Transnationalism in A Daughter’s Geography

by Jennell Strong 2 Comments

In all my readings on black feminism throughout the decades, present in every reiteration or rather continuation of the social, intellectual and cultural feminist movement within the United States is the recognition of and solidarity with oppressed peoples all over the world. Although focused on the plights of women, black feminism’s objective is almost always rooted in the protection and support of all humans. Black feminist politics is saturated with empathy and genuine diversity. The TWWA’s newspaper Triple Jeopardy and the magazine Conditions exemplify this ingrained attitude of multiplicity. These papers are inclusive of the narratives of Third World Women. Conditions for example published “work by women in other global locations as a form of information exchange” (34) Likewise, Triple Jeopardy operated centered their content beyond the borders, linking the injustices happening abroad with the internal terrorism against WoC in the States.

Ntozake Shange throughout all her works, carries strongly an expansive sense of self, an understanding of self as collective. Specifically in the poem Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography is the imagery of transnationalism. Shange, a Black American woman claims blood ties to folks in Africa, the Caribbean and South America. Not only is she saying that she has a diasporic family, but these people in Mozambique, Cuba and Salvador are her children. She has “made children of the new world”. As a mother, the urgency she has in protecting and fighting for them is stronger, I presume, then if she was simply their sister or cousin.

our twins

capetown & palestine/ cannot speak the same

language/ but we fight the same old men

the same men who thought the earth waz flat

In these lines, and the entire poem, Shange recognizes 1) the kinship throughout the diaspora 2) the nuances of experience and 3) the common oppressor of Black Americans and Third World black people. That is also how Triple Jeopardy and Conditions operated. Shange sees a commonality of oppression from racial discrimination in the US, South African apartheid and the social conditions of Palestinians. However, this commonality doesn’t translate to universality because she recognizes the difference in language, a note on separate colonizers. Still, regardless of the colonizer’s language they are all “the same men” whose “dreams are full of none of our/ children”.

This principle of solidarity that runs deeply through Shange’s poetry and the politics of TWWA reminds me of the civil rights movement of my generation: Black Lives Matter, a movement pioneered by queer black women. Every time some major social event occurs, there is always support from the BLM movement. An example of this is two years ago when the Dakota Access Pipeline was heavily trending BLM people were upfront about their support for Native Americans fighting the US government for autonomy of their land. Regardless of their name being Black Lives Matter, there is no hesitation or confusion about the inherent fact that all lives, especially the lives of the most marginalized and oppressed, matter. So of course black people, but really black women, would recognize the need to empathize and stand with indigenous folks.

Image result for blm standing rock

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Kim Hall
    nice post Jannell! I wonder if the poem doesn't get bigger in the movement from "i" to "our" in the opening? which is to say to move from a mother-child relationship to the multiple interconnectedness of family. Your beautiful photo illustration makes so many visual points about #BLM and its sense of the interrelationship of struggle. For example, the reference to "liberatED" makes me think that perhaps we need to think about the struggle over language in the 70s. The groups mentioned in the readings don't refer to themselves as Civil Rights groups-- should we be be moving towards the earlier terms-- "radica," "revolutionary," "liberatory," etc. Or do those terms seem too old-fashioned now?
  2. Asha Futterman
    In this election season, you're post reminds me that global movements are what force governments to effect change. Shange's lines about Palestine reminded me of a petition that asked for Black people to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and detailed instances of police brutality happening in Palestine by the Israeli military force. The examples cited on the petition were shocking not only in their horror, but also in their similarity to violence that Black people experience in the US. Recently, the police at Standing Rock have been using similar tactics to suppress protesters as used in the civil rights movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and in Palestine. I could think of the issues happening in my city and at my school as a “local” problems, just as someone living in Gaza could think of their issues as “local.” But I have come to believe that most struggles are global. Things change when people change them. Legal changes happened during the civil rights movement in the 1960s not because Lyndon B. Johnson, a conservative, was president, or even because Martin Luther King was an amazing leader. Changes happened because people across the globe bound together to attempt to end racial oppression in the US. Similarly, the apartheid in South Africa ended despite the conservative president at the time, F.W. de Klerk. The onus is on us: one leader, one president, or one administrator won’t make fundamental changes for us or stand in our way on our path to freedom.

Leave a reply