COLORED WOMEN, With Mumia and Che
I am thankful I can remember when signs like this were common in the apartheid Southern United States. And how our mothers held their heads high in spite of them. Refusing to use, when possible, the decrepit water fountains or smelly toilets built purposely to insult them.
On the altar: Ida B. Wells, who took on, in investigation and writing, the horror of lynching, common in the United States during her lifetime, on a stamp attached to a Mexican Day of the Dead skull; Gloria Steinem, an honorary woman of color, persistent in her alignment with us, Alice Walker, Wilma Mankiller, Chief of the Cherokee (who always maintained, jokingly, that she earned her name); Alice Walker and Pratibha Parmar, recovering in the Grand Canyon after taking on Female Genital Mutilation, in book and film, and the marvel that Africa in general didn’t seem, at the time, to realize that the cutting (and sewing up, i.e. infibulation) of female genitals was a death blow to the continent. Alice holding Ede, the wonder dog, who later vanished without a trace, to her immense sorrow. Alice and Rebecca Walker with Nelson Mandela who was as handsome up close as he was far away. And as thoughtful and kind. Minnie Lou/Lue Grant Walker (the “Lou” shortened from Tallulah, the Cherokee contribution to our clan); Joan Baez, whose voice lifted our spirits when they were dragging, across the South, in the Sixties; Delores Huerta who worked endlessly to keep her people from dying of hunger and thirst in the American new plantation fields, often while pregnant; Bonnie Raitt, whose spirit of rebellion was plain in voice and guitar, Barbara Lee, who demonstrated that even in Congress one can be moral and not vote for war; Alice Walker, who loved being among these spirits. Alice with Aminata Diop, who fled her country to avoid having her vagina destroyed to prepare her for marriage; Alice with Cuban children who seemed like children anywhere on earth who trust grownups not to harm them; Angela Davis, Wilma Mankiller, Gloria Steinem facing some new menace. Alice with Marley the black lab; a relationship with whom was a gift from a beloved colored woman. Che and Mumia reminding us of something important:that we can be seen with deepest compassion, and stood with through every peril, by men of true courage. Shortly before he was assassinated, Che promised that if he survived (highly unlikely) he would come back and build for the woman of color who fed him his last meal, a proper school. ~aw
The beaded staff is Wilma’s. We discovered our common Irish ancestry (well, who knows?) and that she liked my knobby black shillelagh; as I admired her Cherokee/Native American staff. The drum is Indigenous Turtle Island and African. An Africa that one loves no matter the obstacle; a motherland like no other. The “OM” sign reminds me that perhaps sound is the creation of all that is. And that it happens of itself and is not planned by anyone/thing. Others have believed this before me. Of course!
Also: The pipe, the magic wand, the sage in the shell! And a green snake (unseen) beneath the altar. As is right.
The print of Che’s face on a thin copper disk was a gift from Cuba. The radiant photo of Mumia Abu Jamal was from himself! a week ago: after over forty (!) years in prison, mostly on death row. Having accomplished feats of heroism in prison few would have believed possible, he has now edited a profound essay collection on prison abolition: BENEATH THE MOUNTAIN: An Anti-Prison Reader, with co-editor Jennifer Black. This book takes us back to Nat Turner and John Brown, Ona Judge, Malcolm X, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Leonard Peltier, Chelsea Manning, and others of our resistance lineage, and offers as well a fascinating piece by the extraordinary Assata Shakur, whom America has tried to keep imprisoned or murdered, countless times, “Women in Prison: How It Is With Us.”
Black people, women, give up any idea that we have failed. (I know that, in the seemingly endless night of our sojourn here this thought sometimes rises, crushing us). But. The mountain may be there, and of course it is, but as this book reminds us, as well as the life of an extraordinary man, Mumia Abu Jamal, we are aware that though we were meant to remain bent beneath the mountain, like countless warriors before us, we are standing up.~aw
