Please note
Please Note…
This book is part of a passion project.
It is dedicated to us.
To Soulaan.
To African Americans.
To descendants of this country's greatest sin.
To the diaspora — across time, place, and memory.
But most specifically, it is dedicated to the Soulaani community, of which I am a part.
This story exists because of you. It carries your endurance, your imagination, your grief, your joy, and your future.
For everyone else, this book — and the universe it begins — is a love letter. An invitation to witness, to feel, and to sit with a story shaped by people who have always existed, even when the world refused to see them.
Please note:
What you are reading is an early excerpt — the Prologue through Chapter 4 — of a work currently in progress. This is not the complete book.
This excerpt is presented in English for reading purposes only. The people within these pages are not speaking English. Any words you encounter in another language represent OAL, the language of Soulaan. These terms are not translations — they are stand-ins, visual approximations used so the story may be read while the language itself remains intact and protected.
Some sections of this book will be written entirely in OAL. They are not meant to be decoded, nor would the means to do so exist within these pages.
