Since 2015, the Tengo Sed (“I am thirsty”) Writers’ Retreats have brought together African-descended people of diverse backgrounds and across disciplines to create works in an emancipatory space of knowledge and community. For editors Yndia Lorick-Wilmot and Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, Tengo Sed is the manifestation of the bonds created within the context of global community-making, allowing for these perspectives to come to life.

A blend of text and visuals in genre fiction, nonfiction, poetry, memoir, art, and music, Tengo Sed engages in the expansive and nuanced meanings of Blackness across the diaspora, traversing linguistic, geographic, material, and formal boundaries. The collection interrogates how African-descended individuals theorize and articulate their racial, gender, ethnic, and national identities in relation to dominant discourse. Underscored by a transnational feminist cultural studies approach, the collection builds upon the legacy of The Sisterhood—an activist-literary collective founded by Alice Walker and June Jordan—by providing a contemporary platform for Black creatives to amplify their voices.

Singular and inspirational, Tengo Sed centers storytelling, self-making, and artistic practice, and contributes to ongoing dialogues on Black identity, liberation, and creative sovereignty.

Contributors: Vilna Bashi, Khytie Brown, Masauko Chipembere, Maria DeLongoria, Rosalina Diaz, Summer Edward, Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, Tonya Hegamin, Tiffani J. Johnson, Daphne Lamothe, Gabrielle Lawrence, Yndia S. Lorick-Wilmot, April Mojica-Clement, Courtney Desiree Morris, Anton Nimblett, Kasandra Pantoja, Michael D. Poole, Nelly Rosario, Alicia Anabel Santos, Michele L. Simms-Burton, Andrea Stith, Tawana Thompson, Tracey L. Walters, and N’deye Walton, and Janvieve Williams Comrie

Yndia Lorick-Wilmot is a sociologist and creator of the award-winning podcast Belonging to Blackness. She is the author of Creating Black Caribbean Identity and Stories of Identity Among Black Middle Class Second-Generation Caribbeans. Natasha Gordon-Chipembere is a professor of African Diasporic literature and is the author of Representation and Black Womanhood: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman and the novel Finding La Negrita. She is the founder and host of Tengo Sed Writing Retreats in Costa Rica.