In a Minnesota suburb where my friendliest neighbour’s attempt at my name emerges as an unsteady Mu-ga-mba, I can finally sit down long enough to remind my children that the t in water has a sound like all letters are supposed to. The e at the end of kale, the i in mukwai, ß in abantu.

Alefes Silva was born in 1981 in Colombia and lives in Bogota. This illustrator started his work experimentally and he was used to drawing on the margins of books and on small papers every day and everywhere. This experience led him to choose pencil illustration as his main technique.

This early memory feels hazy: me as a baby sitting in a room in Japan on a mint green mat. The smell of dried bamboo seeps through the floor. My grandfather is there, the one who died shortly after I was born.