It recalls Zora Neale Hurston’s time with maroons in the village of Accompong; traces a young girl’s flight from NJ to the Grand Canyon to escape U.S. immigration officers; follows an Ashante woman in the hull of a middle-passage ship; a mother searching across centuries for her missing child; and a wailing youth leaping through quantum gates, seeking liberation and the lost parts of himself—the whole juxtaposed against botanical, animal and planetary migrations and the riddims and chants of the cosmos.

By continuing the “speculative ancestral project” (Whiting Foundation) begun in Douglas’ earlier work, The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive further explores themes of loss, survival, and deliverance. Through an immersive storytelling, richly layered with drawings and footnotes on flora, fauna, and natural phenomenon, Douglas preserves and reimagines the “movement of Jah people” and the cultural memory of the African diaspora.