#abigailmott

We love the varying sizes of flowers on the faded purple ribbon-embossed cloth on our copy of Abolitionist Abigail Mott’s Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Colour (New York, 1837). #PublishersBindingThursday

The first edition of Mott’s Biographical Sketches, which includes an account of Olaudah Equiano abridged from his 1789 narrative, was published in 1826 as a textbook for African Free School students and was the first American work celebrating African Americans. There would be nothing comparable published in the United States until the works of African American writers of the mid-19th century.

This is an old game.

First thought, best thought.

We are different and same.

New origin stories break out and we are bound by nothing

but our Creativity.

I thought I saw a Poet brought to life.

Her face was warm with the freckled glow of a cosmic undertow.

She was the Earth, brown with chapped lips and thirsty eyes.

It was as if inside every tree was a human and

inside every word a universe of symbols.

This game of making the future is an old game.

I have turned away twice and the woods are thick with twilight.

Still I search.