Author Neesha Powell-Ingabire reflects on Brunswick upbringing in new memoir
Author Neesha Powell-Ingabire grew up in the small coastal city of Brunswick, Georgia, a town now best known as the place where white vigilantes killed a Black man named Ahmaud Arbery.
When a young Powell-Ingabire lived there, decades before Arbery’s murder, she felt alienated as a Black queer girl, and soon left the area to build her life elsewhere.
Now, the accomplished journalist and activist is reflecting on her time in Brunswick, and in her new book, “Come by Here, A Memoir in Essays from Georgia Geechee Coast,” Ingabire is reconnecting and reckoning with her personal and cultural history.
The author recently joined Kim Drobes, managing producer of “City Lights,” to discuss her new book.
“I can really see the ways that coastal Georgia has shaped me,” says Powell-Ingabire about her growth over the last couple of years. “There’s [a] spirit of rebellion, this spirit of wanting to fight back. And I feel like that comes from my ancestors.”
Her new book extensively pulls on her upbringing in Brunswick, set out over a series of essays that draw lines between the lessons that she internalized as a young woman in the rural South.
“I have so many stories of collective resistance and collective rebellion stories… I see that in myself,” she added. “There’s just like spirit of rebellion, this spirit of wanting to fight back. And I feel like that comes from my ancestors.”
More information about Neesha Powell-Ingabire can be found on her website, and “Come by Here, A Memoir in Essays from Georgia Geechee Coast” through Hub City Writers Project.
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