Website design By BotEap.comWandering the blogosphere as I usually do, I came across a challenge on the calyx press blog. Of course, at 43, I don’t qualify as a “young feminist” (if I ever did), but it still got me thinking about my intentions in writing a review of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology.
Website design By BotEap.comFor an anchorless young woman on the verge of culturally divorcing herself, the anthology was one of a series of buoys that she clung to and devoured as if I were a member of the Donner group, not Salma’s daughter. Composed of both poetry and prose, the book represents the discussions that black women had with other black women, and with society in general, about what it means to be a black woman. The scope of the conversation is wide. Includes the Combahee River Collective Statement which includes articulations such as
Website design By BotEap.com This focus on our own oppression is incorporated into the concept of identity politics. We believe that the deepest and potentially most radical politics stems directly from our own identity, rather than working to end someone else’s oppression. In the case of black women, this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have come before us that no one is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, royalty and walking ten steps behind. Being recognized as human, plainly human, is enough.
Website design By BotEap.comI am not entirely clear on the concept of identity politics. However, it seems to me that the essence of self-determination is furthering your own cause. In the case of black women, the cause must be the black woman. Home Girls is one of the places along my literary reading path where I realized it was acceptable, even revolutionary, to come out of the background, open your mouth, and fully express myself.
Website design By BotEap.comHome Girls is also where I first encountered the work of the poet Kate Rushin. Her poem, the Black Back-ups,
Website design By BotEap.com It is dedicated to Merry Clayton, Cissy Houston, Vonetta Washington, Dawn, Carrietta McClellen, Rosie Farmer, Marsha Jenkins, and Carolyn Williams. This is for all the black women who sang backup for Elvis Presley, John Denver, James Taylor, Lou Reed, etc., etc., etc.
…
Website design By BotEap.comThis is for Hattie McDaniels, Butterfly McQueen, Ethel Waters
Website design By BotEap.comSapphire
saphronia
ruby begonia
Aunt Jemima
Aunt Jemima in the pancake box
Aunt Jemima in the pancake box?
Aunt Jemima in the pancake box?
tiajemimaonthepancakebox?
Ainchamamaonthepancakebox?
Isn’t mum chure in the pancake box?
Website design By BotEap.commom mom
get out of that fucking box
and come home with me
Website design By BotEap.comAnd my mom jumps out of that box
She swoops in with her nurse cloak
What wears on Sunday
And at the Wednesday night prayer meeting
And she wipes my forehead
And she fans my face
And she makes me a cup of tea
And it does nothing for my true pain
Except she’s my mom
mom mommy mommy mommy mommy
Mam-mee Mam-mee
I’d walk a million miles
for one of your smiles
Website design By BotEap.comThis is for the black backups.
This is for my mom and your mom
my grandmother and your grandmother
This is for the thousand thousand Black Back-ups
Website design By BotEap.comAnd the colored girls say*
Website design By BotEap.comAfter reading this poem, I couldn’t listen to Lou Reed’s Walk on the Side as a simple song. Instead, she now expressed a relationship in which the talent and artistic ability of black women is used to enrich other artists, both musically and financially. It’s Big Mama Thornton and Elvis represented across the cultural landscape. Or it would be, except Big Mama’s daughter loves her mother and wrote a poem about it; a poem that changes the dynamic landscape of understanding.
Website design By BotEap.com* © 1983 Donna Kate Rushin
