Kindred Creation - by Aida Mariam Davis (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A vital path home. Employing African epistemologies and an embodied African beingness, this book embraces the revelation and miracle of Blackness.

Creating a world worthy of our children requires recalling the dignity and distinction of the African way of life.

This book is not written for settler consumption. Kindred Creation is a call and response to dream and design better worlds rooted in African lifeways: a path to Black freedom, a love letter to Black futures, and a blueprint to intergenerational Black joy and dignity--all (and always) on Black terms.

Author, organizer, and designer Aida Mariam Davis explores the historical and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism, making explicit the ways that extraction, oppression, and enslavement serve the goals of empire--not least by severing ancestral connections and disrupting profound and ancient relationships to self, nature, and community.

Structured in three parts--Remember, Refuse, and Reclaim--Kindred Creation is a philosophical guidebook and a vital invitation to power and reconnection. Davis employs parable, poetry, theory, memory, narrative, and prophecy to help readers:

• Remember By unforgetting the unending and cascading violence of settler colonialism and other forms of domination and exploring the ways that African land, language, lifestyle, and labor are stolen, distorted, and repackaged for colonial consumption to extract capital and sever ties to ancestral knowledge, lifeways, and dignity
  
• Refuse By rejecting and interrupting death-making institutions and relationships and choosing kinship and self-determination in the face of settler colonial violence
  
• Reclaim By revealing that freedom is within us--and within reach. Davis shares how the reader can birth new worlds and relationships and offers strategies for reclaiming land, language, lifestyle, and labor.
  

The colonial violence and dispossession of African land, language, and labor is inflicted intentionally--and by design. Reclaiming African lifeways and remembering what was forcibly forgotten must be by creation a re-membering of our interconnectedness and kinship.

Review Quotes

"The parables in Kindred Creation show us the light on the walk of life."
--Nikki Giovanni, poet, author and seven time NAACP Image award winner

"Kindred Creation is an offering of high art, radical political philosophy, and spiritual nourishment. Read this book and prepare to be unsettled, challenged, inspired, and healed."
--Marc Lamont Hill, author and BET News correspondent

"... a lyrical, audacious appeal to decolonize everything in order to preserve and repair our planet. A vital contribution that needs to be translated into every language."
--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams

"A powerful testimony to the richness of African and Black knowledges. Both inspiring and poignant."
--Anna Tubbs, author of the New York Times best seller Three Mothers

"An invitation to rip colonial borders out of our hearts and souls by the roots, and then rebuild, restore, and reimagine what lives lived together could look like.... an invitation to be made whole."
--Patty Krawec, cohost of the Medicine for the Resistance podcast, cofounder of the Nii'kinaaganaa Foundation, and author of Becoming Kin

"Kindred Creation moves us in the direction toward decolonial futures in ways we didn't know we needed."
--Kyle T. Mays, PhD, author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

"This book is a marvel.... it just may be the spark needed to compel serious transformative action."
--Daniel O. Sayers, author of A Desolate Place for a Defiant People

"Clear-sighted and precise, heart-centered and expansive. A balm."
--Angela Flournoy, author of the New York Times Notable Book The Turner House

"A revival and a revelation.... Kindred Creation shows us the magic, majesty, and magnificence that is Blackness. A must-read for anyone working to create a future worthy of our children."
--Michael Tubbs, special advisor for economic mobility to CA Governor Newsom and former mayor of Stockton

"This precious book reminds us that if we refuse to acknowledge our individual and collective responsibility in caring for the earth and all beings on it, it is at our own peril. Love is the answer to every question."
--Ericka Huggins, author of Comrade Sister

"Kindred Creation is in the family way with languages, musings, musicalities, worldviews, ontologies, epistemologies, and axiologies of free and ancient futures."
--Fania Davis, civil rights attorney and restorative justice practitioner

"A must-read for all schools and for parents of Black children who can use Aida's smart, decolonized lens as a tool to reimagine/create a revolutionary new world of freedom."
--Jessica McKay, New York Times best-selling author of Always with You, Always with Me

"Aida's vision and voice are seminal and represent the leadership necessary to unlock the promise of the nation by unleashing the promise in us all."
--Dr. Michael McAfee, president and CEO of PolicyLink

"The American experiment in democracy may be nearly 250 years old, but our attempt to realize a multiracial and pluralistic society of free and equal citizens has yet to be born.... Kindred Creation reminds us that we must look backward to reclaim and repair in order to chart any path forward."
--Rob Reich, professor of political science at Stanford University

About the Author

Aida Mariam Davis holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and African American studies from the University of California, Berkeley in addition to a Master's from the University of Southern California in Public Policy and Public Administration. Davis is currently the Chief People Officer of the Sierra Club. Davis founded and led Decolonize Design, a boutique consulting firm with clients spanning the nonprofit sector, philanthropy, and Fortune 500 companies. She created the Belonging, Dignity, Justice, and Joy (BDJJ) framework as an alternative to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) industrial complex. Her writing can be found online and in print at various publications, including Stanford Social Innovation Review, World Economic Forum, Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, and UC Berkeley Diaspora Magazine. She teaches a class on social innovation at the University of Pennsylvania. Davis currently resides in California with her husband and two children.