Ugochi Egonu: Before We Become Ancestors

Content warning: This post contains discussion of sexual violence and police brutality.

“I saw a demon on my shoulder, it’s lookin’ like patriarchy
Like scrubbin’ blood off the ceiling and bleachin’ another carpet
How my house get haunted?
Why Toyin body don’t embody all the life she wanted?
A baby, just nineteen
I know I dream all black
I seen her everything, immortalizin’ tweets all caps
They say they found her dead”

-Noname


This summer I’ve had a hard time focusing in general, both because of my research and the growing intensity of the liberation movements surrounding us. At first, it felt like my work had to take a complete halt. It felt impossible to worry about an artist in a country thousands of miles away when my community surrounding me when directly in front of me I could see people hurting, cities burning and hear cries for the end of the oppressive systems. A large part of my research process is reaching out to musicians through social media. My social media feeds at the time were only filled with news of racial violence or organizers informing people on how to fight against it. It felt irresponsible for me to be posting and sharing information about a seemingly unrelated art project when I could be working to help the movement.


On June 13th 19-year-old Black Lives Matter activist Oluwatoyin Salau was murdered after speaking out about her sexual assault on twitter. The first thing I noticed when I read that headline was the name, Oluwatoyin, a popular Yoruba name. Earlier that month, women and girls in Nigeria began to protest both online and in-person against rape culture in Nigeria. Women began to come forth about their experiences with sexual abuse with both high profile Nigerian celebrities and people close to them. I started to think about the prevalence of sexual abuse and gender violence in our culture and why it is that even in diaspora that legacy prevails. I started to think about what it takes for Nigerian women to be heard. About why it is that often only after death are our stories recognized and validated. How Seyitan Babatayo was literally forced into silence and dismissed after her encounters with sexual violence with Nigerian musician D’Banj. Why it took this moment for the story that she had told to finally be recognized.

These headlines made me want to shift gears in my project, I will still be highlighting the work of Nigerian artists, but I will focus on Nigerian femmes both in the diaspora and in the motherland. I want us to have a space for our voices. I want a space for tears, laughter, and shouts. I want us to be heard before we become ancestors. That will also be the new title of the anthology, Before We Become Ancestors, and I will do my best to have the web designers and anyone else who works on this project be a Nigerian woman.