Becoming Water: Black Memory in Slavery’s Afterlives – Makshya Tolbert

As our physical and cultural landscapes transform around us, what
memories remain held by water? What histories of pain and
destruction, what hallowed moments are carried in its currents,
taken into its body like shards of glass, and resurface to haunt
us, to guide us? In this narrated essay from our archive, writer
and poet Makshya Tolbert wades into the liminal, haunted space that
exists between water and Black memory. As she navigates Black
lineages of thinking and practice, she comes to the meeting place
of past and present, life and death, slavery and freedom, and
embarks on her own return to water. Read the essay online on our
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