Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

I come from people who chose joy the way you choose survival.

Because it was survival. Because without it, what would there have been to pass on?

Juneteenth is not the birthday of our freedom.

It is the day the secret got out.

The freedom had already been living among us, tucked inside the music, inside the faith, inside the irreducible fact of our persistence.

Like light, we were always here. We always knew.

And the joy — that deep, structural, defiant, load-bearing joy —

was always, already, ours. Keep this.

This day was almost denied. Then it began and we were asked to described the roots of our joy. For me, it will always be dreams, always be light and now I understand too, that this business of being light belongs in the hands of only those who understand what it means to be light. Keep this.

Thank you to a team who understand that to be light is to be free…