mai-mai more than

I saw you online recently. You were one of five women participating on a panel tackling complex questions on a tight timeline. The scheduled hour was never going to be long enough for both generous introductions and deep thought-work. Unsurprisingly, the intersection of gender, religion, and difference requires a longer runway. As does the work of holding space for the fullness of one another. What, then, do we make of these invitations that squeeze us in and mete us out?

The conversation was scheduled during dinnertime and I was hungry as I logged onto the call. I wondered whether you had found time to eat. I wondered about your family and their sustenance. But the show must go on. Or so they say. You were brilliant and eloquent and fierce and strong. And when you called out your mother and daughter as fieldwork companions? The ancestors heard their names. And when you claimed kinship in the same sentence as a Mai-Mai warlord? Power repurposed. Plain and never, ever simple.

There is more to say about this group of women who took the time to introduce us to worlds beyond our knowing. During dinner. In a pandemic. I remember the wholly predictable moment a young child came into the room where her mother was presenting. As this child tucked into her parent’s side, it was a gift. Because, we rarely see labor – or its fruits – in spaces set apart for a different kind of production.

As the call came to its close, we were invited to celebrate both the poise of the interrupted mother and the monographs these scholars – women all, and many Black and Brown – would write this coming year. Business as usual. Or so they say. And I wondered about the other books these women were writing, revising, improvising, and eking out in this season of compounding assault. Sometimes, writing our own names – and those of our beloveds – into the book of life is more than enough. May it be so. Asè.

For Jojo, with love

September 1, 2020