Editor’s Take
BY NJEMILE Z. ALI
Land and Liberation
The Summer 2025 issue of KIZA BlackLit holds hopes, dreams, futures, present lives and principles. Our writers cultivate Black Mind: Real. Estate. by inviting us into their inner and outer landscapes, where they delve into the meanings of all the things: land, liberation, sovereignty: how do we attain them?
In "Growing on the Land,” Tannur Shewrightz Ali reminds us of the depths of internal liberation, accessed by giving way to being mentored by the soil and shaped by the demands and wisdom of living in communion with the land.
Dr. Geneva Smitherman’s “Black English/Ebonics: What It Be Like?” - originally published in 1997 - is as fresh and relevant today as it was 28 years ago. Dr. Smitherman helps us reclaim the land of our voices, our language. She teaches us to embrace the rhythms, flow and go of how we talk, which reflects who we be and how we be.
Chris Courtney Martin takes us from unfinished business at the block level in their poem "The MOVEment,” out into the universe and beyond, reclaiming the very black of is-ness with an excerpt from their forthcoming publication, Blaq Andi / A Meditation on the Re-Negrofication in the Mythos of a Tragically Compulsory Swxrl Gxrl.
Our columnists, too, paint new tactile vistas of land and liberation. I can feel the cool grass under my feet while traipsing through Khadija Pounsel’s “Land as Liberation.” In Eryka Parker’s “Liberation is a Place: Writing Black Joy in Rooted Spaces,” I can feel the red clay ground, as she gives honor to the joys and sorrows of Black folks’ relationships with the land then and now.
The Summer issue’s Treasures of the African Diaspora bring together many of the values our writers call to our attention: growing character on and with the land, appreciating the gifts of the land, being home, seeking safety, building in community, protecting the land: this quarter’s treasures “Catch the Spirit of Sovereignty,” providing a visible example of Land and Liberation in practice.
The staff has also compiled a reading list on Land & Liberation that spans the years from the early homesteading era to current work among urban and rural farmers and homesteaders in the U.S.
Here’s to soaking in the abundance of summer for the remainder of this year’s hot season. Wishing you communions with greens, cool grass walks, starry warm nights and moonlit meditations.