I found a book in the art room at my job that used to live on my Grandmother's coffee table. The mere site of the book transported me back to my childhood and it was a welcomed feeling. Everything about this piece spoke to me. I am standing just a bit taller after reading this.
They Came to Stay
I Dream a World Foreword by Maya Angelou
I
am a black woman
tall as a cypress
strong
beyond all definition still
defying place
and time
and circumstances
assailed
impervious
indestructible
Look
on me and be
renewed
-from “I Am a Black Woman,”
Mari Evans
Black women whose ancestors were brought to the United States beginning in 1619 have lived through conditions of cruelties so horrible, so bizarre, the women had to re-invent themselves. They had to find safety and sanctity inside themselves or they would not have been able to tolerate those tortuous lives. They had to learn to be self-forgiving quickly, for often their exterior exploits were at odds with their interior beliefs. Still they had to survive wholly and healthily as possible in an infectious and sick climate.
Lives lived in such cauldrons are either obliterated or forged into impenetrable alloys. Thus, early on and consciously, Black women as reality became possibilities only to themselves. To others they were mostly seen and described in the abstract, concrete in their labor but surreal in their humanness.
They knew the burden of feminine sensibilities suffocated by masculine responsibilities.
They wrestled with the inescapable horror of bearing pregnancies which could only result in issuing more chattels into the rapacious maw of slavery.
They knew the grief of enforced separations from mates who were not theirs to claim, for the men themselves did not have legal possession of their own bodies.
And men, whose sole crime was their hue,
the impress of their Maker’s hand,
and frail and shrinking children too
were gather in that mournful band.
-from The Slave Auction,
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
The larger society, observing the women’s outrageous persistence in holding on, staying alive, thought it had no choice save to dissolve the perversity of the Black Woman’s life into a fabulous fiction of multiple personalities. They were seen as acquiescent, submissive Aunt Jemimas who showed grinning faces, plump laps, fat embracing arms, and brown jaws pouched in laughter. They were described as leering buxom wenches with round heels, open thighs, and insatiable sexual appetites. They were accused of being marauding matriarchs of stern demeanor, battering hands, unforgiving gazes and castrating behavior.
When we imagine women inhabited by all those apparitions, it becomes obvious that the women themselves did not hallucinate, but rather that they were national, racial, and historical hallucinations. Those contradictions stump even the most fertile imagination, for they could not have existed despite the romantic racism which introduced them into the American psyche. Surprisingly, above all, many women did survive as themselves. In this book we meet them, undeniably strong, unapologetically direct.
The photographer, Brian Lanker, possesses an acute eye and a brave heart. He has discovered women whose images show us the high cost of living and the rich reward of thriving. Lanker intends to capture the viewer with the twin magic of his camera and the women’s faces. These women regard us, understand us, gaze through us into a beyond, alien to our most common view. Each seems to know something we have not known. The sameness of their gaze informs us that they will not be removed, that indeed although they are shaken, bruised, and uprooted, they are determined to remain.
This foreword does not mean to be an explanation of the Black woman’s stamina. Rather, it is a salute to her as an outstanding representative of the human race. Here, in this book, educators, athletes, dancers, judges, politicians, artists, actresses, writers, singers, poets and social activists dare to look at life with humor, determination and respect. Their visages do not entertain hypocrisy. To those who would desire chicanery, they honesty of these women is terrifying.
The heartbreaking tenderness of Black women and their majestic strength speak of the heroic survival of a people who were stolen into subjugation, denied chastity, and refused innocence.
These women have descended from grandmothers and great-grandmothers who knew the lash first hand, and to whom protection was a phantom known of but seldom experienced. Their faces are captured here for the ages to regard and wonder, but they are whole women. Their hands have brought children through blood to life, nursed the sick, and folded the winding cloths. Their wombs have held the promise of a race which has proven in each challenging century that despite threat and mayhem it has come to stay. Their feet have trod the shifting swampland of insecurity, yet they have tried to step neatly onto the footprints of mothers who went before. They are not apparitions; they are not superwomen. Despite their majestic struggle they are no larger than life. Their humanness is evident in their accessibility. We are able to enter the photographs and enter into the spirit of these women and rejoice in their courage and nearness.
Precious jewels all. Thanks to their persistence, art, sublime laughter and love we may all yet survive our grotesque history.
~Maya Angelou
