As a college freshman, I attended a 1973 meeting of the Muhammad Ahmad (a.k.a. Max Stanford) Defense Committee (MADC). Police had captured Ahmad, a leader of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and a principal target of the Counter INTELligence PROgram (COINTELPRO). I was asked at the meeting, “You ever heard of Queen Mother Moore?” After receiving a brief explanation, I was assigned to escort Queen Mother to a speaking engagement. The proceeds of her California talks went to the MADC. As her driver and security, I accompanied Queen Mother on several speaking engagements in the 1970s. I was later recruited into RAM’s successor organization, the African Peoples Party (APP). Queen Mother was mentor to the APP. As the principal female elder in APP, she was commonly referred to as “Mother.” Queen Mother’s speech that 1973 winter day expressed themes that recurred throughout her addresses. I will briefly share some core themes that appeared in Queen Mother’s oratory, and reconstruct some of my experiences with her.
{"title":"Matriarch of the Captive African Nation: Recollections of Queen Mother Moore","authors":"A. Umoja","doi":"10.1353/PAL.2018.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAL.2018.0025","url":null,"abstract":"As a college freshman, I attended a 1973 meeting of the Muhammad Ahmad (a.k.a. Max Stanford) Defense Committee (MADC). Police had captured Ahmad, a leader of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and a principal target of the Counter INTELligence PROgram (COINTELPRO). I was asked at the meeting, “You ever heard of Queen Mother Moore?” After receiving a brief explanation, I was assigned to escort Queen Mother to a speaking engagement. The proceeds of her California talks went to the MADC. As her driver and security, I accompanied Queen Mother on several speaking engagements in the 1970s. I was later recruited into RAM’s successor organization, the African Peoples Party (APP). Queen Mother was mentor to the APP. As the principal female elder in APP, she was commonly referred to as “Mother.” Queen Mother’s speech that 1973 winter day expressed themes that recurred throughout her addresses. I will briefly share some core themes that appeared in Queen Mother’s oratory, and reconstruct some of my experiences with her.","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/PAL.2018.0025","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46103084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poem for Queen Mother Moore","authors":"S. Sánchez","doi":"10.1353/pal.2018.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pal.2018.0022","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/pal.2018.0022","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45176671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light by Laila Amine","authors":"L. Amine","doi":"10.1353/pal.2020.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pal.2020.0003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/pal.2020.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42364575","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kathleen M. Gyssels, Kevin J. Meehan, Courtney L. Thompson, Claudine Taaffe, Terrance Dean
{"title":"Editor's Introduction","authors":"Kathleen M. Gyssels, Kevin J. Meehan, Courtney L. Thompson, Claudine Taaffe, Terrance Dean","doi":"10.1353/pal.2018.0000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pal.2018.0000","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/pal.2018.0000","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46416382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
People often ask me how I could have survived under the conditions I had been subjected to in my life. The short answer is that if you are faced with adversity, you have no choice but to strive for survival. It is amazing what internal reserves come to the fore under stressful conditions—mostly reserves you did not even know you possessed until they are needed. —Mamphela Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader
{"title":"\"No Choice but to Strive\": Gender, State Power, and Resistance in the Life Narratives of Emma Mashinini, Mamphela Ramphele, and Wangari Maathai","authors":"Courtney L. Thompson","doi":"10.1353/PAL.2018.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAL.2018.0003","url":null,"abstract":"People often ask me how I could have survived under the conditions I had been subjected to in my life. The short answer is that if you are faced with adversity, you have no choice but to strive for survival. It is amazing what internal reserves come to the fore under stressful conditions—mostly reserves you did not even know you possessed until they are needed. —Mamphela Ramphele, Across Boundaries: The Journey of a South African Woman Leader","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/PAL.2018.0003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46123599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In his excellent and most welcome collection of essays, The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966,1 David Murphy illustrates the vibrant art scene in the young republic with a thorough overview of a range of Senegalese authors and artists. And yet, someone is missing: Leon Gontran-Damas, the Martinican-born, French Guyanese cofounder of the Négritude movement, who put together several collections that included works by Senegelase authors. In fact, it was Damas who provided his friend, Négritude cofounder and Senegalese president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, a first copy of what would be his second wide-ranging anthology of African voices in five languages, Nouvelle somme de poésie du monde noir/A New Survey of Poetry from the Negro World. The potency of this largely forgotten and unacknowledged anthology is revealed when compared with other examples of the genre. What do Nancy Cunard, Blaise Cendrars,2 André Gide, Albert Memmi, L.S. Senghor, Albert Helman, Léon-Gontran Damas, and Edouard Glissant have in common? Published anthologies form a genre that Paul Lauter convincingly argues we should take seriously, since knowledge of most works of “ethnic literature” has remained within classroom walls for too long.3 Anthologies were, and are still today, valued for their didactic function, as well as serving as inventories of new fields and schools of writing. They are essential to the creation of a specific corpus that needs to be presented as a subsystem, one that seeks legitimacy through editorial strategies. Many intellectuals, black and white, Anglo and Francophone, have served as intermediaries between artists and their potential audiences with respect to black literature and postcolonial literature (the Maghreb, for instance, with Memmi’s 1969 Anthology of French Writers from the Maghreb). Many of these thinkers—themselves poets and
大卫·墨菲(David Murphy)在其优秀且最受欢迎的散文集《1966年达喀尔第一届世界黑人艺术节》(The First World Festival of Negro Arts,Dakar)1中,对塞内加尔的一系列作家和艺术家进行了全面的概述,描绘了这个年轻共和国充满活力的艺术场景。然而,有人失踪了:莱昂·贡特兰·达玛斯,出生于马提尼加人,法裔圭亚那人,Négritude运动的联合创始人,他收集了几本书,其中包括塞内加尔作家的作品。事实上,正是达玛斯为他的朋友、Négritude联合创始人兼塞内加尔总统Léopold Sédar Senghor提供了一本第一本的非洲声音选集,这本选集将是他用五种语言创作的第二本内容广泛的非洲声音选集,《黑色世界新诗歌》/《黑人世界诗歌新调查》。与该类型的其他例子相比,这本基本上被遗忘和未被承认的选集的潜力就显现出来了。Nancy Cunard、Blaise Cendrars、2 AndréGide、Albert Memmi、L.S.Senghor、Albert Helman、Léon Gontran Damas和Edouard Glissant有什么共同点?出版的选集形成了一种类型,Paul Lauter令人信服地认为我们应该认真对待,因为大多数“民族文学”作品的知识已经在课堂上保留了太久。3选集过去和今天都因其教学功能而受到重视,同时也是新领域和写作流派的目录。它们对于创建一个特定的语料库至关重要,该语料库需要作为一个子系统来呈现,一个通过编辑策略寻求合法性的子系统。在黑人文学和后殖民文学方面,许多知识分子,包括黑人和白人、盎格鲁人和法语人,都充当了艺术家及其潜在受众之间的中介(例如,《马格里布》,梅米1969年出版的《马格里布的法国作家选集》)。这些思想家中的许多人——他们自己就是诗人和
{"title":"Anthologies, Ontologies, and Hauntologies: Resurrecting Léon-Gontran Damas","authors":"Kathleen M. Gyssels","doi":"10.1353/PAL.2018.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAL.2018.0001","url":null,"abstract":"In his excellent and most welcome collection of essays, The First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar 1966,1 David Murphy illustrates the vibrant art scene in the young republic with a thorough overview of a range of Senegalese authors and artists. And yet, someone is missing: Leon Gontran-Damas, the Martinican-born, French Guyanese cofounder of the Négritude movement, who put together several collections that included works by Senegelase authors. In fact, it was Damas who provided his friend, Négritude cofounder and Senegalese president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, a first copy of what would be his second wide-ranging anthology of African voices in five languages, Nouvelle somme de poésie du monde noir/A New Survey of Poetry from the Negro World. The potency of this largely forgotten and unacknowledged anthology is revealed when compared with other examples of the genre. What do Nancy Cunard, Blaise Cendrars,2 André Gide, Albert Memmi, L.S. Senghor, Albert Helman, Léon-Gontran Damas, and Edouard Glissant have in common? Published anthologies form a genre that Paul Lauter convincingly argues we should take seriously, since knowledge of most works of “ethnic literature” has remained within classroom walls for too long.3 Anthologies were, and are still today, valued for their didactic function, as well as serving as inventories of new fields and schools of writing. They are essential to the creation of a specific corpus that needs to be presented as a subsystem, one that seeks legitimacy through editorial strategies. Many intellectuals, black and white, Anglo and Francophone, have served as intermediaries between artists and their potential audiences with respect to black literature and postcolonial literature (the Maghreb, for instance, with Memmi’s 1969 Anthology of French Writers from the Maghreb). Many of these thinkers—themselves poets and","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/PAL.2018.0001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44404597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"We Were Eight Years in Power—An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates (review)","authors":"Terrance Dean","doi":"10.1353/PAL.2018.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAL.2018.0005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/PAL.2018.0005","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43364099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sponsored by the callie house research center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics, the second annual Black Feminist Methods and Methodologies Working Symposium held at Vanderbilt University in October 2017 focused on black girls and black girlhood. A symposium developed as a space for early to midcareer black women scholars to present their works in progress, the interdisciplinary two-day gathering featured speakers from education, history, and literary and women’s and gender studies. A significant and necessary purpose of the working symposium on black girls and girlhood was to disrupt the disappearing and devaluing of black girls and women within academic research and in program-based settings. Educational researcher Ruth Nicole Brown argues that black girls are the experts on their own lives. The problem is there is often no place for the narratives of black girls to be discussed, documented, and disseminated. In the work engaged by these black women scholars, a cacophony of innovative theories and methodologies were presented and discussed. The work of these scholars is a critical and intentional attempt to broaden the aperture into
{"title":"Second Annual Black Feminist Methods and Methodologies Working Symposium: Black Girlhood and Black Girlhood Studies, an Introduction with Selected Abstracts","authors":"Claudine Taaffe","doi":"10.1353/pal.2018.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pal.2018.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Sponsored by the callie house research center for the Study of Global Black Cultures and Politics, the second annual Black Feminist Methods and Methodologies Working Symposium held at Vanderbilt University in October 2017 focused on black girls and black girlhood. A symposium developed as a space for early to midcareer black women scholars to present their works in progress, the interdisciplinary two-day gathering featured speakers from education, history, and literary and women’s and gender studies. A significant and necessary purpose of the working symposium on black girls and girlhood was to disrupt the disappearing and devaluing of black girls and women within academic research and in program-based settings. Educational researcher Ruth Nicole Brown argues that black girls are the experts on their own lives. The problem is there is often no place for the narratives of black girls to be discussed, documented, and disseminated. In the work engaged by these black women scholars, a cacophony of innovative theories and methodologies were presented and discussed. The work of these scholars is a critical and intentional attempt to broaden the aperture into","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/pal.2018.0004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43257892","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenally successful Broadway hip hop musical Hamilton!, the anthemic phrase “rise up!” returns several times as a lyrical and musical refrain. The Puerto Rican identity of Hamilton! ’s author and the Nevisian origins of its title character suggest that the idea of “uplift”— the quest for social ascension often associated with African American and American culture more broadly—is something that can also be seen as a core theme in Caribbean cultural expression. In fact, this same leitmotif of rising up has been central in the Caribbean coming-of-age novel, from Jane’s Career by H.G. DeLisser to canonical mid-century novels by George Lamming, Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, and Jacques-Stephen Alexis to more-recent-but-nowclassic offerings from women writers such as Merle Hodge, Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Collins, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Caribbean writers have repeatedly turned to the bildungsroman to explore the promises and pitfalls of regional decolonization, the uneven participation of women in currents of social change, and the contemporary struggle to survive and thrive in the latest dispensations of globalization. Two new books—Madinah Girl, by TrinidadianGrenadian author Anna Levi, and Moun Lakou, by Guadeloupean novelist Marie Léticée—carve out new spaces in the generic niche established by previous generations. Both are debut publications and together they point to how the Caribbean coming-of-age novel continues to function and be transformed in the way critic Maria Helena Lima describes as “one of the ways individuals find to create themselves as subject within new social and political contexts.”1 Both novels also suggest that the future of Caribbean literature is in good hands. Madinah Girl offers an unflinching depiction of life in the margins of contemporary Trinidad that is guaranteed to shock any reader unprepared for essays
在林·曼努埃尔·米兰达的百老汇嘻哈音乐剧《汉密尔顿!》中!,国歌短语“站起来!”作为抒情和音乐副歌多次出现。汉密尔顿的波多黎各身份!”其作者及其主人公的尼维斯起源表明,“提升”的概念——对社会提升的追求——通常与非裔美国人和美国文化更广泛地联系在一起——也可以被视为加勒比文化表达的核心主题。事实上,从H.G.DeLisser的《简的职业生涯》到George Lamming、Sam Selvon、V.s.Naipaul和Jacques Stephen Alexis的世纪中期经典小说,再到Merle Hodge、Jamaica Kincaid、Merle Collins、Julia Alvarez、Edwidge Danticat等女性作家最近推出的但现已成为经典的作品,这种崛起的主题一直是加勒比成人小说的核心。加勒比作家多次转向成长小说,探讨区域非殖民化的前景和陷阱,女性在社会变革潮流中的不均衡参与,以及当代在全球化的最新时代中生存和繁荣的斗争。两本新书——特立尼达和格林纳达作家安娜·李维的《麦地那女孩》和瓜德罗普小说家玛丽·莱蒂奇的《穆恩·拉库》——在前几代人建立的通用利基市场中开辟了新的空间。这两部小说都是处女作,它们共同指出了加勒比成人小说是如何继续发挥作用和转变的,正如评论家玛丽亚·海伦娜·利马所描述的那样,这是“个人在新的社会和政治背景下创造自己的方式之一”。《麦地那女孩》对当代特立尼达边缘的生活进行了坚定的描绘,这一定会让任何对散文毫无准备的读者感到震惊
{"title":"Rise Up?: New Directions in the Caribbean Women's Bildungsroman","authors":"Kevin Meehan","doi":"10.1353/PAL.2018.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/PAL.2018.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenally successful Broadway hip hop musical Hamilton!, the anthemic phrase “rise up!” returns several times as a lyrical and musical refrain. The Puerto Rican identity of Hamilton! ’s author and the Nevisian origins of its title character suggest that the idea of “uplift”— the quest for social ascension often associated with African American and American culture more broadly—is something that can also be seen as a core theme in Caribbean cultural expression. In fact, this same leitmotif of rising up has been central in the Caribbean coming-of-age novel, from Jane’s Career by H.G. DeLisser to canonical mid-century novels by George Lamming, Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, and Jacques-Stephen Alexis to more-recent-but-nowclassic offerings from women writers such as Merle Hodge, Jamaica Kincaid, Merle Collins, Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and others. Caribbean writers have repeatedly turned to the bildungsroman to explore the promises and pitfalls of regional decolonization, the uneven participation of women in currents of social change, and the contemporary struggle to survive and thrive in the latest dispensations of globalization. Two new books—Madinah Girl, by TrinidadianGrenadian author Anna Levi, and Moun Lakou, by Guadeloupean novelist Marie Léticée—carve out new spaces in the generic niche established by previous generations. Both are debut publications and together they point to how the Caribbean coming-of-age novel continues to function and be transformed in the way critic Maria Helena Lima describes as “one of the ways individuals find to create themselves as subject within new social and political contexts.”1 Both novels also suggest that the future of Caribbean literature is in good hands. Madinah Girl offers an unflinching depiction of life in the margins of contemporary Trinidad that is guaranteed to shock any reader unprepared for essays","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/PAL.2018.0002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43722378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"History vs. Historical Memory Rosie Douglas, Black Power on Campus, and the Canadian Color Conceit","authors":"M. O. West","doi":"10.1353/pal.2017.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/pal.2017.0019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41105,"journal":{"name":"Palimpsest-A Journal on Women Gender and the Black International","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/pal.2017.0019","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47595537","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}