Ayo

His father was a politician, was assassinated when he was a young man. He lived in England for many years and then came to New York. He is struggling to survive here, learning to live as a black man in America. He began with little understanding and sympathy for black-Americans, but a few years ago a friend took him to an African-American Yoruba ceremony and he had the experience of seeing his own religion and hearing his own language filtered through 400 years of systematic suppression and cruelty. To hear his own words so twisted by time and suffering, yet exis ting against such odds, kindled a fierce pride in his culture which he had always taken for granted, and gave him great respect for all black Americans--those who held on, and those who have lost the thread of their heritage.