But let me take you back to the beginning, before I even knew I was working on a memoir, before these conversations with my ancestors and their histories, their stories. One dreary winter afternoon in January 2015, I was sitting down having a cup of coffee with my father. For some reason he started to tell me story of how he drove from Harlem, New York on his way to Harlem, Georgia in 1965. He was moving there, to be with his then girlfriend whose people came from there. I had never heard of this ‘other’ Harlem before. Before my father left New York, his car was broken into, thus when he finally drove south, his side window in the back was smashed. My father was in a suit, and he was very specific to point out that he was wearing a pair of fifty-dollar shoes. Church’s. My grandfather thought the price way too high to pay for a pair of shoes. My father dismissed him as not knowing what fly fashion of the day was. Outside of Lexington, South Carolina my Dad was stopped by the cops who then drove him to the Sheriff’s station and decided to keep the car. My Dad was told to spend the night in a motel. My fathers’ very real fear of being lynched in the middle of the night caused him to, ironically, climb up a tree to be safe. He spent the night sitting high up in the branches in his expensive shoes. I found this story so tragic and comical I decided to write it down verbatim. That story was how I started on the multipronged project that is A Drop of Midnight.

A Drop of Midnight is and has been by far the most meaningful work I have done to date. From January 2015 when I penned the first words that would later become my family memoir, until today. This work has resulted in a book published in the Swedish, Norwegian language and English, a stage performance in Swedish, an album of original music, a documentary film in the making, and now finally an adaptation for the stage in English.
The journey that this work has taken me on is a testament to the unexpected nature of creativity. Initially it was the need to connect my roots and draw a map of my heritage and origins that started me on this project. My identity is a mosaic, a patchwork of countries and cultures and as far back as I can remember I have been asking myself: where do I belong, where is my home? While writing it became very clear to me how migration is a family tradition and for each generation a new piece has been added to our family tapestry.

While earlier iterations of this work where focused on summoning my ancestors, connecting myself to them and being in conversation with them, the American adaptation that Jonathan McCrory and I have worked on also passes that legacy forward to my children and beyond. Above all this work is a matter of personal healing and meaning. When I hold the jar of cotton I picked on a field where my ancestors may have slaved and in my other, I hold my daughter’s hand, progress and legacy become physical, opening up a dimension of gratitude and understanding for gift that was given to me and that I am now passing on. I turn to the ancestors and say thank you and then to the future and say go forth.