Hoe wij hier ook samen kwamen

May 29, 2021.Reading time 6 minutes.

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 […]

What’s in a name?

December 13, 2020.Reading time 18 minutes.

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 […]

Lurid finds

December 8, 2020.Reading time 8 minutes.

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 […]

When the motherland and the diaspora meet (3)

December 1, 2020.Reading time 6 minutes.

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 […]

Rebel Faces

November 10, 2020.Reading time 22 minutes.

A painting containing the actual faces of rebels who participated in one of the most well documented slave revolts.

Short Surinamese horror movies

September 26, 2020.Reading time 1 minute.

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!

We preserved…!

September 25, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

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 […]

Before Mississippi Masala there was Wan Pipel

September 23, 2020.Reading time 4 minutes.

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 […]

Horror Nursery Rhymes

September 22, 2020.Reading time 11 minutes.

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. […]

When the Motherland and the Diaspora meet (2)

August 28, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

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 […]

Letter to Cecilia

August 19, 2020.Reading time 17 minutes.

Dear Cecilia, I will start off by saying that compared to the other letters I’ve written, this letter has been the hardest so far. I’ve started a couple of times but then stopped to post other things, which is something I normally don’t do. I may even end up drastically editing the post after I’ve […]

Letter to Serafina

July 19, 2020.Reading time 7 minutes.

Dear Serafina, When I found out that your picture, this picture, existed, I felt several emotions raging through my body. Surprise, because who would have known that after all this digging around for clues, that there still would be actual imagery of you. Excitement, because I would finally be able to attach a face to […]

The same old

July 8, 2020.Reading time 4 minutes.

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”.