Born in Vancouver and carried by the names Phillips, King, and Taylor, I come from a long line of Black folk who kept stories, held joy close, and remembered out loud. My family migrated from Texas to Oklahoma to settling in Alberta in 1911, arriving in Canada as Black homesteaders, and eventually making their home in Vancouver in 1929.

Our history wasn’t kept in official archives, but in the everyday: stories passed around the dinner table, photo albums thick with handwritten captions, shared recipes, and keepsakes tucked away in drawers. These weren’t just mementos—they were declarations. Acts of care. Quiet refusals to be forgotten.

In my family, storytelling and scrapbooking were more than hobbies. They were ways of seeing ourselves in a world that too often tried not to. These practices—layered, loving, improvised—formed the foundation of The Things We Keep, my ongoing exploration of Black memory, inheritance, and home-making.

Today, I continue this work with intention: to make the invisible visible, to honour those who came before, and to gather what has always been worth keeping.