Chapter 1
The Decolonial Journey: Letters from a Mother to Her Son
When Lesley-Ann Brown penned "Decolonial Daughter: Letters from a Mother to Her Son," she created more than a memoir-she crafted a roadmap for understanding identity, history, and belonging in a world shaped by colonialism. The book resonates deeply with readers seeking to understand their place in a complex global landscape. Beyonce reportedly keeps it on her nightstand, and academic institutions worldwide have adopted it as essential reading for courses on diaspora studies and postcolonial literature. Brown's work arrived at a crucial moment when conversations about decolonization were gaining mainstream attention, providing both personal narrative and theoretical framework for dismantling colonial structures that persist in our modern world. What makes this work so powerful is Brown's ability to weave her intimate experiences as a Trinidadian-American woman raising a son in Denmark into a larger tapestry of historical analysis and cultural critique. Her letters don't just speak to her son-they speak to all of us about the legacy of empire and the possibility of healing.
Chapter 2
Reclaiming Indigenous European Roots
Before Christianity swept across Europe, indigenous European cultures lived in harmony with the land through sophisticated social and spiritual systems. They weren't the primitive barbarians we've been taught to envision, but peoples with complex cosmologies, advanced agricultural practices, and nuanced understanding of natural cycles. Women weren't considered property, and land wasn't something to be owned and exploited - rather, it was held in sacred trust for future generations. These pre-Christian Europeans-whether Celts, Picts, Vandals, Goths, or Gauls-understood themselves as part of nature's intricate web rather than its conqueror.
Archaeological evidence reveals remarkable technological and artistic achievements. The Celts developed advanced metallurgy techniques, creating intricate jewelry and weapons that demonstrated sophisticated understanding of materials science. The megalithic structures across Europe - from Stonehenge to the stone circles of Ireland - required advanced mathematical and astronomical knowledge. Recent excavations have uncovered complex urban centers with advanced sanitation systems, challenging long-held assumptions about "primitive" pre-Christian societies.
Women's roles were far more diverse and powerful than previously acknowledged. Archaeological findings show female rulers, warriors, and religious leaders across pre-Christian Europe. The Etruscan civilization granted women unprecedented freedoms, including property rights and social mobility. Celtic women could own property, choose their partners, and lead their clans. The remains of the "Birka warrior," a high-ranking Viking fighter long assumed to be male, was discovered to be female, forcing historians to revise their assumptions about gender roles in Norse society.
The Vikings exemplify how historical narratives can be distorted. Far from mere raiders, they were master craftspeople, traders, and explorers who established complex trade networks stretching from Baghdad to North America. Their ships were engineering masterpieces, incorporating flexibility and strength in ways that wouldn't be replicated until the modern era. Viking settlements showed sophisticated urban planning, and their democratic thing system influenced later European governance structures.
These pre-Christian societies demonstrated sustainable resource management practices that modern environmentalists are only now rediscovering. The Celtic practice of sacred groves protected biodiversity. Norse farming techniques in Iceland included early forms of crop rotation and soil conservation. Many of these practices were lost when Roman and later Christian authorities imposed new systems of land ownership and resource exploitation.
Recovering these indigenous European traditions reveals alternative models for social organization and environmental stewardship. It challenges the narrative that exploitation and hierarchy are inevitable or "natural" human conditions. Understanding how these knowledge systems were suppressed helps explain the psychological and cultural roots of modern environmental crisis and social inequality.
By reconnecting with these pre-colonial European traditions, we gain valuable insights for addressing contemporary challenges. The buried wisdom of these cultures offers practical solutions for sustainable living and social organization. Their example shows that different ways of organizing society - more egalitarian, more sustainable, more connected to natural systems - are not only possible but have historical precedent in European culture itself.
Chapter 3
The Cultural Tapestry of Trinidad
Trinidad represents a microcosm of global history-a place where cultures collided and coalesced into something entirely new. Growing up connected to this twin-island nation gave me cultural fortitude beyond what Brooklyn taught me. The phrase "All of we is one" isn't just a saying but a lived reality reflected in our biological offspring and cultural practices, from the way we celebrate Carnival to our approach to religious festivals like Divali and Eid.
The Balbirsingh family name itself tells a story of forbidden affairs and courageous love that defied colonial establishment. "Singh" comes from Sanskrit for "lion," originally adopted by warrior castes, making my mother's family name "Strong Lion"-fitting for a lineage of people who survived colonial violence through resilience and adaptation. This heritage represents countless similar stories of Indo-Caribbean families who maintained their traditions while embracing new cultural elements.
At age ten, seeing Eric Williams as prime minister showed that Black leadership was normal, long before America would see a Black president. His presence, along with other diverse leaders in parliament, demonstrated the possibility of multicultural governance. Trinidad taught me code-switching and language skills-shifting seamlessly between British-influenced English, Creole, and Hindi phrases-that later helped me navigate life in Denmark and other international spaces. Even the jokes we shared about Indian names weren't racist but ways to claim ownership of a culture flowing through our blood, representing a comfort with identity that many diaspora communities struggle to achieve.
Trinidad's diversity isn't just demographic-it's woven into every aspect of life. Our food tells the story of cultural exchange: pigeon peas from India, okra from Africa, channa from Europe, cassava from indigenous peoples. From roti to callaloo, doubles to pastelles, each dish narrates the history of those who danced before us. The Sunday lunch table might feature curry alongside macaroni pie, pelau next to dhal-living testimony that Indians, Africans, and Indigenous peoples once worked, laughed, and loved together despite the colonial system designed to keep them apart.
This experience of growing up amid such rich diversity provided tools for navigating a world increasingly defined by cultural exchange and hybrid identities. It offered a glimpse of what societies might look like when they embrace rather than fear difference-when they recognize that diversity strengthens rather than threatens cultural fabric. The annual Carnival celebration exemplifies this unity, where everyone participates regardless of background, creating a space where social hierarchies temporarily dissolve.
Yet Trinidad also carries the weight of colonization-a land where something longs to be righted, to be balanced. Despite producing excellence in fields from literature to cricket, and having a flourishing upper class, grinding poverty and violence permeate the air. The oil wealth that should have lifted all boats instead created stark disparities. Classism and racism persist, sometimes perpetuated by those who look like us-internalized racism manifests in preferences for lighter skin and "good hair," devastating communities from within. The legacy of colonial divide-and-rule tactics continues to influence modern social dynamics, even as Trinidadians work to overcome these historical wounds.
Chapter 4
The Power of Narrative and Representation
Stories shape our reality in profound ways. When my son picked up Don Quixote and shared his thoughts on Cervantes' Muslim representations, I felt immense joy. Stories aren't just entertainment-they're powerful forces for change that can either reinforce or challenge existing power structures.
While studying at the New School for Social Research in 1991, I was captivated by Don Quixote-this man so consumed by knight-errantry books that he believed himself a knight, seeing his bony horse Rocinante as gallant while confounding everyone he met. This is the genius of narrative-how deeply we're affected by what we read and the stories we tell ourselves.
Around this same time, two young men in Copenhagen were inspired by the film Point Break to become surfers in Hawaii. Unlike Quixote, they couldn't simply declare themselves surfers-they worked, saved money, and executed their plan. One of those men would later become my son's father, connecting our lives through the power of narrative inspiration.
I discovered James Baldwin in my Uncle John's book collection in Trinidad. Baldwin's work planted the seed of the Black expat writer narrative in me-showing me possibilities I hadn't imagined for myself. His migration to Europe offered a different vantage point on American Blackness, though he taught us that Europe's peace is easily punctured, being the birthplace of racism.
When I arrived in Denmark, I found no challenges to the dominant narrative about race and colonialism. I started my blog "Blackgirl on Mars" in 2007, connecting with artists, activists, and scholars resisting the silencing of Black voices. Through figures like Jamaican-Danish artist Michelle Eistrup and her project "Not about Karen Blixen," I discovered Denmark's unexamined colonial nostalgia-from "African head" candy to the Circle Girl coffee logo-all nodding to Denmark's history of colonization in the Caribbean and Ghana.
This resistance movement has grown during my years in Denmark, including scholars and artists like Temi Odumosu, Nazila Kivi, and Michael McEachrane. Through Danish-Trinidadian artist Jeannette Ehlers, I connected with Alanna Lockward's BE.BOP (Black Europe Body Politics), bringing together diverse voices on decoloniality and creating new narratives that challenge colonial legacies.
Chapter 5
The Persistence of Racial Hierarchies
In Denmark, many claim they "don't see race" while failing to acknowledge how this erasure affects thousands of children who must deal with public debates about their acceptance in society. When we don't talk about race, we end up talking only about whiteness. In the twisted logic of white supremacy, those who point out racism get labeled racist themselves-what Julia Suarez-Krabbe calls "the death project," which "targets the actual processes of life and the conditions for existence: in short, plurality."
I find little difference between racism in Denmark, the US, or even Trinidad and Tobago-the only distinction being that Scandinavia has remained insulated from confronting the ramifications of empire through erasure. Race is a construct created to justify enslavement for Europe's "death project." Thomas Middleton first used "white people" in 1613, when an African character in his play remarked on "the faces of these white people." As scholar Kim Hall explains, "whiteness truly exists only when posed next to 'blackness'" and depends on colonial expansion.
Images are more powerful than swords-communicating at light speed. This is why imagery like Holland's Black Pete and Denmark's Djurs Sommerland is so upsetting; they reproduce power structures born from our ancestors' enslavement and teach racial hierarchy subliminally. European expeditions always included illustrators to create imagery of the "New World" that would make conquest palatable. These illustrators held power to convey or deny indigenous peoples' humanity through their depictions.
The genocide and enslavement that followed European expansion was partly accomplished through imagery that failed to convey indigenous peoples' humanity, alongside European diseases to which they had no immunity. By some estimates, the indigenous population of the Americas fell by 130 million between 1491 and 1691-a staggering loss of human life and cultural knowledge.
In Trinidad, when someone acts selfishly, as if better than others, people say, "What happen to she? She feel she white, eh?"-speaking to imperial arrogance. The current European anti-refugee sentiment is deeply ironic given Europe's history of global intervention. Race will only become obsolete when hierarchy and capital are no longer needed, when life and Earth are respected.
Chapter 6
The Violence of Silence: Intergenerational Trauma
Our bodies remember what our minds cannot-aches and pains remind us of unresolved issues. If we're fortunate enough to face our demons, we can burn them down with the cleansing power of fire, like the rebellions of enslaved Africans. Slash and burn: clear the land, start anew.
The anxiety that still visits my body-the same that devoured me when my father raged-may carry fourteen generations of inherited trauma. Is it the anxiety of our ancestors driven from India, born on ships bound for Trinidad, violated on plantations, kidnapped and whipped? Or my father's own experiences of his mother's beatings? Science shows childhood experiences permanently change DNA. How has our collective DNA been altered by centuries of violence?
In fifth grade at P.S. 152 in Brooklyn, during recess on a sunny autumn day, I experienced sexual assault when a group of younger boys pinned me down. When I told my mother that evening as she organized laundry, her only response was, "Lesley, you have to forget about it. And don't tell your father. You know how he does get." Soon after, I was sent to Trinidad for being "too American." My behavior deteriorated-I stopped attending school, wandered Brooklyn streets alone, started fighting, and was eventually expelled for carrying a razor blade for protection.
This is how silence is handed down among women-when girls report sexual transgressions and adults respond, "Hush up, nah! Don't tell nobody!" This transfers shame to victims while protecting perpetrators. The colonial system depends on this pattern, from profiting from ancestral rape to maintaining patriarchal capitalism. During slavery and indentured labor, who could a violated child turn to for protection? Rape became a colonial tool, and silence became a desperate form of protection that ultimately perpetuates violence.
How many mothers have told daughters to "Just forget about it" as the safest option? When my mother lost her virginity in what she later called date rape, did she go to her mother who gave the same advice? Did my great-grandmother have anyone to turn to? My mother recently admitted she didn't tell anyone because she was embarrassed-the shame and silence continuing across generations.
A 2012 Black Women's Blueprint study revealed 60% of Black girls experience sexual abuse before 18. According to the Department of Justice, for every white woman reporting rape, five don't report; for every African-American woman reporting, fifteen don't. This silence isn't coincidental but structural-part of the colonial legacy that continues to shape our most intimate experiences.
Chapter 7
Reclaiming Ancestral Memory
Memory lives in our children's bodies-they remember the drowning during Middle Passage, the sharks circling slave ships, the myth of Drexciya where unborn children of pregnant women thrown overboard adapted to breathe underwater. These aquatic memories run deep in Caribbean consciousness, passed down through generations like silent echoes. Memory echoes in a mother's teeth-sucking across the Caribbean, a sound that transcends language to express disapproval, in eating cassava and breadfruit ("slave food") that sustained ancestors through brutality, in the remembered weight of shackles and whips that marked flesh and spirit.
But memory also holds joy-children bathing at Maracas and Las Cuevas beaches, their laughter mixing with crashing waves, couples choosing their partners freely under moonlit skies, growing okra that resembles what grew in ancestral villages across the ocean, learning to read despite historical prohibitions, celebrating with calypso's rhythm and enjoying channa, doubles and corn soup that connect present to past. These pleasures are acts of resistance, reclaiming joy from pain's shadow.
We cast off the spell of the "tree of forgetting" that our ancestors were forced to circle seven times to erase memories of Africa. Each circle was meant to strip away identity, family, culture - but the memories persisted in blood and bone. "We are still here and we remember. We will not forget that which has been done to us & we shall balance the book of life." This remembering is both burden and blessing.
Trinidad embodies living memory-not forgetting those indigenous peoples who stood naked on the beach when Columbus arrived, those kidnapped and enslaved from Africa's shores, who we were before "the curse of the cross" transformed spirituality into chains. Our youth must dig deep to find these memories because "when we forget, we die." Each generation must become archaeologists of their own history.
Country. What country are you from? The word's etymology reveals "country" comes from Old French "cuntree," from medieval Latin "contrata (terra)" meaning "land lying opposite." But what if we deconstruct it further to "cunt-tree"? What tree of cunts do you descend from? This maternal lineage stretches back through time like roots seeking water. Who are the women who came before you, whose names have been erased by time and oppression?
Not knowing our mothers strengthens patriarchy's grip on history and memory. Why has the mother been othered, smothered beneath layers of colonial and patriarchal narratives? Find what blocks this knowledge and destroy it. Cunt-trees have no borders, no flags, no military, no visas, no passports - they exist in the realm of blood memory and inherited wisdom. From cunt-trees we do not flee. They are our original homeland, carried in our DNA.
Start with the name of your mother, and your mother's mother, tracing back through time. If you don't know them, name the women who have mothered you - biological or chosen. If you're without that knowledge, create them from mythology's rich soil so they become real in your utterance. This naming is not just remembrance but resurrection. This is the road to liberation, paved with recovered memories and reclaimed identities.
Chapter 8
Motherhood as Revolutionary Act
I lost myself when I became a mother, though those early years were some of my best. Throughout our years in Denmark, many women have brought me life and laughter, including Mandana ("like Banana"), whose emerald-speckled dark eyes shone as we laughed together, two women in a foreign land fighting isolation.
Son, elephants rely on matriarchs-grandmothers-for survival. Their memories hold maps to watering holes, knowledge of droughts, and wisdom to discern threats from friends. Without this awareness, the herd becomes vulnerable. There are no elephants in Trinidad. And my grandmother no longer has memory.
You've met your great-grandmother before Alzheimer's claimed her mind. She was once lively and laughing, dressing like the Queen of England, nicknamed "Hot Foot" for her love of "knocking about." In Diamond Vale, Trinidad, she'd wake early, don her church dress and leather-buckled shoes to walk to the Main Road before the tropical sun's heat intensified.
My grandmother worshipped the "great white man in heaven" and his mother too, though I think her body remembered Africa. Her altar was a dressing table overflowing with beauty offerings-creams promising to remove brown spots on her pale hands, tweezers for plucking grey eyebrows, lipstick tubes with deep holes, and nail polish she always called "Cutex."
I miss my grandmother's humor, vitality, and uncompromising love. During our last night together in Brooklyn, she didn't recognize me but wanted to sleep beside me on the pull-out couch. Despite her Alzheimer's, she remained physically fit with a healthy appetite, especially enjoying dancing to parang music. I remembered her practical advice: "Don't eat meat every day," "Wash your panties when you shower," "Keep a tensil in your room." She was my guide, my lantern through life's darkness.
Motherhood becomes revolutionary when we break the cycles of silence and trauma, when we pass down not just our pain but our joy, our resistance, our memory. What better gift could a mother give her child than knowledge of their ancestors? These letters to my son share reflections not as scholarly work but as casual thoughts that move between various themes. I don't expect agreement with everything, only to encourage thinking.
Chapter 9
Healing Through Decolonial Practice
Your father once admired how I overcame my challenging background, but he was wrong about one thing. Those with childhood trauma often function well until their thirties or forties, when the demons finally emerge. I was fortunate-Denmark provided me space to break down and rebuild. I had your father and grandmother to care for you when I couldn't get out of bed, healthcare access through a compassionate doctor, and unemployment insurance while I healed through nature, calypso, cassava and okra.
My personal crisis between ages thirty and forty led me to examine Western ideas about mental illness, childhood trauma, and social structures. Until then, I'd thought I'd beaten the system-I was successful by conventional standards, having built a career in Denmark through writing and teaching. Yet when I moved into my newly purchased apartment, I cried unpacking my life in boxes.
This breakdown became my breakthrough. While therapy is essential but not always accessible, living in racially homogenous Denmark highlighted how crucial it was to understand my origins as memories flooded back. Opening myself to humility brought me closer to my personal power and my ancestors, who revealed my true friends.
Word has it that ayahuasca is all the rage in Brooklyn. I first encountered it as a treatment for trauma and addiction. When my Danish friend invited me to an ayahuasca retreat, I met Mother Aya with twenty-seven others in the Danish countryside. For two nights, we worked with a shaman playing icaros, and the experience reset me. Mother Aya connected me with gratitude-I cried for hours thinking about your grandmother, your father, and you. I left renewed, with deeper awareness of our interconnectedness.
Decolonial healing isn't just about political awareness-it's about reconnecting with ancestral knowledge systems, with the land, with our bodies. It's about recognizing that the personal truly is political, that our individual healing contributes to collective liberation. When we heal ourselves, we begin to heal the wounds of history that continue to shape our present.
Aging has brought wisdom and liberation contrary to media portrayals of it as disability. I was fortunate that Denmark's social systems and my ex-husband's support prevented homelessness-a luxury many don't have in places like America. This strengthens my conviction that housing is a universal right, not a privilege. As cities like Copenhagen, London and New York gentrify, we must ask where less financially able people go.
Son, we have always had a global presence, making worthwhile contributions wherever we find ourselves. There have been struggles and successes in these tales I pass to you. We are inventive people, paving ways where there seem to be none. May the ancestors protect and guide you. Ase, as the Yoruba say, and so it will be.
