The Breakfast Club: Charlamagne and Chadwick Boseman

By Mwabi Kaira

My father is from Zambia and my mother is from Malawi. My late paternal Uncle was our family historian and wrote out our family tree back to 5 generations based on oral tradition before his death. I’ve always known my history because of this and I have never questioned where I’m from. In 1998 my best friend Jackie was pregnant with my Godson and she decided to give her son a new last name because she and his father did not want to pass their slave names down to him. She told me I was so lucky to know where I am from because they didn’t. That conversation made me appreciate my Uncle and gave me a different viewpoint on ancestry. Ancestry is not something people who grow up in Africa think about and it is something we learn the importance of living in America.