Maurya’s Seed: Why Hope Lives Behind Project Walls
by Cathie Wright-Lewis

Maurya’s Seed portrays the aftermath of slavery. More precisely, it actually gives the updated status of African slave descendants living in urban America exactly one hundred years after the signing of The Emancipation Proclamation. An unspoken centennial anniversary of revolution, 1963 is the perfect setting to depict the continual battle against slavery African-Americans must endure. Fiction rooted in truth, this story reveals the diabolical strategies used against the children of former slaves to keep them in servitude, even when it’s disguised as freedom. The main character, Passion unknowingly is a direct descendant of Maurya, a legendary African slave best remembered for her ability to escape a popular, evil slave trader turned slave master. Maurya is Passion’s guardian angel and spiritually guides her through her adventurous and explosive life. Passion is the epitome of black, female heroism. She is the young widow of a revolutionary named Justice, and is raising her four children with the assistance of a unique extended family. In the name of Civil Rights, she is one of the few parents brave enough to fight for her children to be bussed to school in a white neighborhood where they are not welcome. Ironically, at the very same time, one of her children is being declared the first casualty of war.