Enter: the New Daughters of Africa
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE LONG READ New Daughters of Africa Photography — Yagazie Emezi Enter: the new daughters of Africa With the release of New Daughters of Africa, editor Margaret Busby explains why the collection – 25 years after Daughters of Africa was published – could not have come at a better time and introduces three stories from the anthology. hat a joy to be introducing Kenya, Nigeria to Norway and Sudan to an anthology he had recently curated. From dirt you to New Daughters of Africa. Zimbabwe. His warm response read, in part: ‘It goes WEnabling the anthology to My ambition was and is to shine a light to show – the proportion of women poets Words — Camillet Dungy be assembled in record time, writers on as many as possible of the deserving, never did occur to me – a greater testi- not only came on board with enthusi- whether or not they are acknowledged mony to my non-sexist outlook I cannot asm and alacrity but often steered me or lauded by the gatekeepers, who tra- imagine! But seriously though, it’s quite or months now, I’ve been living heirloom Cherokee seeds to whomever long trial of the Middle Passage and onto, in the direction of others whose work ditionally single out a privileged few, true, and I am sure you wouldn’t have through the grief of deaths, dev- showed interest and sent postage – in a then into, American soil. She must have they admire. Altogether, more than 200 seemingly never too many to rock the wanted double standards applied in Fastation and debilitating disease. decade I was nearly too small to remem- secured raw peanuts in an unsearched living writers have contributed work to boat. But the boat is going nowhere if it is selection. But you are right to point it I am naming none of these things in an ber and which my daughter calls the scrap of cloth she kept near her body. New Daughters of Africa – an amazing content to drift in stagnating water. out. I know that in the next edition I will abstract, global sense, though they are olden days. Peanuts, like pole beans, like black-eyed party guest list! In my introduction to the 1992 anthol- especially search for poetry by women.’ pervasive conditions of our times. I am If we were to start from the start, where peas, are both food and seed. You can eat A template of sorts was provided by ogy, I concluded that: ‘Throughout these For my part, I present every woman talking about the deaths of family, the would that take us? Black-eyed peas, a them for power today or plant them for the anthology I compiled more than 25 women’s words runs the awareness of who did me the honour of accepting my failure of this country [the US] to provide staple food in West Africa, made the abundance tomorrow. People who came years ago, Daughters of Africa; yet the new connectedness to a wider flow of history, invitation to feature in this anthology safety to dear friends. I am talking about journey with enslaved people from that long before us carried the source of a new volume represents a fresh start, since to the precursors, our foremothers. Our with the Venerable Order of True African grief and exhaustion and autoimmune continent into the American south. In kind of flourishing through desolation it duplicates none of the writers who collective strength, like that of a chain, Sisterhood. A legacy of New Daughters of flares that make it difficult, daily, to get their book, In the Shadow of Slavery: Afri- most of us care not to fully comprehend. appeared in the 1992 collection. derives from maintaining the links.’ Africa that has been facilitated by their out of bed. I’m talking about seeming to ca’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World, If I say my garden’s story starts with the Custom, tradition, friendships, I feel undeterred in my proselytizing generosity is a major new award that will run out of prospects. But, this week, we scholars Judith Carney and Richard planting of a seed, to which seed am I mentor/mentee relationships, sister- for greater visibility for women writers directly benefit African women, making pulled several cubic feet of rock from our Nicholas Rosomoff tell us that these same referring? hood, romance, inspiration, encour- of African descent, which until relatively possible a course of study free of the yard. Now the soil is ready to receive pole people used the stimulating kola nut to I remember the first garden I planted agement, sexuality, intersectional recently I had thought that I began doing worry of fees and accommodation costs. beans a friend gifted me last summer, manage the fetid water they were given as a married woman. It wasn’t much feminism, the politics of gender, race towards the end of the 1980s, when I And may all who find their way to this beans from a line of seed passed on by on slavers’ ships. Later, that nut would to speak of, neither the garden nor the and identity – the anthology explores began to work on compiling Daughters of anthology, regardless of gender, class or survivors since the 1838 Trail of Tears. make a key ingredient for Coca-Cola. house in whose yard it was sown. The an extensive spectrum of possibilities, Africa. However, I recently happened on race, feast well on its banquet of words. ● Soon, I will make a space in my garden When I speak about garden-variety crops garden was a way to help me feel rooted in ways that are touching, surprising, a letter from Wole Soyinka (who in 1986 for something that will look, by autumn, in this country, I nearly always point in a place where we were struggling to angry, considered, joyful, heartrending. made us all proud by becoming the first MARGARET BUSBY IS A MAJOR CULTURAL FIGURE like edible hope. toward simultaneous legacies of trauma begin our new life. I planted a few, sturdy IN THE UK AND AROUND THE WORLD. BORN IN Supposedly taboo subjects are addressed African to be awarded the Nobel Prize GHANA AND EDUCATED IN THE UK, SHE BECAME I’m getting ahead of myself. Working and triumph. Watermelon, sorghum, starts: marigolds and nasturtium. I put in head-on and with subtlety, familiar for Literature). In 1975, while he was BRITAIN’S YOUNGEST AND FIRST BLACK WOMAN the land, I am always losing track of a millet, sesame seed, rice: none of these zucchini, mostly for the riot of its bright PUBLISHER WHEN SHE CO-FOUNDED ALLISON dilemmas elicit new takes. editor of Transition magazine, he wrote linear concept of time. What happens would be what they are in America were blossoms. I kept an artichoke for the & BUSBY IN THE LATE 1960S. SHE HAS JUDGED Countries represented range from me a letter responding to something I NUMEROUS NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL today is fed by what I did yesterday. What it not for the centuries of human traffick- same reason. The thistle flower delighted Australia to the Bahamas, Cameroon to had said when our paths had crossed in LITERARY COMPETITIONS, AND SERVED ON THE I reap in the fall will recollect decisions ing we call the slave trade. The stories I’ve me, though it attracted an army of ants BOARDS OF SUCH ORGANIZATIONS AS THE ROYAL Dominica, Egypt to Ethiopia, Finland to London and I had seemingly berated LITERARY FUND, WASAFIRI MAGAZINE AND THE made by the likes of Dr John Wyche received tell me some ancestor must have that quickly moved the artichoke beyond Ghana, Haiti to Côte D’Ivoire, Jamaica to him for not including enough women in AFRICA CENTRE. – the man who began to send out these kept seed for okra in her hair through the the possibility of human consumption. I 62 NEW INTERNATIONALIST MARCH-APRIL 2019 63 THE LONG READ New Daughters of Africa I’m not sure I understand how it would be possible to talk about history without taking into account me. There is power to be generated from cultivating whatever might sustain me, in the environment out of which our whatever way I wish. I grow sunflowers and sweet potatoes history springs in my own garden. I plant what plants I desire, and I harvest or not as I choose. I grow mint and tolerate the purslane Even if I had managed to harvest any- On the property of Thomas Jefferson’s people these days tend to weed. As we thing during our brief season in that retreat home, Poplar Forest, archeolo- learn in Lucille Clifton’s poem ‘mulberry house, I shouldn’t have trusted the food gists have discovered caches of food that fields’, sometimes unmastered growth that dirt produced. Fumes from the give insight into the diet of the enslaved reveals what it is our land most dearly nearby freeway drifted over us all night men and women who lived on that prop- needs. I grow poppies and let the wild and all day. Anytime they were touched, erty. The very produce of the earth has violets flourish, for, through their flower- flakes of paint flew from the Victorian provided a lasting record of who on that ing, time will progress. duplex’s exterior walls. Soil tests in the land had what type of access, autonomy It’s been nearly a decade since I dug area have revealed lead levels hundreds and power. The list of foods found in in the particular patch of dirt our neigh- of parts per million above what is deemed the storage pits reveals the epidemic of bour questioned, but I still regularly to be safe, and I hadn’t built raised beds.