I. moving toward home (always a voice/siempre una voz series)
2025-2026
6.5 x 6.5 inches
Fabric, vellum, thread, sharpie, cardstock, cardboard, photography

June Jordan wrote “Moving Towards Home” in 1982 after the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra + Shatila refugee camps. Jordan acknowledges the Palestinian struggle for liberation as her own. This book accompanied by the playlist “moving toward home,” part of my “always a voice/siempre una voz” series honors women artists who do the same.

The songs, this poetry, pushed me to learn more about our collective struggles, and create more, uplifting and searching for solutions to rectify it. From listening to Miriam Makeba, I learned about resistance against apartheid in South Africa. I open the playlist and book with Sade “Pearls” from annoyance of the song being paired with beauty videos byway of TikTok. I learned about the 1992 Somali famine that Sade references in the song. The book shares my thoughts and background knowledge from these musicians acknowledging that music is information.

This playlist series is also an invitation to read poetry and listen to music about resistance, while surrounding our lives around it. It is also an invitation to listen to non-Western music, and learn languages beside your own. There is always a voice in between the lines, sometimes needing translation, and beyond borders. Our lives depend on searching for it.