Ancestries

Ancestries builds on Identities: A short story collection, to imagine and portray ways in which a variety of Global African characters-multicultural and multiracial-negotiate their sense of self and belonging. They do so within a world where their sense of rootedness and belonging must cross racial, cultural, continental and generational divides. These stories share narratives of possibilities that emerge from the creative space that Global Africans experience and exist in. It portrays Global Africans in more shades of the bridge-building, resilient capacity, ingenuity and love they bring to a world that desperately needs these qualities. This short story collection also highlights the agency and choices Global Africans must regularly make to transcend artificial boundaries and claim belonging in our world. Stories in the collection include: 1. WHAT ARE YOU? A young woman contends with the experience of being asked: What are you? and makes an interesting discovery. 2. LEGACY - Follows the cross-continental generational odyssey of an African immigrant family. 3. THE ANCESTORS - The ancestral clan of a young woman gather in the afterlife to deliberate important life decisions she must make. 4. CHOPPED - The story of a family's search for identity and belonging in the context of migration to Canada and return to Sierra Leone. 5. FATIMA - A young woman makes sense of a strange upbringing and finds out the even stranger story of her family when she moves to America for University. 6. OPEN ADOPTION - The story of an African girl adopted by a Canadian couple and the journey of her life in both worlds. 7. SHADES OF LIFE AND LOVE - shares glimpses of what love might be like at different life stages for the Global African protagonists. 8. DEAR RUBA - A grandmother shares your journey through womanhood with her granddaughter who just reached puberty. 9. ONCE UPON A TIME - A Canadian-born black man's identity and belonging journey on and off the African continent. 10. WE HUMANS, LOVE - An African woman leads a daring experiment to explore empathy in ways that might lead to ongoing social good and save humanity.