Invocation for Umoja Night

Kwanzaa, the week-long holiday celebrated from December 26 – January 1, was developed in the late 1960s by Maulana Karenga because, well, we needed it. The official Kwanzaa website explains its origins and how to celebrate it. It is a cultural intervention: an answer to a yearning throughout the African diaspora for “something all our own,” as poet Margaret Walker put it.

Each day focuses on a different aspect of black people’s sojourn in the wilderness.

• The first day, Umoja (Unity), basks in our collective history and experience.

• The second, Kugichagulia (Self-Determination), exalts our responsibility to ignore or debunk what people say about us, and to bring into being the world we want.

• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) calls us to work together to solve the myriad problems we face— on the Continent, in the Caribbean, in North, South, and Central America, or Europe—or really, wherever we are.

• Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) points us toward working together to strengthen our economic foundation.

• Nia (Purpose) reminds us of the importance of setting goals, for both ourselves and our communities.

• Kuumba (Creativity) is the only one of the principles that we have pursued relentlessly through the generations— our music, our style, our visual art, our language—have reflected us back to ourselves, glorifying our full humanity.

• Imani (Faith) is the cement that holds all the principles together: we must believe in our humanity to express and develop it.

Kwanzaa is a balm for the black soul; it lets us reflect communally on what WE know, and what WE have experienced. It is a brilliant improvisation that flips the script on mainstream views of black people as problems and transforms us into monster creators, dream weavers and determined people, connected to each other, our history, and a brighter, different future. Like our marvelous music, it sets the table for joy.

The history that connects people of African descent around the world is a powerful current unifying us across space and time. We are not all the same, but we share history.

We offer this poem to anyone who wants to swim in that current. Feel free to use it to call forth the spirit of being together on your Umoja Night.

Umoja Night Invocation

Here we are again,

together.

Stopping here, looking back

at where we’ve come from,

what we’ve done

Traveling together, families & folks

linked by vision of our inner eye,

stumbling toward tomorrow.

This is our time. We

built it/no money is needed

our sharing and being together

is free,

our spirit belongs to no one

and as we share it

we enrich only ourselves.

Kwanzaa is ours

To grow as we grow the song of

Our struggle

Enlarging ourselves

And who knows what the next song will be?

Kwanzaa is ours

We are its sculptors our lives are our

workplace/molding and shaping

next Kwanzaa

Today.

And this night

is in celebration

of our first steps,

our toddling-towards…

Confused

but toddling toward…

attacked, but

toddling toward…

Afraid, but

toddling toward.

Strong, and still

toddling toward. And if all year we

must decry the distance,

Tonight

We celebrate the bond.

©Fasaha M. Traylor 1979

Every family has stories that deserve to be known, remembered, and shared.

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