"Truth Awakens, Daring To Dream Of Past Glory In Order To Envision Future Greatness"
This story continues in the middle school setting of the initial book "See Us, From Whence We Come" in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn in the year 2020. The school is made up of a diverse cultural student body and teaching staff. The main characters are the TNT twins, brother and sister Tarik and Tiye Washington. They are two of the few children of African descent in their classes as well as the overall school general student body.
It is the response to a class project of tracing the student's family homeland history and heritage that sparks this journey of self-discovery and establishing a invigorated love and pride of Africa's contributions to world. With the intervention of the twin's parents and grandparents, they in fact are exposed to a truer representation of the Africa's historical achievements over the millennia. Other students of European heritage had little difficulty in tackling the task at hand of historical research of their family homelands. The students of color, however on the other hand, faced a more stressful and challenging time in their research quest. Often the students resourced family elders for information reaching back to their family homeland of origin which was complemented by the history books in the school library for students of European heritage while little documented facts about Africans was readily available. It is this paradigm that triggered the journey Tiye and Tarik set out on.
It is as if the history of Africans only began once they were enslaved by Europeans and brought to the Americas? The accepted narrative seemed to imply that African peoples were just slaves, with no real value and history in the world, societies or cultures prior to their in slaved arrival in the Americas. The journey for the TNT twins so far has proven that not to be the case by any means, but quite the contrary.
The twins, working as a team, would soon find out the truth about the great contributions African's have had and are still providing to the world. This was particularly demonstrated in the realm of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics & Medicine). The information leading up to the conclusion was not easily obtained and offered a challenge for the young students of African descent. It was the knowledge of the family elders that bridged the information divide established by the limited educational curriculum that posed the greatest hurdle which necessarily had to be overcome. Was It not for the family's intellectual background, which was steeped in ancient African history, the twins, like many other students of color and European background as well, never really would have been exposed to Africa's vast world attributes? Educational system curriculum up to that point for the twins and their pear group alike, never really exposed the true greatness of Africa or it's peoples to the diverse student body. However, this was practically the norm for all peoples of color while it was European greatness alone that was mostly stressed and re-enforced in the classroom lessons, history books and overall syllabus.
With this newfound knowledge and understanding, the twins felt deprived of information that nurtured their wellbeing/self-esteem and would offer other students, across the cultural spectrum; a true and more complete understanding of the African experience.
