Hide Article Text (OCR)
Angela Davis (born 1944), the former Black Panther, who was acquitted in 1972 of charges which led to her being placed on the FBI’s most wanted list, made these remarks in a speech at Spellman College in 1987 on organizing black women. ‘Black women scholars and professionals cannot afford to ignore the straits of our sisters who are acquainted with the immediacy of oppression in a way many of us are not. The process of empowerment cannot be simplistically defined in accordance with our own particular class interests. We must learn to lift as we climb.” Jo Veronique Tadjo (born 1955) teaches in the English department at the University of Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The following poem is published in ‘Daughters of Africa,” for the first time. “Life is walking fast “It wasn’t how I wanted it, but I had to take what I could. “TL used to think time was on my side. That has changed now. “T can’t risk it “IT can’t wait , had to touch you “I don’t know what tomorrow will bring “IT had to gamble.” C34) Ly Barbara Burford, a British poet writer and editor was born in 1945. The short story, ‘Miss Jessie” first appeared in “Everyday Matters: 2,” published in 1984, “Two late commuters looked at each other with raised brows and slightly pursed lips. Miss Jessie, catching that well-known look, stirred up the dust between their seats with her dirty broom till their still-shiny black toe-capped shoes became a more interesting mottled grey “Like most individuals who perform a menial task for the public, Miss Jessie was invisible to the great mass of people who surged through the station in tidal flows, to be drained down into the underground system or ferried away by bus or taxi.” Ood Lorna Goodison, a writer and painter, was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1947. Her prize-winning poem, “I am Becoming My Mother, was published in 1986. “Yellow-brown woman “fingers smelling always of onion. “My mother raises rare blooms “and waters them with tea “her birth waters sang like rivers “my mother is now me. “My mother had a linen dress “the color of the sky “and stored lace and damask “tablecloths “to pull shame out of her eye. “Tam becoming my mother “brown-yellow woman “fingers smelling always of onions.” It proved a herculean project, requiring all of Busby’s energy, her writing and reviewing experience and her extensive library, which she fears eventually could bring down the house. ‘See that crack in the ceiling? There is a room full of books above it,” she said, glancing above a kitchen table covered with news papers, letters, bills and books. “There are books in every crev ice. There are books in those boxes,” she said pointing to large cardboard boxes sitting outside on a concrete ledge beyond her kitch en window. “That's partly why I’ve got all this chaos.” Busby was familiar with almost all the 200 women before she be gan but there were a few surprises, “like the Turkish woman (Asye Bircan). I didn’t even know there were black people in Turkey until I met her. That was a surprise.” The anthology includes moving memoirs from slaves, such as Eliz abeth (“Old Elizabeth’), who was born in Maryland in 1766 and died sometime after 1863: “At parting, my mother told me that I had ‘nobody in the wide world to look to but God.’ These words fell upon my heart with pon derous weight, and seemed to add to my grief. I went back repeating as I went, ‘none but God in the wide world.’ On reaching the farm, I found the overseer was dis pleased at me for going without his liberty. He tied me with a rope, and gave me some stripes of which I carried the marks for weeks.” There is a rousing pamphlet published in 1835, by Maria W. Stewart, calling on black women to strive for education and political rights: “O, ye daughters of Africa, awake! awake! arise! no longer sleep nor slumber, but distinguish yourselves. Show forth to the world that ye are endowed with nobel and exalted faculties.” There is a letter from Harriet Tubman, excerpts from a speech by Angela Davis, contemporary po etry from the Ivory Coast, Ger many and Zimbabwe, plus popular African-American novelists such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Al ice Walker and Terry McMillan. Busby took 18 months to pull ev erything together, starting with a 500-page list of writers she had compiled for no particular reason. “It was a pincer movement,” she said. “I wanted to include the whole range. They all started from Africa. The diaspora exists because of slavery and now here we are, like a fan.” Busby admits there was enough material from the United States alone to fill another 1,089-page an thology, but she was committed to geographical breadth. “A lot of people do tend to think black women’s writing is just like Alice Walker. There are huge varieties. They may not have all had the same history, the same heritage, the same experience. “The British, German, American black women will have all sorts of social things, maybe prejudice, op pression by either gender or race. But it is different in the way they experience them. Somebody brought up in Brazil will be very different from somebody brought up in Kenya.” Busby was born in Ghana, where her love of books was sparked by dipping into her father’s medical tomes. Sent away to England for boarding school at eight, she went on to earn an honors degree at London University before co founding Allison and Busby, an in dependent publishing company. “As long as a I’ve been here I still don’t think of myself as En glish. I don’t think I'll every feel English,” she said. Her next pro ject will be a family history. She hopes “Daughters of Afri ca” will inspire writers and per haps goad someone into editing another anthology. “They'll read it and say, ‘I can do better than Bus by,’ she said with a smile. As Busby had hoped, the book will be equally at home on the ref erence shelf and on a bedside ta ble, for late-night sampling. “I don’t expect people to be equally interested in everything. But something should prick up that they really get,” she said. ee Lal “Daughters of Africa” is pub lished by Pantheon for $335.
Newspaper Details
Nashua Telegraph
Nashua, New Hampshire, US
Sun, Jan 03, 1993
Page 38
Full Page
Clipped by
Dawne Y.
USA 05 Jul 2026
Other Publications Near Nashua, New Hampshire
Nashua Telegraph
