Edition 6: Writings on Black Sisterhood

15 Jan

Ruby Duncan

Grateful to the girls.

Black sisterhood at Oxford, how dear you are to us. How important and valuable you are to our endurance at this institution. Black sisterhood at Oxford?! In the eyes of some you should not exist, yet, in increasing numbers, you do. Black sisterhood at Oxford, how grateful I am for you.

As a small disclaimer, I shall state that when I was asked to write this blog, I was given the theme of ‘black sisterhood’. But for those who identify as part of the sisterhood, despite the way you are perceived, I welcome you to see this piece as your own too.

It is not necessary to lay out the context of why black sisterhood is so important at this university, but I think it is telling that it is us who must affirm each other since our university so often fails to. It is tiring being an Oxford student, it is tiring being black in the UK and it is tiring identifying as a woman in this country too. We blend them together, these overlapping identities, because we know none excludes the other. Our intersections, however they extend, do not contradict our intelligence.

Still, luck is the feeling that remains within me. But in expressing my luck, I feel as though I deny us our right to be in this institution. Our presence should not be so rare that I resort to sentiments of gratitude when seeing fellow black students in my lectures, libraries, or tutorials. We are deserving, as we’ve endlessly displayed, of equal opportunities. Yes, I should award my peers for their success in the exams that brought them to Oxford, but I should hold my tongue before rewarding the institution for letting us in. It is not for us to cower at its reputation and feel forever indebted to the university for our acceptance letters. I follow acceptance with letters in my last sentence because holistic acceptance is still yet to be achieved here.

In the midst of it all though, I am blessed. My immediate experience of black sisterhood, in the household I live in, has been created by us and for us. We; six black students, five black women, live altogether in rooms overlooking a lake. Plantain adorns our kitchen worktops; buckets of chin chin decorate our kitchen cupboards; and jollof fills the Tupperware of our fridge. Our set up is infused with symbols of blackness that affirm our presence here, so that when I leave and walk the streets of Oxford, the symbols of exclusion, empire and wealth feel ever so slightly less powerful. I have my hair braided in the bedroom of a college erected long before my ancestors were recognised as humans. My friends feed hair into the hands of our resident college hair stylist and the strands of extension weave together like our stories do. Another friend handles me softly to measure and cut waist beads that embellish the skin above my hips. The evening comes and we are visited by an honorary house member who sets out to teach us the recipe for rice and peas - so naturally we must extend the great debate to ‘Jollof vs. Rice and Peas’ and at last we have achieved African unity! I joke here. An endlessly treasured element of our sisterhood: the power of humour to soothe ourselves from what it is we actually endure. It is in this home of sanctuary that we find respite.

Black sisterhood for me has been affirming, it has been accepting, it has been about support, it has been about shelter. We create our spaces in a space not created for us. The femininity we are often denied outside is celebrated within as something to be embraced. Our femininity is fluid, and it is important. It manifests in a variety of ways that we hold the power to control. Bright blue eyeliner against our beautiful black skin; gold beads in brown braids; tooth gems glistening in the heavily sought after sunshine; afro curls bejeweling the carpet after wash day. We need not deny our sisters, our smiles, our race, or our gender, for we reinforce them all. Our hands trade the books of Lorde and hooks, and we exchange clothes and bags in the same settings that we discuss resistance and action. We lace our lips with Fenty lip liners and edges are gelled down (or not) whenever we step out. Coconut oil in the kitchen and coconut oil on the skin, coconut body wash in the showers and coconut leave-in on the curls. Short skirts that scare our aunties and large baggy jeans we wear interchangeably. We battle with our histories on the national scale, the familial and the intimate. We link legacies to the present and we dream of the future.

To black sisterhood and the sisters that make it, thank you for sustaining our space. Thank you for not shrinking to society’s standards. Commitment to the self and commitment to the cause at times feels tiring, but it is these pockets of peace we make that we return to rest in. I will forever be rejuvenated by the sight of my sisters’ smiles. For this, I am appreciative…

Grateful to the girls.

Ini Awah

A sister’s warm embrace

This drawing depicts two black women being seen. Being together. Sisterhood is something that I've always known, so, in a way, it's not something I've had to consciously acknowledge or appreciate. With this drawing I wanted to capture the beauty of my everyday, showing two black women in a warm embrace.

Ebehitale Okojie

Not you, Baby

The speech "Ain't I A Woman?" by Sojourner Truth has been performed in almost every black historical play across America; this titular line being the focal point. Yet the falsity of this line, repeated by black women across the African diaspora, lies with its authorship. It was not written by Truth. Ironically, the line was added by the white feminist and abolitionist Frances Dana Barker Gage, who inserted the rhetorical question because she felt that Truth's speech did not sound "black enough" on its own.

Sojourner's first language was actually Dutch. Writing the following poem from this lens has forced me to question my own biases. What is a black woman meant to sound like? The extraordinary popularity of Truth's modified speech amidst the black community seems to suggest that Frances Gage was partially right in her decision. Yet it is wrong. There is no one way of sounding Black, being Black. You just are. I hope this poem highlights that.

Not you, Baby

Ain’t I a woman?

They put words in her mouth

Ain’t I a woman? She

Never said this.

Always spoken for, never speaking

The erasure of her skin

Hair, body, lips

Not a consequence of belonging,

But a requirement

“If it’s so wrong

Then why does my skin

Protect me?

Shield me?”

Not you baby,

Not you, not you

The fault does not

Lie with you, you

Are complete, hair

Lips, body, skin

Made as intended, yet always

Fending for your identity

As it is forcefully stripped

And distributed

Elsewhere to others