Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank the Athabasca University Writer in Residence program for gifting me the time and the mental space to focus on writing for a year. In this regard I want especially to thank Angie Abdou and Paul Huebener. Thanks, too, to the rest of the writer in residence committee, Manijeh Mannani, and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Talks committee.

A big thanks to Peter Midgley, my editor. Peter you were the perfect editor for this book. You know your CMOS from your OED, your Dutch East India from your British East India Companies, and your Mighty Sparrow from your Black Uhuru. Who else could have gathered the trailing threads of my wide-ranging thoughts together with such confidence and comfort? There has never ever been any doubt in mind: you are a “real” African man. Also, to the very capable production and promotions coordinator at AU Press, Karyn Wisselink, thank you for being so on top of every step of the book’s production. Your work ethic is colossal.

Thanks to all of my OC Commie Colleagues, Brendan, Keith, Michele, Noah, and Whitney, who have always shown me support, encouragement, and forgiveness when I have been unable to give it to myself. Similarly, thanks to Kit Dobson and Uche Umezurike for timely support when things got tricky.

A special thanks to Cheryl Foggo, whose literary presence forms the ether of my creative output and whose writing always shows the paths away from anger. Thanks to my writing crew: Weyman, Teresa, Chimie, Tolu. I love our random interactions! Thanks to Lindsay Amundsen-Meyer for introducing me to stratigraphy and for showing such care toward the buried nature of buried histories. Thanks to Tammy Rosner, an enthusiastic researcher whose family knew Charles Dyson in Pincher Creek. Tammy is the one who cleared up the mystery of Dyson’s double wedding for me. She has a wealth of information on both Charles Dyson and Liza Johnson (née Reed); watch out for her book, folks!

A very special thank you to Katrina H.B. Keefer at Trent University who very kindly guided me to “recaptive 7804” in the Liberated Africans Register for 1815 and gave me permission to use her screenshot. “Recaptive 7804” was a nineteen-year-old man whose name was Joze and who was branded with a “Crown and B” on his left breast. I wish I knew more about Joze than the paltry physical qualities noted in the Register, but I will be endlessly grateful for the work Dr. Keefer and her colleagues are doing to recover the histories of Africans whose humanity was mercilessly pulverized and scored over by the Atlantic slave trade. Do check out their research: https://languageofmarks.org/newHome/research.php

I would like to acknowledge Joze, a miraculous, impossible returnee; he is my symbolic ancestor and the prototype for Abiola.

I would like to give posthumous gratitude to John Bickersteth for his generosity and the honest warmth he extended to me. Little did I know at the time, but John had been the Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1975–87. He was a confident and driven clergyman, but he was also a spontaneous and colourful man. He once preached peace to thousands of hippies at Glastonbury in the late seventies. Do check out his obituary in the Church Times, 16 March 2018.

The two poems that appear in this book, “Some Say. . .” and “A Black Hand Revisits,” were originally published in filling Station 81 in 2023.

I must acknowledge the many Black cowboys and ranchers who acted as inspiration for me but did not make it into this text: Flora Wolfe, Lige Abel, Billy Welsh, Martha Proctor, and David Mills, to mention a few. This book would not have been possible without all of my historic collaborators, both those mentioned and unmentioned in the text.

Finally, a big thank you to the community of Prairie Africans I grew up with, who gave me so much, despite my reluctance, resistance, and straight-up ignorance. I especially thank my mum, who has always been the family historian for me, sharing stories, filling in the gaps, and encouraging connections. Thank you for reading and smoothing over my Krio cultural catastrophes in the text. Thank you, especially, for giving me the gift of an awkward upbringing.