JUMBEE AND RUM

Jumbee \jUHm-bee\: (noun) SPIRIT

NESSA debuted at the Heatspeall Multimedia Event with JUMBEE AND RUM. The collection personifies the spirits that haunt Guyanese women. It is a tether between Jasmin, her mom, and all their homes.

Garment Design and Creative Direction by Jasmin Nessa Ali

Photography by Jameer Robinson.

An unbreakable thread flows through my Guyanese matrilineage. It runs through desert, forest, field, and in a way, two oceans. On our timeline, my mother and I come after an extraordinary double migration.

We remember the widowed Jahajee that was tricked into voyaging from the Indian subcontinent to the Caribbean: her first ocean. She cut down sugar cane as her language changed and her beliefs were molded by Christian imperialists. Then, we saw my grandmother leave everything behind to move her daughters across yet another ocean.

Now, I am the same age as my mother when she immigrated from Enmore, Guyana to New York City. I see the spirits that made her: that haunt us.

.

We are made of

the curse of alcoholism

the hesitance at the airport

the sweat of the sugar estate

the darkness of inequity

the loss at the wedding.

I am the first to be born in a new arena. I am breaking and fulfilling generational legacies. Our timeline has met me with a strange homesickness for a place in which I’ve never resided, but my power source is just as rich as that of the women who came before me. I am fueled by maternal prayer, wisdom, and protection.

So, I explore a different form of Jumbee, one of grace and pride. In my collection, lighter spirits follow the wicked ones. Altogether, the line is a tether between my mother and I and all of our homes. Its purpose is to make her feel beautiful and powerful.