A blog about everything and nothing
I often blog about the history and cultural experience of the African diaspora, and then specifically the African Surinamese diaspora. Since Suriname is an ethnic and cultural melting pot, there are however, several other diasporic communities. One of those communities is the Surinamese Indian diaspora or the Hindustani as we call them in Suriname. After […]
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Today I saw a newspaper article about the MyHeritage app Deep Nostalgia. It’s an app that animates faces from (old) photographs. The animations I saw were so realistic, and I knew immediately that I needed to try it. And when I tell you I was not disappointed! I started with a photograph of my maternal […]
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My first blog post for this year was one where I expressed my anxiety and fears surrounding this pandemic. Even though I still feel anxious and afraid, there are also many things I need to be very appreciative and thankful for. In previous posts I have shared some of my personal feelings, but it has […]
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A couple of weeks ago I was sent this song, written and sung by Surinamese physician Ruben del Prado. It’s called Grantangi. This is the Sranan word for saying both thank you, and please. He wrote this song as an ode to everybody working on the front-line of the COVID response team. This would include […]
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Even though a lot of historical records have been digitized, researching your Surinamese family history can still be tricky at times. For instance, the enslaved Africans in Suriname only received a family name upon manumission or emancipation. This makes digging through the slave registries still a very tricky process. You constantly have to check and […]
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Content warning: This blogpost contains material that may be considered very disturbing to some. Discretion is advised. When doing research, I sometimes stumble upon very lurid stories. This is one of them. The following text contains an English summary of the newspaper article displayed in the image below. Semire, an enslaved woman of about 30 […]
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This is the third installment in this series. Because this post has been sitting in my drafts for quite some time now, some of these songs are somewhat old. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t good…! Good music doesn’t have an expiration date! Gafarock featuring Rico Saridin- Wong JowoI know that I mostly highlight all […]
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A painting containing the actual faces of rebels who participated in one of the most well documented slave revolts.
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These short films are such a delight! It’s great to see the spooky stories I grew up with acted out on the screen in such great quality. There’s a whole series on Youtube, but these two are my favorite. Check out the filmmaker’s channel, Little Wolf Imagination, and make sure to subscribe…! Enjoy!
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In my post They connected…! I posted a list of Surinamese words that have an African origin. Of course Suriname isn’t the only country that has persevered and has managed to preserve Africa in all aspects of life. This post will focus on how Africa was preserved in the languages of the Diaspora. Take for […]
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In a previous post I highlighted the movie Wan Pipel, which portrayed quite a bit of traditional Surinamese Indian culture. This post will be somewhat of a continuation of that. I will also highlight a bit of Surinamese Indian culture. However, this post also offers a glimpse of the unique melting pot that is Suriname. […]
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Some of you may be familiar with the movie Mississippi Masala, a romantic drama film which explores the interracial romance between Demetrius, an African American man, and Mina, an Indian American woman and all the societal obstacles they had to overcome to be able to be in a relationship with each other. The movie, which […]
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Frequent readers of this blog, know that I love to write about my home-country Suriname. About all the ways in which mother Africa is still very much present in the souls of Surinamese people, hundreds of years after their ancestors were snatched away from her bosom. I write about our resilience, our music, our pride. […]
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Regular readers of my blog would know that I love black history and black culture. I love it when black people come together to create magic, and then in particular magic in the form of music. In the past I blogged about, what I called African Fusion songs, which were songs made out of some […]
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As an avid genealogist, a lot of my time is spent browsing through old newspapers in search of clues and missing puzzle pieces. I was doing just that today, when I stumbled upon this article in the Surinamese newspaper De West: nieuwsblad uit en voor Suriname, 21-11-1951 about “Negervervolging in Amerika”, translated “Negro-prosecution in America”.
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Ana Elrich 