Akira De Carlos Akira Clelia Da Costa De Carlos is an Afro-Indigenous Black Queer knowledge seeker, kinship builder, full-spectrum doula, and land steward. Rooted in Angola with Cape Verdean and Sao Tomean heritage, they move through Tioh:tia’ke, Pawtucket, and the UK, weaving home between them. Akira co-founded the Sankofa Farming Cooperative to reconnect Black and Afro-Indigenous youth with ancestral land practices. Their work integrates birth work, land stewardship, and abolition, grounded in Black feminist and anti-fascist principles. Guided by seven-generations thinking, Akira envisions liberation as reclamation—of land, identity, and care—where Black and Afro-Indigenous people thrive, resist, and reimagine their futures.
how will your black joy perservere into our future unkown?Black joy, in its most radical form, is survival—unapologetic, unwavering, ever-evolving. It is my father cradling his newborn sons, my brothers, in a world that does not always see Black life as precious. It is in the quiet moments, in the unspoken understanding, in the ways we choose each other every day. His body, his love, his persistence defy history’s cruel erasure, claiming a future even when the present tries to foreclose it. His joy is in lineage, in flesh made anew, in love reincarnated despite the grief that once threatened to eclipse it.
Bell Hooks wrote, "grief is not letting love go." And so, we do not let go. My father and I carry grief as a sacred weight, an inheritance of remembrance, of perseverance. My mother’s absence is not a void but a presence we cradle, a rhythm in the background of our joy that fuels our living. It shapes the contours of our laughter, makes room for joy to bloom even in sorrow’s shadow.
Elsa’s lineage is the way I throw my head back when I laugh, the way I press my feet firm into the earth, claiming life fully. She is in every breath of my becoming. My mother’s lineage is my body in motion, my earnest observations inquisitive, my living a tribute to her presence and absence. I carry her in every step forward, in my resistance against mere survival, in my commitment to fullness. To live is to honor her, to refuse mere existence. Joy, then, is not separate from grief—it is sharpened by it, made richer, deeper, more whole. To grieve is to remember, and to remember is to insist on joy, on life, on love that endures.
My vovó is my compass, my living archive. She embodies the past and the future in a single breath, the proof of our continuity, the keeper of traditions that stretch beyond time’s reach. I look to her and see the blueprint of our persistence, the quiet revolution of our existence. She teaches me that to persist is to remember, to carry forward, to hold hands with those who came before and those yet to come.
Elders are the keepers of our futures. Without them, we are untethered. With them, we walk forward—not blindly, but guided. Not afraid, but held. They light the path with stories, with love, with the steady reminder that we have always been, and we will always be.
In the vast unknown, we move forward—not alone, not afraid, but carried by joy that refuses to disappear. We persist, not just because we must, but because we can. Because we always have.
Sisterhood and Survival: Elsa’s Innerchild, circa 1980s. “Grandma’s house in Lunda, Angola. Ana Maria da Conceição E Costa, Elsa da Conceição E Costa, Third sister unknown.
Papai e eu: two peas in a pod, 2023. “Happiness of daughter to be reunited with father in the motherland Angola after two years.” Akira Clelia da Costa De Carlos & Caesar “Nando” Manuel De Carlos. Ancestral Joy, 2024. “Akira's love for their vovós interest in selfies.” Teodora & Akira Clelia da Costa De Carlos. Marley's first day home, 2025. “Newest member of the De Carlos family in Sumbe, Angola.” Marley Graça De Carlos.
From Caesar to Kaiser, 2025. “Happiness of father with his new born son in Porto Amboim, Angola.” Caesar “Nando” Manuel De Carlos & Kaiser Reeve Paul De Carlos.
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Special thanks toSecret Riso Club Sojourners for Truth Press & The Black Zine Fair Crystal Leick at Neenah Paper Nik Muka Lydia Chodosh & every contributor + person that has supported this project since 2020