Kima Jones' "Homegoing, AD" as an essay in the wake of a changing nation.
Kima Jones’ “Homegoing, AD” is an essay part of a collection of writings called “The Fire This Time,” which features diverse voices in response to America’s turbulent racial climate. Jones is a poet who has developed a strong presence in the both literary world and social media, eventually founding the Jack Jones Literary Arts, a literary publicity firm. Jones was born in 1982 in Harlem, New York. Her essay reveals the story of an African American girl who travels to Charleston, South Carolina for her grandmother’s funeral. Her writing serves as a hybrid poem, beginning as a prose and bridging to a poem toward the very end. The speaker is an unnamed figure, speaking to an unknown audience, which could be targeted toward America as a whole. Similar texts include Isabel Wilkerson’s, “Where Do We Go From Here?” Carol Anderson’s “White Rage,” and Jesmyn Ward’s, “Cracking the Code.” The text reminisces upon past memories of the narrator’s loved ones, such as her grandfather, along with the familiar setting where she grew up in North Carolina, speaking about the tobacco plants and paper mills that she remembers. The tone of her writing is calm yet informative, speaking directly toward the African American community and indirectly to perhaps those who live in America that might not understand the truth of being an African American during that time period. Through the author's language and vivid imagery of the setting in which the narrator is in, readers can conclude that the story may be linked to parts of her childhood that she experienced. The narrator and the author share some similarities; they are both African Americans (presumably female) who have grown up in the face of a changing time for the nation and seemed to have shared some similar experiences during their childhood. The story depicts the narrator sitting in a car while another family member, Jack, drives quickly toward the funeral of her grandmother. The speaker, with her cousin and a girl named Toya, escape to the woods to drink and smoke, discussing her grandfather’s death in his bed. They leave after becoming wary of an alligator nearby.
“So we run fast cuz gator made for water but children born for land"
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