Futurist Quilt

storytelling as medicine

communal writing ritual to metabolize ancestral grief

digital publication sewing solidarity

tending to the fibers (stories) between us + exploring how to make these threads stronger!

digital collages Vero made during their time in PR; some maternal grandfather and great grandmother featured

About

Futurist Quilt is an online (hopefully, eventually also in print!) publication for art and writing that is a form of ancestral research, honoring, and reconnection.

Futurist Quilt believes ancestral reconnection is one of the necessary steps towards healing the wounds of colonization and capitalism.

Submissions | FAQ | Prompts | Resources

Origins

clothes drying on a line between two trees on Aurora's farm in Puerto Rico

One of the few activities my dad and I share is watching Finding Your Roots. He says nothing when I tear up. He has seen every single episode.

In middle school, I had a little side hustle scanning people’s family photos. Sometimes I’d also get paid to create family photo albums with newly digitized ancestors. Even though they weren’t my ancestors, I felt they were aware of me, thanking me for reemerging them.

In Fall 2022, I spent two months with Aurora Levins Morales on her ancestral farm lands in Puerto Rico. She mentors in writing from the body, writing for liberation.

Off-grid in the mountains, I had the slowness to reconnect with my body and observe how the wounds of whiteness and traumas of colonialism block the free flow of energy inside me. The more grounded I became, the quieter my mind — quiet enough to hear my ancestors speak through poetry. My grandpa, who I never met in the flesh, visited as a hummingbird. After my time with Aurora, I knew why I rummaged. After months of my own ancestral research, I understood why there were so many stories intentionally buried by my people. I understood why ancestral reconnection is one of the necessary steps towards healing the wounds of colonization and capitalism.

So I started my own ancestral writing ritual, Texts with Grandpa, but writing can be so lonely! I started gathering resources for others which you can check out on my Are.na channels Metabolizing Ancestral Grief and Radical Genealogy.

Submissions

Submission Guidelines

Non-writers/artists are highly encouraged to submit. Futurist Quilt believes everyone devoted to being whole is an artist. Submissions are always open and there’s no reading fees. If accepted, you will be notified by email within one month and your work will be published shortly after.

  • 1 submission per person per every 6 months

  • Types of work accepted

    • Writing

      • any form of writing under 1,500 words (for non-poetry) or less than 4 pages (for poetry)

    • Video

      • under 10 min

    • Images

      • 9 images max (counts as 1 submission)

      • digital art or documentation of physical work

How to Submit

All submissions go through this google form. If you have issues with the form please contact Vero.

FAQs

  • Any kind of writing under 1,500 words, video 10 min max, or 9 images max. Images could be digital art or documentation of physical art. As long as your submisson is related to ancestral connection or family history, please share it!

  • Yes! In that case, share a link in the google form to where this work is already published.

  • Please only one submission per person per every 6 months.

  • This work can be heavy; it’s important to ask for help! Vero is happy to support you in a 1:1 session. You can schedule a 1:1 session for 30 min by contacting Vero.

  • Here are some prompts! They are just a starting place for inspiration and in no way meant to be rules to follow. The Digital Altar might also be an interesting place to start. It has rituals connected to ancestors for you to experiment with.

  • Yes.

  • In your google form submission, you have the option to select whether, if accepted, you would like your work to be featured on Instagram. If you select yes, please upload (minimum 2 / maximum 9) pictures that can be used in a quilt square cover animation.

This project is also deeply informed by my participation in Material Abierta 2022 in Mexico City.

Why connect with ancestors? Why do family history research? Why metabolize intergenerational grief?

End cycles of pain

“We are the continuation of our ancestors. We contain all the beautiful qualities and actions of our ancestors and also all their painful qualities. Knowing this, we can try our best to continue what is good and beautiful in our ancestors, and we will practice to transform the violence and pain passed down to us from so many generations. We know that we practice peace not only for ourselves but for the benefit of all our ancestors and all our descendants.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

Ancestors connect us to our bodies and Earth

“We live in a culture that perpetually idealizes progress. We’re always moving forward. However, in the process we often abandon history. In a sense, we abandon the dead. But the dead are still with us. Much of the sorrow that’s in our bodies is inherited…We are the current curators of the sorrow. It didn’t necessarily begin in my lifetime, it began generations ago. It could have begun as a consequence of a rupture of connection to a homeland…So why is it useful to talk about the ancestors? Well, in part because we want to understand the depth and breadth of what it is we are being asked to face and to deal with. There’s another part, too. We need their help. They need our help. In the ancient ecologies, it was understood very clearly that the dead are not gone. They are still living in our dreams and in our bodies, in our moods and in our feelings, in the places where we struggle. Asking them to participate in our rituals is part of reestablishing that deep ecology of the sacred.” — Francis Weller

For white folks

“Mapping the specificity of our ethnicity also reveals hidden relationships. European Americans in this country need to find out in relationship to whom they became white… Questions about our place within the megastructures of racism become intimate and carry personality…it becomes possible to see the choices we make right now as extensions of those inherited ones, and to choose more courageously as a result.”

- Aurora Levins Morales

Creative Prompts

Resources