandfather’s stone, though cracked and unadorned, lays steadfast on the land to mark the death of the Englishman. Their child spreads his palms on the grave. What easier way to invoke the life of the forgotten by placing your hands on the one who has chosen, by circumstance or conviction, to forget you? 

That is only one question the writer Thomas Glave posits for himself, and by extension his ancestry, in his essay, “In Search of the Undead: (Un)marked Graves and The Sea of We,” published in Transition, Issue T128. In his commitment to uncovering the hard truths of racial economy, sexual politics, and their intersection, Glave provides a searching, uncompromising historical accountas Transition authors have done since the magazine’s founding. 

Bizaye Banjaw

Thomas Glave's hands on Stephen Sharp Glave's Headstone
Thomas Glave’s hands on Stephen Sharp Glave’s gravestone. Manchester, Jamaica

Artist Spotlight

Yvonne Osei

Multidisciplinary Ghanaian artist Yvonne Osei uses photography and the language of textile design to create full-body portraits of African and African American women, including herself, adorned in vibrant, colorful textile patterns. Her series, “Here to Stay,” serves as a focal point for celebrating the elegance, ingenuity, resilience, and contributions of black women. The title, “Here to Stay,” signifies a declaration of presence and an endeavor to establish enduring recognition for young black women. This work operates on both physical and metaphorical levels of insertion.

Created in 2016-17, during a year-long residency at St. Louis, Missouri’s cherished open-air museum, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Osei spent time photographing and gaining insights into the park’s public artworks. Seeking to infuse her perspective and that of individuals who share her background into the park’s landscape and collection, she transformed photographs of artworks, vegetation, signage, and park visitors into textile designs reminiscent of traditional West African textiles and wax print cloths worn in Ghana, her home country

Here to Stay: Lois in Pepper Them (Brown), Yvonne Osei,
photograph, 2017.
Photo courtesy the artist and Bruno David Gallery.

Here to Stay: Yvonne in Pepper Them (Blue), Yvonne Osei, photograph, 2017.  Photo courtesy the artist and Bruno David Gallery

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The Longest-Running Pan-African Cultural Magazine

In immediate postcolonial Africa…the various decolonized or soon-to-be decolonized countries didn’t know too much about one another…

Featured Award

Leah Penniman Wins a Pushcart Prize for “Black Land Matters: Climate Solutions in Black Agrarianism”

Leah Penniman’s essay “Black Land Matters: Climate Solutions in Black Agrarianism,” featured in T133 CLIMATE, was selected to appear in PUSHCART PRIZE XLVIII, the 2024 Edition, which will be published in December, 2023 and distributed by WW Norton Co. Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm received the added honor of serving as a contributing editor on all future Pushcart Prize Editions.

Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol farmer, author, mother, and food justice activist who has been tending the soil and organizing for an anti-racist food system for 25 years. She currently serves as founding co-ED and Farm Director of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, a Black & Brown led project that works toward food and land justice. Her books are Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land (2018) and Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists (2023)

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Transition aims to speak to the lay intellectual through jargon-free, readable prose that provides both insight and pleasure.

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