See Us

“See Us, From Whence We Come.”

This story opens in a Brooklyn NY,  Boerum Hill section, middle school setting in the  year 2020.  The school is made up of a diverse cultural student body and teaching/administrative staff.  The main characters are the TNT twins, brother and sister Tarik and Tiye Washington. They are two of the few African Americans children in their classes as well as the overall general student body.

It is their eventual response to a class project of tracing and documenting student’s family homeland history and heritage that sparks the Sankofa journey of self discovery and the establishment of a life changing love and pride of the Africa’s contributions to world.  Students of European heritage had little difficulty in tackling the task at hand.  However those students of color, on the other hand, faced a more stressful and challenging times in their research quest.  More often than not, most students sort out their  family elders as their primary resource for information, reaching back to their family homeland of origin, which was complemented in most cases by the history books in the school and public libraries, as well as by online website resources.