The first annual Alchemy Lecture brings four deep and agile writers into vibrant conver-
sation on a topic of urgent relevance: humans and borders. Borders, Human Itineraries,
and All Our Relation captures and expands those conversations in insightful, passionate
ways. Architect, artist, and urban theorist Dele Adeyemo calls attention to the complex-
ity of Black infrastructures. Poet Natalie Diaz asks, “What is the language we need to live
right now?” Philosopher Nadia Yala Kisukidi suggests there is no diasporic life without
“the stories of our ancestors who walked barefoot for many months.” And cultural theorist
Rinaldo Walcott asks us to consider inheritances beyond white supremacist logics. As each
Alchemist considers the legacies of anticolonial struggle, the future of the planet, and the
textures of Black and Indigenous life, their essays speak to each other in multiple ways, cre-
ating something startling and revelatory: a vision of the world as it is, and as it could be.