dive into the lore
Half city girl. Half Southern gal.
Afrofuturism is old records and red clay. Afrofuturism is fried fish with spaghetti, hot sauce, and sweet tea. Afrofuturism is end of week rest, and your Sunday best. It’s “yes, ma’am” and “bless your heart” and it’s the Dirty South and the ring shout. It’s the juke joint and the sous sous. Kongo Square Studio was founded by Kayla Jordan Love, a wandering griot, spiritualist, and design researcher. Raised in a blended Malawian-American family, her design work prioritizes conjure, climate justice, and qualitative data methods. With family roots in West Africa via Maafa up into Mississippi, her great grandparents journeyed North during the Great Migration, setting up a church and BBQ restaurants. As a child she traveled across the Mason-Dixon Line again, passing her youth between MI, TN, and Atlanta.
“La sangre llama a la sangre.”
Blood calls to blood. Who’s calling you?
Love always felt a deep kinship to precolonial figures and folklore, craved jazz and channeled poetry, and soaked up Black music, symbolism, and mythmaking. Three years researching (and dancing) on a Caribbean island strengthened her kinship to the global African diaspora. She consulted in the tech industry, read Sanchez, Hughes, and Hurston. . . .and kept dreaming of a world where Black folks can move freely. Living in the barrios of Borikén deepened Love’s calling and she wandered even further on pilgrimage. Currently writing near the seaside in South India, she’s been traveling since 2021 with no plans to stop anytime soon.
Meet us at the Crossroads.
The Green Book was a travel guide for Black folks navigating road trips during Jim Crow. Now, you’re navigating the world and seeking freedom, but haven’t been gifted new maps. We’ve designed your compass. Blend pilgrimage journaling with Black autoethnography with The Emerald Book.
“Afrofuturism is a woman in Louisiana who swallows the moon. She does it on a dare, at the edge of the bayou. The moon slides down like cold honey. Afterward, her eyes glow all white and tides obey her moods. She laughs and the river ripples in delight. Lunar liquor.”
Kongo Square Studio began to share Afrofuturist storytelling in 2025, and soon folks were begging for books, films, and comics. Those beloved jazz fables crystallized into Crossing the Jordan, an independently-published short story collection centered around a time-traveling griot telling his very last tale.
“I never truly understood Author’s Voice until I came across [Kayla’s storytelling]. I woke up this morning with a rhythm in my head, and I knew it to be from her. The words were not there, because they are her words and stories to tell, not mine to invent, but I felt the music. Her writing is jazz that moves the spirit.” Jilian Mathews
Afrofuturism is tasting a story on your tongue. Saltmouth Sankofa.
Our studio is developing Afrofluxus IP rooted in communal cultural heritage, inspired by the work of Zora Neale Hurston, Boatema Boateng, Bagele Chilisa, and Shawn Wilson, spinning griot grooves that empower Black and Indigenous storytellers, founders, and artists to map our own North Stars.
Afrofuturism is the call and response.
Named for Congo Square, we honor Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau and carry on her legacy of marketplace ritual: here, stories carry value and change hands, creating ripples that defy time and space. The Cowrie Moon (Full Moon) marks new salon transmissions and the Obsidian Moon (Dark Moon) is for curating fractal feedback.
Kongo Square 