Author:auot_admin

Damma’s letter reveals how the West African deity Mawu—also called Mau, Bruku, and vodu—traveled with her across the Atlantic, embodying both continuity and adaptation in her understanding of God amidst slavery and conversion.

Damma’s shifting use of the terms Popo and adga tome in her letter to the queen of Denmark reveals how African diasporic identities—and the meaning of “nation”—were shaped by language, geography, and the lived realities of transatlantic slavery.

Damma’s decision to write in her native West African language was unprecedented and it offers a unique opportunity to imagine how the adoption of Dutch Creole, like other European and Creole languages, affected Damma’s patterns of thinking and ways of knowing, as she was forcibly transported from adga tome to St. Thomas, and from Gbe to Dutch creole.