No Sun Here: Teaching the Middle Passage Through One Human Voice
I remember light.
That is how "No Sun Here" begins. It's a persona poem in the voice of an African captive in the hold of a slave ship, and it opens Section One, "The Womb of History," of my collection We Were Never Meant to Beg for Light.
The poem begins in light, with a mother pounding millet into song and a child running through tall grass. Then the raid comes in the night, then the dark of the hold and an ocean that does not bargain. It ends with a weight the speaker will carry forever, and that their descendants carry still.
I wrote this poem to honor the millions who were stolen from their homelands, and to remember what was never fully taken from them: memory, a name, home and one another.
A New Lesson for Grades 9–12
I've turned the poem into a complete poetry and history lesson for high school classrooms. Students analyze how a poem can hold memory that a history book cannot, then test it against primary sources.
A 24-page printable PDF for two 50-minute class periods, with a teacher guide, a timed lesson sequence and differentiation ideas
The full poem with line numbers, a listening guide and close-reading questions, plus a craft focus on light and darkness imagery
A History Connection with my Backstory, excerpts from Olaudah Equiano's 1789 narrative and the Brookes slave ship diagram
A viewing guide for my 2:44 charcoal-and-ink video reading, plus audio of my readings of the poem and its Backstory
Three writing choices, including an original "I Remember Light" poem, with a rubric and a teacher answer guide
Teaching It With Care
The lesson follows Learning for Justice's Teaching Hard History framework: no simulations, begin with African life before the rupture, and center humanity and agency. The video uses stylized artwork with no graphic images, and an audio-only reading is included.
It's aligned to the 2023 New Jersey Student Learning Standards for English Language Arts, grades 9–10, with notes for grades 11–12, and it supports New Jersey's Amistad mandate.
It pairs with I Am Gullah, I Do Not Fade, the poem that follows it in the book.
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