Routes is for people like us: the ones who move, migrate and adapt, but never forget where they come from. The ones driven by freedom. The ones no chain could ever hold.

We carry our roots wherever we go. In our suitcases, in our accents, in the words we whisper when we're far from home.

Routes gathers the words we should never forget. The ones that remind us who we are when nothing around us feels familiar. The ones that turn four walls into a home.

These words, from Fanon, from Douglass, from our rappers and our poets, were not born in comfort. They were born of resistance, of survival, of standing tall in the face of erasure.

Routes is a crossing point: a place where our ancestors' words echo so that their children can see them, take them in, and carry them forward in turn.

To be at home, everywhere.

All roads lead to us.

An archive of Black thought, printed for your walls

Routes turns the words of Black writers, thinkers and freedom fighters from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and North America into wall art.

Each quote is printed in its original language, English or French, and illustrated by artist Baptiste "Wako" Buonomo. When a text is still under copyright, we license it from the author or their estate, because honoring these voices starts with respecting them.

In the 1930s, Paulette Nardal brought together Black writers from Paris, the Caribbean and Harlem. Routes follows in her footsteps.