Poetry Across Borders: A Conversation with Kakuma’s Young Writers by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Explore the work of photographer Steve Kiza, a Kakuma resident whose images document his community not for the Western gaze, but to reveal its humanity, resilience, and vibrancy despite difficult circumstances. Here is the link: Kakuma Photographer Steve Kiza

Established in 1992, Kakuma has become one of the largest refugee camps in the world. It is home to tens of thousands of people who fled violence and instability in neighboring countries, particularly South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For many residents, the camp is the only home they have ever known.

The poets I met are part of that generation. Their poems document life in the camp including its hardships, its long waiting, but also its communities of resilience, imagination, and artistic expression.

Other writers joined our gathering as well: the Somali -American writer Zainab Hassan, Ethiopian, London-based poet Alemu Tebeje and, of course, the London-based organizers of this event Ambrose Musiyiwa and Omobola Osamor, who convened us. Musiyiwa and Osamor are the force behind the Forced Migration and The Arts Poetry Project and the poetry anthologies complementing this project, of which my work is included along with other African writers based on the continent and throughout the diaspora. Last week’s gathering, poets shared their work and began discussing ways to continue supporting projects with the Kakuma poets, including helping them translate their work into Swahili so that their voices might reach wider audiences across East Africa.

The featured poets from Kakuma, Mamuch Bey and Mudadi Saidi, have lived most of their lives in the camp. Their work was striking. Their poetry was informed by displacement yet it was filled with clarity and courage.

Poet Mudadi Saidi

This reading was an extraordinary experience. It was one that reminded me how poetry continues to travel across borders, even when people cannot.

This reading was recorded, and I will share the link once it becomes available.

Poet Mamuch Bey

Beautiful Stranger, Come to The World; Who Built the Sound? by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Before the salons and symphonies, there were her hands, his mother, grooming, guiding, grounding Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges in a love no title could outrank.

In Beautiful Stranger, Come to the World, women do and will play prominently in shaping what we now call classical music. The documented record rarely centers them. The contributions of enslaved Africans to the formation and evolution of classical music are also seldom acknowledged. So I am imagining them here: women and enslaved Africans from across the world meeting, collaborating, and making music while moving through dark and complicated histories.

*Remember, this is an ongoing series where history slowly unfolds through many voices, so you can truly hear the world. If you would like to revisit the earlier installments before listening to Part III, all are accessible in the link below.

Actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. playing Chevalier in the 2022 movie.

And you must see the 2022 film Chevalier, which portrays the brilliance of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges who was often called the “Black Mozart,” and he was a contemporary of Mozart. Though raised and groomed within a privileged, white, French world, he was never severed from his Black mother or the Black community that shaped him. What moved me most in the film were the tender depictions of those bonds.

Courtesy Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.  Frederick  Douglass with his grandson. 

I salute, too, Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), who was an amateur violinist and owned a copy of a Stradivarius. His grandson, Joseph Henry Douglass (1871–1935), became one of the first Black musicians to tour internationally as a concert violinist and later led Howard University’s School of Music.

And many of us learned, in school, about Solomon Northup (1808–1864), whose memoir Twelve Years a Slave documents his kidnapping into slavery. He was also a professional violinist.

While we honor these men, the women and the enslaved Africans who preceded them stand at the center of this musical genre. I am using this series, along with imagination and history, to raise the dead and restore their contributions.

Give a listen: If you feel moved to support this work as it unfolds, contributions are always appreciated.

 

Click link to listen:  

 

https://open.substack.com/pub/octaviamcbride/p/beautiful-stranger-come-to-the-world-2c1?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

Who Gets to Declare Forgetting? On Judge A. Leon Higginbotham and Memory by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

 

Artist Jerry Lynn- Discover more of his work: https://artbyjerrylynn.com/

Dear Malcolm Burnley and Philadelphia Magazine:

When headlines suggest local forgetting of Black icons like Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, they can unintentionally obscure the ways Black communities preserve and transmit their own histories, often without validation from mainstream platforms. Framing his legacy as lost and rediscovered risks centering absence rather than continuity.

That headline carries a quiet erasure, even if unintended. It frames local Black memory as absence, and centers the outsider’s gaze instead of the community that has long honored Judge Higginbotham.

I read this piece on him with great appreciation for your desire to underscore his phenomenal achievements. His legacy is urgently needed in this moment of legal and moral reckoning.

But I need to strongly push back on the framing suggested by the title, particularly the implication that Philadelphia “forgot” him. For a significant portion of Black Philadelphia, Judge Higginbotham has never been forgotten. He is known and taught. He is spoken of with reverence. His legacy has lived not only in institutions, but in community memory, classrooms, churches, and family conversations.

I wonder what it might have offered to lead instead with celebration, to foreground his contributions and his courage, and why his jurisprudence and moral witness matter so profoundly right now without first positioning him as forgotten.

I share this in the spirit of dialogue and care for how our city, and especially its Black communities, are represented. I’m grateful for the attention you’ve brought to Judge Higginbotham and hope future conversations continue to honor both his national stature and his deeply rooted place in Philadelphia’s Black civic life.

Here is the link to the article : Philadelphia Magazine-Philadelphia Forgot A. Leon Higginbotham. America Can’t Afford To : https://www.phillymag.com/news/2026/01/30/a-leon-higginbotham-history/

The Final Two Audio Installments of Mr. FiFi’s Summer by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

 

I’m adding here the final two audio installments of Mr. FiFi’s Summer.  At its heart, this is a story about how generosity travels: through the practice of craft, through friendships sustained across borders, and through the quiet, enduring acts that allow people to remain connected despite change and departure.

Thank you for listening and for staying with the story to its close. Stay tuned for the next stories. You never quite know where you might find yourself: Rwanda, Mauritania, North Philly and all points in between.

Comments are welcome for those who wish to respond. *The audio version is narrated by a voice artist. All installments are available here. Click link.

https://open.substack.com/pub/octaviamcbride/p/the-final-two-audio-installments?r=74n5p0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Listen: Mr. FiFi’s Summer, a Serialized Audio Short Story by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

 

Image-K. Addo

         If you haven’t yet listened to the first two audio installments of Mr. FiFi’s Summer, they’re available on my first Substack post-located at the end of the post. The final two audio installments will be shared on Friday. And subscribe for future posts, for more stories and do leave some comments.

Here is the link: 

https://substack.com/@octaviabmcbride/note/p-185217469?r=74n5p0&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web

Strangers No More: Street Portraits Across Cultures-Yaprak Soysal at Plays and Players Theatre by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

I have been following the work of Yaprak Soysal for some time now, encountering her street portraits as they surface on my social media feed, quietly, without fanfare, yet insistently asking to be seen. Again and again, I find myself pausing. These photographs do not clamor for attention; they bear witness. They invite recognition.

While the portraits shared here were first encountered online and may not be the same works presented in this new exhibition, they nonetheless offer a window into Soysal’s way of seeing which is one that makes the exhibition especially anticipated. 

Strangers No More: Street Portraits Across Cultures-Photography by Yaprak Soysal will open tomorrow, Saturday, January 17, 2026, 4-6 p.m., at Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Street. 

Soysal’s portraits present something essential about who we are as a city. They remind us that the soul of a city resides in its people. The ethnic and cultural diversity so often discussed in abstract terms comes into focus here as intimate, grounded, and dignified. Each face carries a story, but Soysal resists the urge to over-narrate. Instead, she allows presence to speak.

What strikes me most is her refusal to exoticize difference. These are not images that turn cultural markers into spectacle. Rather, each subject meets the camera with agency and calm authority. The photographs suggest a moment of mutual recognition; an exchange rather than an extraction. Even when I encounter these images digitally, I sense conversation behind them: a pause, an agreement, a shared curiosity.

Street portraiture can be fraught. It carries questions of power, consent, and representation. Yet Soysal’s work consistently conveys care. The viewer is not positioned above or outside the subject, but alongside them. The portraits feel collaborative, as if shaped by trust in the brief space where two strangers meet and decide, together, to make an image.

As someone who has lived, worked, and written within multicultural communities, I am especially attuned to how easily difference can be flattened or

 misunderstood. Soysal’s portraits resist that flattening. They insist on complexity without drama, on individuality without isolation. Each photograph feels like a small act of civic faith.

In sharing some of these portraits here which are images I have encountered previously through Soysal's Facebook posts, I want to honor the way her work has already been moving through the world, touching viewers one at a time. Strangers No More is not only a title; it is a proposition. It asks us to slow down, to look carefully, and to reconsider how we see those we pass every day.

I know Soysal not only through her work but personally, and she photographed me during a project we were  both a part of.  That experience deepened my respect for her practice and resulted in one of my most cherished photographs.

Her photographs are worth seeing in person. 

Strangers No More: Street Portraits Across Cultures-Photography by Yaprak Soysal will open tomorrow, Saturday, January 17, 2026, 4-6 p.m., at Plays and Players Theater, 1714 Delancey Street. 

Listening Together: Poetry and Kora by Octavia McBride-Ahebee

Shoutout to Larry Robin and the Moonstone Arts family for a deeply moving evening of poetry. It truly felt like a family reunion. The upstairs of the famed Irish pub Fergie’s was packed with young and old, representing every corner of our city, just as it should be.

In that space, we also acknowledged the crisis our country is in and the vital role poets play in bearing witness, speaking truth, and imagining change .

Octavia McBride-Ahebee reading her work as master kora musician, Youba Cissokho, weaves sound beneath the words.

Heartfelt thanks to master kora musician Youba Cissokho for accompanying my reading. I was honored to read alongside the other featured poets and inspired by the open mic, especially the phenomenal Adriann Just-the-Pen Bautista, Aaren Perry , Elijah B. Pringle III and Ray Garman. And thank you to the evening’s host Liz Allen.

72nd-Generation Kora Musician Youba Cissokho

Poet  Adriann Just-the-Pen Bautista

I had the loveliest table mate for the evening, poet Anne-Adele Wight ! I am so looking forward to reading the collection she’s working on. Such a gentle and generous spirit.

My work is a kind of ode to migration not as a crisis, but an essential, enduring expression of human hope. 

I am always uplifted by my dear friends Phyllis, Tony, Mona, my daughter Sojourner, and Sami, whose love and support over the years continue to carry me. Thank you. Thank you !