Aishatu is an award-winning writer and peace technologist named among "TOP 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics," exploring liberation through literary art, design, and divestment from oppressive systems.
04 VERSES IN THE WAKE Darfur opens— a wound the sun keeps trying to close. A girl stands in the heat, holding her silence like a bird too frightened to lift its wings. The air breaks against the girl’s face. Someone’s scream from the night before still clings
Dignify through Design
Mama zipped me in a Ninja Turtle shell—Michelangelo, the laughing one, 'cause I giggled through gunfire and dreamed in technicolor even when sirens split the night like wishbones. Sweat glued the mask to my face, plastic breath, cinnamon gum, and that hum of danger, a tuning fork struck
Dignify through Design
Someone will ask you one day if you've seen Eve's Bayou. You need to be able to say yes.
Forget brain-training apps. In the ‘90s we already had one: Super Mario 64. Turns out Peach’s castle was a cognitive gym all along.
ÀROKÒ ANTHOLOGY NO.1: FOLKLORE FROM AFRICA & THE DIASPORA Curated and edited by Aishatu Ado DEADLINE 12.31.25 // Submit to: contact@aroko.coop THEME We invite fiction and poetry that breathes new life into folklore from Africa and the African Diaspora. Send us stories that draw from folktales,
145,000 young Nepalis turned Discord into a digital parliament and elected their country's first woman interim prime minister. Design reflects the values of those who wield it, not those who built it.
On July 4th 2025, America murdered its safety net: Medicaid gutted, food stamps slashed, Arctic drilled—all for billionaire tax cuts. "The cupboards testify: nothing grows in hunger's house.”
Dignify through Design
You want to know what Juneteenth means in 2025? It means we're still breathing despite every plan to make us die. Every law designed to break us, every vote they tried to steal. Every knee pressed to our necks, every wound they wouldn't heal.
Design is Circular
For 137 minutes, "Sinners" transforms theaters into Underground Railroad stations—where Black truth flows freely. Darkened spaces become corridors of breath. Tears fall uncensored. And for a moment, liberation exists in plain sight.
Updates
Welcome to the ÀROKÒ.WORLD, a home for critique, reflection, and conversation at the intersection of Blackness and design. Brought to you by Àrokò Cooperative.
Dignify through Design
When nostalgia becomes a weapon, truth blurs. As AI-generated Ghibli-style imagery floods the political arena, we must ask: What happens when the visual language of peace is hijacked to launder state violence?
Divest
The debut of the “Verses in the Wake” poetry column tears through illusion with lyrical fury. It strips democracy of its costume, revealing empire’s raw face—where ballots bury dreams and language launders violence. This is poetry as reckoning. As resistance.