update on Africatown, and more on Irom Sharmila

I promise it won't be all activism all the time at asakiyume dot livejournal dot com, but sometimes things happen all at once.

Back in 2010, when I was doing research for Pen Pal, I found out about Africatown, a unique community in Mobile, Alabama, home to descendants of people brought to America on the last slave ship, in 1860. People in this community spoke African languages well into the twentieth century. When I went to Alabama, I visited a memorial in the community (pictures here), and I...