A Cold Wind Blows Through New Orleans

Men fear what they do not understand. My art is older than the churches of men, older than the enslavement of my people. It came to me from my mother, who learnt it from hers and so on back to the dawn of time, in ancient Africa, when men and women lived in harmony with the spirits of the earth and sky, and with the ancestors.

When I first came into my art, it was as a healer, as my mother before me. The people would bring their sick to me and I would perform miracles.

But the preacher man saw me as a witch. Said that my power came from the Devil. He blamed me for the people's ills, and had me condemned, when they believed that I was responsible for a storm that took a dozen lives.

I was asked to leave and when I refused they beat me. Men of God raped me before my children. I called down the powers of vengeance (the black furies of my ancient lineage) and the people knew my pain. Men, women and children alike bleed as I bleed.

I thought that if they knew the injustice done unto me, that they would support me in my plight. But instead they came. They dragged me from my house into the abnormally cold and howling wind. And in the old oak tree they hung me there.