In Hopes It Might Carry Me Home is an ongoing oral history and archival research project aimed at preserving my matrilineal history as well as a shared history of African American women in Louisiana.

This web-based installation features eight audio stories from my mother and grandmother, layered with our family photographs and archival images from Ouachita Parish in northern Louisiana. As you listen to each audio recording, I encourage you to sift through the images at a slow pace. Each collage of photographs is designed to be bidirectional, allowing you to peruse the images intentionally.

In Hopes It Might Carry Me Home emerged from my curiosity about how my family and ancestors ended up in northern, rural Louisiana. Through research and using my grandmother’s recollections as guides, I concluded that there were two likely possibilities; as victims of the slave trade, my ancestors would have either been trafficked by river through Arkansas, or through the Gulf and upriver through Louisiana. The project title references this because my hope is that by combing through historical maps, archives, and personal stories along the river routes, I can learn more about my family’s origins and find a way “home”.

This installation features an original typeface titled, Nita, inspired by my grandmother’s handwritten captions on Polaroids in our collection of family photographs. The font mirrors her prominent block letter style, often written with felt-tip markers in blue or black ink.