Posts tagged Black feminist

Why do you enjoy working on the farm and with the nation-wide CSA community? Is it particulary meaningful to you as a Black wombyn?

My identity as a black wombyn has informed by decision to farm and become a part of the CSA community. The concept Sankofa has also had a huge impact on those decisions. Meaning either the word in the Akan language of Ghana that translates in English to “go back and take” (Sanko- go back, fa- take) or the Asante Adinkra symbol. It is often associated with the proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which translates “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” As a black wombyn farming how can I not implement the sankofa concept in my life; I am choosing it as a life philosophy… I am learning from our ancestors and from some of the mistakes that have been made… I learn not to control the earth but work with the earth, using natural methods that some of our ancestors used to work with the patterns of the earth and combining them with new technologies that are in line with an ethos of interconnectedness that respects the earth.. i believe everyone has the basic human right to healthy and nutritious food and we all need to be a part of cultivating the food we consume. I recognize that the current reality of our world’s food systems are steeped in white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal ideologies and structures that affect everyone but disproportionately hurt marginalized communities (i.e. women, people of color). Through CCF I seek to create and (re)imagine a transformative food justice system that serves as an example of an alternative pro-human ideology, addresses the effects of oppression, thereby dismantling structures of oppression through our own positive creativity. I enjoy working on the farm, not only because i get to work with nature but also because I feel empowered relying on myself and my fellow farm-partners to supply my diet rather than multi-national-corporate-for-profit-businesses and I believe I am in solidarity with the women who produce 70% of the food on earth but are marginalized and oppressed by neoliberalism and patriarchy.

Would you describe the work you are doing as spiritual/metaphysical? Why?
I would definitely describe the work I am doing as spiritual. I am seeking a spiritual, ancestral and African derived consciousness for my own creativity. Making peace with the earth, an integral component to ancestrally driven spiritualized consciousness, involving a deliberate and critically aware relationship with ancestral spirits that reside all around us. Respecting nature is a practice that is closely associated with the practices that sustained our ancestors. Seeing nature as an essential force for human existence, and creating positive relationships within natural landscapes is an embodiment of ancestral consciousness. (“Making peace with the earth, we make the world a place where we can be one with nature. We create and sustain environments where we can come back to ourselves, where we can return home. Stand on solid ground and be a true witness.” –bell hook ( The Colors of Nature, “Earthbound: On Solid Ground”, 2002)). There is a spiritual practice that is involved at a daily and constant level when truly living aligned with the seasons of the earth. 


-Do you understand the Black community as having a distinct/special connection the physical landscape (in amerikka)? Yes, I do believe within the historical context of Africans forcibly placed in america, the Black community does have a very distinct connection with the physical landscape of this country. Aside from the indigenous people, the Black community have truly been the stewards of this land.

….Considering the tenuous relationship we, as Black people, have had with the amerikkkan land (for example: being commodified as land is in the same capitalist system, being stolen from our land, being forced to work land stolen from Brown folk, being denied access to land ownership, fearing our footprints in the soil as we escaped enslavement ), how would you characterize our relationship to land? How is it radical as in oppositional/creative/cool?

I would characterize our relationship to land as strained. In the aftermath of chattel-slavery, industrialization and in a time where the capitalist system is upheld, I am under the impression that many people of color, and especially many black folks in america want to stray as far away as possible from manual labor in fields…..(i gotta run but, i’m going to finish answering this question today. i apologize if any of these answers are unclear, i’ve been sick and running around for the farm. love you so much!)
-tashi

I appreciate you Tashi for sharing your Black wombyn ecological ancient WISDOM.

Just recently I received an award from my prep school, Northfield Mt. Herman, and my classmates were telling me about a term paper I had done for biology on tissue culture written completely in iambic pantameter- so I know I had to have been intoxicated with words to do that. I don’t really remember doing that paper but my classmates did. So writing was something that became part of my basic identity. Obviously the biology teacher would have preferred to have the paper written in prose, and I didn’t really care, cause that wasn’t the way I was going to write it. I couldn’t have done the paper at all if I had had to write it in prose, it wouldn’t have been interesting to me.

-June Jordan

from I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like by Rebecca Carroll p144-145