Writing Through Pain: Ars Spirituality, the Black Atlantic, and the Paradox of Diasporic Belongingness

Abstract

By way of autoethnographic poetry, I reflect on my personal struggles related to racial consciousness as I embarked on a journey—from America, across the Atlantic, and eventually, to the Indian Ocean off the East Coast of (mother) Africa. The story of my apparent racial crisis is viewed through multiple lenses, as I infuse the pivotal readings of The Black Atlantic, Lose Your Mother, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, and personal experiences both in autoethnographic and in poetic form.