“History, whether you know it or you don’t know it, will impact your life and shift your decisions and shape the world you live in.”

– Antonio Michael Downing

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Episode 103 -Antonio Michael Downing, Saga Boy and Black Cherokee

Antonio Michael Downing is an author, speaker, and musical artist. His memoir Saga Boy was called “singularly dazzling” by Kiese Laymon and “the triumph of Blackness everywhere” by Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Ian Williams. He is also the author of the children’s picture book Stars in My Crown and his debut novel, Black Cherokee.

Lissa and Antonio travel the world in their far reaching conversation from Trinidad, to Canada, to Brooklyn, to the Cherokee Nation- discussing his memoir Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming, his debut novel Black Cherokee, and a broader conversation about lineage and inherited systems.

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Explore the musical alter ego of Antonio Michael Downing. Under the name John Orpheus, Downing creates vibrant, genre-blending music infused with funk, hip-hop swagger, soul, and Caribbean energy — part performance persona, part storytelling vehicle that reflects the identity exploration featured in Saga Boy.

JOHN ORPHEUS –

Born and raised in South-Central Trinidad, John Orpheus is a multi-cultural musician, author and performance artist. Since releasing his previous album SAGA KING in 2021, he has been busy promoting his memoir SAGA BOY (Penguin Random House) and writing two children’s books and a forthcoming debut novel called BLACK CHEROKEE (Simon and Schuster).

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 “I’ve been traveling for so very long, trying to find some place that feels like home.
And there are many things that you can take from me.But what you can’t take away, is the love that is found, in our sweet destiny.” Lyrics from John Orpheus singing Fela Awoke.

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 Cherokee folks in the Southeast — all of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes — took on that grand Southern tradition brought by Europeans of enslaving Black folks. Not everyone did it. The wealthy did it. These folks continued to be part of the tribe even after the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears, and they moved out to Oklahoma. And to this day, those folks — the Black Freedmen, they’re called — are part of these tribes but still fight for recognition within those tribes.

Freedmen History

When the Five Tribes were forcibly removed from their homelands in the 1830s-40s, people enslaved by the tribes also made the long journey to Indian Territory. By 1861, eight to ten thousand Black people were enslaved throughout Indian Territory. In 1863 the Cherokee National Council passed an act freeing all people enslaved by their tribe, but many slaveholders ignored the law.

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What is Antonio Michael Downing reading?

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Black Market Reads is produced by the Givens Foundation for African American Literature in partnership with iDream.tv. Our production team for this episode includes co-producers Lissa Jones and Edie French, technical director Paul Auguston, the voice Yo Derek, and our artist of inspiration Ta-coumba T. Aiken.

Support for Season 11 of Black Market Reads is provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council (MRAC). MRAC funding is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.