good tree, little spider
Mercedes Annaís Estévez Cruz (they/she) is a Dominican multimedia storyteller, oral historian, land defender, and spiritual practitioner of mixed Afroindigenous and Sephardic Jewish descent. Born in New York City and raised between Washington Heights and the Dominican Republic, they returned to the island in 2012. They have been studying with and gathering stories from the land and their Elders ever since.
Their work—across fiction, nonfiction, and community organizing—centers Afro-Indigenous rebellion and resilience from the island of Ayiti (Dominican Republic & Haiti). Their writing and research explore the ways past, present, and future coexist outside the colonial paradigm of linear time. They are always pondering how places, local legends, and cultural practices become sites of collective memory, and what it means to be in right relationship with other sentient beings and the land. Through oral history, land-based practice, and archival research, they aim to elevate histories that are often erased or fragmented by migration, colonial violence, and displacement.
They have been published in The Paris Review, Fodor’s Travel Guide, and Remezcla, among other outlets. In 2024, they received the Folger Shakespeare Library’s first long-term artistic fellowship.
In their spiritual practice, they walk with the Vulture, Hummingbird, and Hurricane.