International Women's Day 2020 - Boldly Claiming Our Equal Place In HerStory by Margo Mocha Ochoa
Do we truly know how much Island Girls Rock? Perhaps not, but it is really through no fault of our own. For the past two years, I have been researching the uncelebrated historical contributions of Black people, around the world, more specifically women of Caribbean heritage.
This journey has led me down the pathway of many who have had a tremendous impact on the trajectory of our people but were never acknowledged, celebrated, and in some cases, completely erased out of history. It’s time we talk about Equity In The Recognition of Black Women and Their Contributions to Major Historical Movements: Literary Activist Edition.
In 1834, Mary Prince, a Bermudian slave who secretly learned how to read and write, took a bold step.
She wrote her memoir, making her the first Black woman in history to accomplish this feat. Now we could stop here in her story, but there is so much more to it.
Her book became the talk of London at a time when the abolition of slavery was a hot topic in Parliament. By the time it reached its third printing, she was called to testify and discuss in person the details of her suffering and what she witnessed under the horrors of slavery. Shortly after, Parliament announced that it would officially end its participation in the Slave Trade and abolished its legality in British colonies around the world. Although Mary and her story played a crucial role in this decision, unless one researches the name Mary Prince explicitly, her contributions and influence are entirely erased from the history books.
What would the Negritude Movement be without the Nardal Sisters hailing from the Island of Martinique? Though history would rewrite its beginnings to focus on a male-centered conceptualization, scholars are now re-examining women’s roles in the formation of the movement with an emphasis on Paulette, Jane, and Andree Nardal.
These trailblazers arrived in Paris in the late 1920s on a mission. Paulette would come first, officially integrating Sorbonne University, where she proceeded to pioneer two publications La Dépêche Africaine (The African Dispatch) and La Revue du Monde Noir (The Review of the Black World). Through these publications, she established the international connections and relationships that would lay the foundation for a literary-based global resistance movement.
Upon the arrival of her sisters, Jane and Andree, they began hosting a weekly Literary gathering called “Clamart Salons.” Each Sunday the likes of James Baldwin, Marcus Garvey, Josephine Baker, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and future Négritude poets Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Léon Damas would attend this extraordinary “gathering of friends.” They examined literary texts of scholars and post-war activists and created the framework for a new kind of resistance against colonialism, racism. I am not suggesting that men did not play a significant role in these movements. Still, it cannot be discounted that, in theory, the women brought a perspective that was much more than material gain as motivation for resistance but instead introduced the concept of global race consciousness. They placed emphasis on cultivating an international Black culture, soul, and humanism, three of the tenets of the later Négritude Movement.
Senghor, Damas, and Cesaire are noted in history as the pioneers of Negritude, but they would be no movement without the work of the Nardal sisters. Paulette refers to Senghor and Damas with some degree of sarcasm, “We were, but women, real pioneers, let’s say we blazed the trail for them.”, but there is a difference between blazing the trail and being completely erased from history.
And finally, Suzanne Cesaire (Martinique), friend, and fellow contributor to the publications ran by Paulette Nardal, was a fierce literary heroine in her own right. Overwhelmingly overshadowed by her husband Aimee, Suzanne is considered the Mother of Afro Surrealism. The theory which captures the soul of the literary resistance movement. She brilliantly fused poetry and prose to camouflage instructions on how Caribbean writers were to implement their craft to crush the hands of colonialism. She declared that creatives have a choice. They can continue to create “vanilla” based writings, with a European flair that had no meaning, were mundane and boring, or they could choose the “Domain of the Marvelous.”
Suzanne wrote that “The Marvelous” was not an ideology, but a state of mind and that we must be in “A Permanent Readiness for the Marvelous.” The Marvelous is the place where the creative mind travels to create concepts and works that inspire the conversations that bring forth Renaissance, Revolution, and Movements. For Suzanne, spirituality, art, and resistance went hand in hand.
The Marvelous being a spiritual domain is the only place where the mind could visualize a world where the Black person is free, strong, and beautiful. She is quoted as saying, “Here is the freed image, dazzling and beautiful, with a beauty that could not be more unexpected and overwhelming. Here are the poet, the painter, and the artist, presiding over the metamorphoses and the inversions of the world under the sign of hallucination and madness.” For only a mad person, could visualize a free world for the black man, believe that it is possible, and create works that mirror this “hallucination.”
It is in Surrealism and Us she writes with a boldness and clarity that would come to characterize her husband’s Discourse on Colonialism, that Surrealism would wake up the most disinherited from slumber, strengthening an impatient revolutionary attitude toward life. It would give the rising people their magic, a power that came from its very depths;
“Colonial idiocy will be purified in the welder’s blue flame…We shall recover our value as metal, our cutting edge of steel, our unprecedented communions.”
Black Girl Magic and Island Girls Rock are more than trending hashtags , they are affirmations, an inner knowing, clairvoyance that we cannot explain. Not that we need to explain ourselves, what we do need, however, are examples, historical references of brave women who came before us and operated in their magic, who “pushed [their] pens and made it happen”
Let’s BOLDLY claim our equal place in Herstory.
Margo Mocha Ochoa is the Founder and CEO of The Oracle Group International, Washington D.C., an internationally recognized public relations firm that specializes in connecting clients with opportunities that engage, uplift and empower local, national and global communities. She is an award-winning international strategist; sought after literary, public relations and integrated marketing professional; international diversity and multicultural program developer; a global visionary literary activist, world-renowned literary entrepreneur and a fervent pursuer of best-selling author status for her clients.
Through her Literary Lounge by Margo offering, Ms. Ochoa has developed large scale multiple day author festivals, pavilions and panel discussions. These events which host several hundred authors in panels discussions, book signings and meet and greet sessions. Literary Lounges have appeared at the NAACP National Convention, The Congressional Black Caucus, The National Press Club, The Soul of South Florida Book Festival and many more. Mocha has also served as Diversity Chair for the National Book Festival.
She is the founder of the Reading Across Continents initiative, an interactive cross-cultural literary exchange project connecting students, teachers and authors in international book clubs and book discussions around the world.
Her clientele list includes a cadre of notable and New York Times Best-Selling authors including, Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Luvvie Ajayi, Taye Diggs, Terry McMillan, the late Dr. Dorothy Height, and Professor Chinua Achebe.