The Resurrecting Writer Series: Home Girls – A Black Feminist Anthology

Wandering the blogosphere like I used to, 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 to write a review for Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology.

For an anchorless young woman on the verge of culturally divorcing herself, the anthology was one of a series of buoys that they clung to and devoured as if I were a member of the Donner party, not Salma’s daughter. Comprised of both poetry and prose, the book depicts the discussions that black women had with other black women, and society in general, about what it means to be a black woman. The scope of the conversation is wide. Includes the Combahee River Collective Declaration that includes articulations such as

This focus on our own oppression is embedded in 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 the oppression of another person. In the case of black women, this is a particularly disgusting, dangerous, threatening and therefore revolutionary concept, because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have gone before us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than we are. We reject the pedestals, royalty and walk ten steps behind. To be recognized as human, leveled as human, is enough.

I am not entirely clear on the concept of identity politics. However, it seems to me that the essence of self-determination is to advance your own cause. In the case of black women, the cause should be the black woman. Home Girls is one of the points along my literary reading path where I realized that it was acceptable, even revolutionary, to get out of the deep, open my mouth and express myself fully.

Home Girls is also where I first encountered the work of poet Kate Rushin. His poem, the Black Back-ups,

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 backing for Elvis Presley, John Denver, James Taylor, Lou Reed, Etc, Etc, Etc.

…

This is for Hattie McDaniels, Butterfly McQueen, Ethel Waters

Sapphire
Saphronia
Ruby begonia
Aunt jemima
Aunt jemima in the pancake box
Aunt Jemima in the pancake box?
Aunt Jemima in the pancake box?
Aunt Jemima in the pancake box?
Ainchamamaonthepancakebox?
Isn’t chure Mama in the pancake box?

Mom mom
Get out of that damn box
And come home with me

And my momma jumps out of that box
She swoops down in her nurse cape
What is sunday
And at the Wednesday night prayer meeting
And she wipes my forehead
And she enlivens my face for me
And she makes me a cup of tea
And it does nothing for my true pain
Except she’s my mom
Mommy Mommy Mommy Mommy
Mam-mee mam-mee
I would walk a million miles
For one of your smiles

This is for the Black Back-ups.
This is for my mom and your mom
My grandmother and your grandmother
This is for the thousands of Black Back-ups.

And the colored girls say *

After reading this poem, I couldn’t hear Lou Reed’s Walk on the Side as a simple song. Instead, it now expresses a relationship in which the talent and artistic ability of black women are used to enrich other artists, both musically and financially. It’s Big Mama Thornton and Elvis represented by the entire cultural landscape. Or it would be, except that Big Mama’s daughter loves her mother and wrote a poem about it; a poem that changes the dynamic landscape of understanding.

* © 1983 Donna Kate Rushin