2020 | Book | Unpublished | Author

“A Home.” explores the binary of domestic spaces as both a place of knowledge sharing and a site of subjugation by generations of women past and present. The book takes the perspective of the domestic from the point of view of two generations of diasporic women coming to terms with the absence of their cultural and familial history. Here, the home becomes a place to form new relationships, transforming the domestic into a space for habitable experimentation. For the author, this experimentation comes in the form of the home as the beginning of a new familial structure that in its novelty is a reminder of what is forgotten or left behind. This desire to look back instead of forward is what draws the author to the story of Orpheus who must tragically accept a devastating loss and only renews his suffering as he tries to reach out to what is gone. The author herself goes on a mythical journey through her house, with Orpheus as her guide, to examine the generational and gendered relationships between the people, places, and things that define the histories of her black, female family home.

Part essay, part poetry, part memoir, and part architectural analysis, Jola Idowu breaks down the architectural object that serves as the cornerstone of American society through the lens of her childhood home in Chicago. The book is composed of a series of poetic letters to and images of the different people, places, and objects that form the tangible and intangible value of her home. Through these methods, Jola Idowu ruminates on what her home holds, what it lacks, and the other “homes” she has lived in along the way. The recipients of these letters range from the personal to the humorous, from the past to the future, with letters addressed to her deceased grandmother and sisters, her blanket, a piece of suya meat, her church, and more. Nothing is too mundane, and nothing is too forgotten, in this unique and subversive reflection on the intersection of architecture and domestic life.