Until our research, only the Dutch Creole section of her letter had been translated. This digital project marks the first collaborative effort to fully examine the Gbe portion of her text. As a result, Damma’s words can now be interpreted in two languages, offering unique insight into one African woman’s life story, as well as the terms and categories she used to define herself.

This research allows us to ask new questions. In her original Gbe text, for example, Damma referred to her homeland as “adga tome.” In the Dutch Creole version, “adga tome” was translated as “Poppo op Africa,” or “Popo in Africa.” “Adga tome” likely refers to “Aja country” and the Aja people, an ethnic group living in what is now southwestern Benin.

What did it mean for Damma to think about “adga tome” as opposed to “Popo in Africa”? Why was “Africa” only referenced in the Dutch Creole version, and not in Gbe? How did the terms “adga tome,” “Poppo,” and “Africa” resonate differently with Damma? And how can understanding the meaning of “adga tome” help us better understand Damma’s world? Our digital project addresses these questions through three interlocking queries, each of which explores one or more Gbe words in Damma’s letter.

“What is Nation?” examines the meaning of adga tome, analyzing the evolving concepts of ethnicity, belonging, and nation in the Atlantic world. It considers what terms like “nation” or “country” meant to Damma.

“What is God?” examines the terms vodu, Mau, and Bruku, which Damma used to denote “God” and, possibly, “Jesus.” This section considers whether God’s gender changed in the “translation” from Dutch Creole to Gbe, and whether Damma may have viewed Jesus as a vodu.

“What is Race?” attends to the Gbe word “yovo” (foreigner, or person of another spirit), which may have been translated into Dutch Creole as “blanco” (white person).

Through these interlocking queries, we gain insight into Damma’s life and her upbringing in West Africa, as well as the transformations wrought by enslavement, forced migration, and colonization. We also learn about the formation of race in the Atlantic world and explore the complicated and intertwined histories of African diasporic religions and Christianity.

We invite you to participate in our collaborative exploration of Damma’s world. Our site is meant to bring you into the research process, and to demonstrate how and why studying sources like Damma’s letter with care, rigor, and collaboration can show us ways of knowing that the legacies of colonialism, racism, and slavery have obscured.

As you will see, it is impossible to know with certainty what each Gbe word in Damma’s letter represents. Rather than seeking certainty, our project acknowledges the complex nature of the archive. It embraces a position of “critical conjecture” inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation.

By “critical conjecture,” we mean that while there are no certain answers, paying careful attention to Damma’s word choice opens up interpretations that are important to imagine. In the essays that follow, we utilize imagination by offering a variety of possible ways to understand Damma’s words. Our method is intended to engage you, the reader, and to ask you to participate in this process of discernment and interpretation.

We also take inspiration from Londa Schiebinger’s analysis of agnotology, the study of things that have been forgotten. We do this through intensive interdisciplinary collaboration. Drawing on historical methods, West African and creole linguistics, and archival theory, our exploration focuses on words and categories that were important to an eighteenth century Afro-Caribbean woman but subsequently lost or marginalized.

We hope that you will join us on this project of discovery, collaboration, and analysis to better understand Damma’s world and the insight it offers us today.