Atlanta journalist Neesha Powell-Ingabire reflects on her Geechee roots in new memoir

Caption

Neesha Powell-Ingabire is the author of the memoir, 'Come By Here'. / Courtesy

A new memoir by journalist Neesha Powell-Ingabire is a look back at her hometown of Brunswick, Georgia—a long look back. The memoir in a series of essays is a reflection on slavery’s impact on the Georgia coast, her Geechee heritage, the Geechee culture that exists today, and the friction that comes with being Black, queer, and disabled in today’s world. The book is called Come By Here: A Memoir in Essays from Georgia's Geechee Coast. Neesha Powell-Ingabire spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello, and is also featured in the latest episode of GPB’s Narrative Edge).

Peter Biello: Let's start by talking a little bit about your family history on the coast. How long has your family been in that part of Georgia?

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: My maternal family has been on the coast of Georgia as long as they can remember.

Peter Biello: So way, way back.

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: Way, way back. I've never heard anything about us migrating from anywhere else. So I assume that that's where they've been since being brought over, stolen, captured from Africa and brought over here. So yeah.

Peter Biello: And did you enjoy growing up here?

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: Oooo. It is complicated. And that's kind of where the book comes from, right? Very complicated, growing up, feeling like an outsider in a lot of different ways and then coming to appreciate it in adulthood.

Peter Biello: What made you feel like an outsider, specifically?

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: I felt different. And being different is not cool. I felt different because I didn't know that I was neurodivergent until I was an adult. But I was neurodivergent and so I spoke differently and moved differently. I was just different from the other children. Also having an eye condition called strabismus where your eyes are not aligned. That made me really different. Being teased by kids. At home, being criticized for just everything. I just feel like I come from a very critical home. So I always just felt different.

Peter Biello: All of the things you mentioned are touched upon in various ways in the essays in this book, in ways that we couldn't possibly cover in a brief conversation like this. But I do encourage our listeners to check out your book, Come By Here. I wanted to ask you about your Geechee identity or the extent to which you identify then and now, because as you write in this book, you didn't really think of yourself as someone with Geechee heritage back then. The word you described [in the book] is that it wasn't the cool thing to be then. But what about now? To what extent do you feel connected to that part of yourself now?

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: Yeah. So while writing this book, I have been able to connect with, talk to, spend time with many people on the coast who are really reclaiming a Geechee identity. And I've learned so much from them and through meeting them and learning what being Gullah Geechee means to them — seeing myself in that, it's kind of like undeniable. As I told you earlier, my family, that is where they are from. They are from the Geechee coast; they have been there for hundreds of years. And I think now I think of myself as I would say, I descend from Gullah Geechee folks.

Peter Biello: It was fascinating to see in this book you go back to Sapelo Island — or go to Sapelo Island, I should say, as both a reporter and as a person with ties to the region; to come to this place, feel emotionally attached to it, and then get to know it on an intellectual basis. How was that process for you?

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: Long overdue. As I talk about in that particular essay, my whole life, right by my church, there was this sign that pointed to Sapelo, and I never really thought much about it. I didn't know that Sapelo was a place of historical and cultural significance. They didn't teach us that in school, and so I had no reason to want to go over there. I only learned of its significance when I moved away from coastal Georgia, and finally being able to go there was a special moment, and I felt really honored that Maurice Bailey, whose family has been on Sapelo since the times of slavery, took time to host me and my partner and to show us around and to really tell us the story and demystify it for me. Just to be somewhere that important to the culture of Georgia, to this country — to the world, honestly — felt very, very important.

Peter Biello: One of the things that hooks readers to this book, if you read the blurb about it, is that you were classmates with one of the white men who — who killed Ahmaud Arbery, who was killed almost five years ago now.

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: 2020.

Peter Biello: Yeah. It didn't take up too much space in your book, but what it did represent, at least to me, as I read it, was that you lived in an area where racism was pervasive. It was around you and it shows up again and again. I'm wondering what it was like for you to reflect on this at length in the writing of this book and how that reflection sort of changed the way you felt about where you grew up?

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: It was —

Peter Biello: Because you're going back and back and back and you're thinking, oh yeah, here's another example. My friend Matt had a Confederate flag at his house and no one said anything about it when I was there. And it was just — you keep encountering these things and now when you're writing a memoir, you're almost creating a list.

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: Exactly. And growing up, I felt like I didn't think about racism that much. Not that I didn't know that it existed, but it wasn't at the top of my mind like it is now, and I feel like it was more hidden. It was something that we knew existed. But we really didn't talk about it in the open. And so I think things have changed since then. I feel like we just talk about race and racism more than we did in the '90s and the 2000s. So things have changed in that way. I've been reflecting on all of that. Reflecting on what happened to Ahmaud is always painful, always surreal because you just never imagine that something like that will hit so close to home. From reading this book, you know, maybe folks will understand kind of like the environment, the climate that we both came up in and how something so horrendous could happen.

Peter Biello: So you live in the Atlanta area now.

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: I do.

Peter Biello: If you had the opportunity, would you move back to the coast? You have memories of pervasive racism. Clearly, it's not gone away. Would you go back?

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: I think I would. While writing this book, I went down to Coastal Georgia more than I had in years and made so many great connections, formed new relationships and friendships that made me feel like maybe I actually do belong here. There are people here who are on the same page as me, who believe in many of the same things I do, who are politically and socially aligned with me and my sense of belonging has definitely grew and I think I could make a meaningful life for myself there.

Peter Biello: Well, one last fact before we leave, which is that the book's title Come By Here is taken from the translation of a word that might be familiar to people, but they might not know it's a Gullah Geechee word, which is kumbaya. So the book is Come By Here. Neesha Powell-Ingabire, thank you so much for speaking with me about it.

Neesha Powell-Ingabire: Thank you, Peter.