Grace Ali heard about DDFR from a friend and fellow journalist Pamela Newkirk (who had participated in one of the DDFR Roadshows at the Brooklyn Public Library last year with her book, Letters From Black America). After reaching out to me via Facebook to say that she was excited by the project, Grace emailed me an image of her Mother, Ingrid and her Grandmother taken in Guyana in the 1960’s.
Last week, Grace came in to our office to meet with me and she brought more of family photographs and shared them with me as well as the stories associated with them. She told me that her father was a mixture of East Indian and African and that her mother was a mixture of East Indian and Native American. She asked me if people often got emotional as they shared this images and then she began telling me of the stories of people in the photo’s many of who have passed on. I invited Grace to create a profile on DDFR social net and share her story which she did.
Grace was excited that she was the first Guyanese person to contribute to the site.
“I was born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1981 and moved to the United States when I was fourteen years old. My family—my parents, brother, sister, and myself—left Guyana in the mid 1990s to find a better life. My mother had waited over ten years for the Guyanese government to approve papers that would allow our family to leave for the United States. Fifteen years later, I have yet to go back.”
Feel free to set up an account on DDFR social net and read other similar stories or upload some of your family photos and share your own story.
Also, check out Grace’s Of Note Magazine, an online magazine that features global artists using their work towards social change and activism.
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