Contents
Cover
Title Page
Introduction
Pre-1900
Nana Asma’u
From “Lamentation for ’Aysha II”
Sarah Parker Remond
Why Slavery is Still Rampant
The Negro Race in America
Elizabeth Keckley
Where I Was Born
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
Address to the First National Conference of Colored Women, 1895
H. Cordelia Ray
Toussaint L’Ouverture
To My Mother
Florida Ruffin Ridley
Our Manners—Are They Bad?
Protest Against Lynch Law
Effie Waller Smith
The “Bachelor Girl”
The Cuban Cause
1900s
Meta Davis Cumberbatch
A Child of Nature (Negro of the Caribbean)
1920s
Arthenia Bates Millican
The Autobiography of an Idea
1930s
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Ode to My Grandfather at the Somme 1918
Nawal El Saadawi
About Me in Africa—Politics and Religion in my Childhood
Adrienne Kennedy
Forget
1940s
Andaiye
Audre, There’s Rosemary, That’s For Remembrance
Joan Anim-Addo
Ashes, She Says
Simi Bedford
From Yoruba Girl Dancing
Nah Dove
Race and Sex: Growing up in the UK
Bonnie Greer
Till
Jane Ulysses Grell
Whatever Happened to Michael?
Queen of the Ocean Rose
Rashidah Ismaili
Dancing at Midnight
Margo Jefferson
My Monster
Barbara Jenkins
A Perfect Stranger
NomaVenda Mathiane
Passing on the Baton
Elizabeth Nunez
Discovering my Mother, from Not for Everyday Use
Verna Allette Wilkins
A Memory Evoked
Sue Woodford-Hollick
Who I Was Then, and Who I Am Now
1950s
Diane Abbott
The Caribbean
Candace Allen
That First Night in Accra (1974)
Yaba Badoe
Aunt Ruby and the Witch
Yvonne Bailey-Smith
Meeting Mother
Angela Barry
Without Prejudice
Linda Bellos
Age
Marion Bethel
We Were Terrestrial Once, Maybe
Of Cowrie Shells & Revolution
Nina 1984
Tanella Boni
One Day Like No Other
Beverley Bryan
A Windrush Story
Angela Cobbinah
Black Tracking
Carolyn Cooper
Finding Romance Online in 2018
Patricia Cumper
Just So Much a Body Can Take
Stella Dadzie
Do You Remember?
Roots
Anni Domingo
From Breaking the Maafa Chain
Bernardine Evaristo
On Top of the World
Diana Ferrus
I’ve come to take you home
A woman’s journey to sanity
Saartjie’s cry
Nikky Finney
Auction Block of Negro Weather
Ifeona Fulani
Three Islands, Two Cities: The Making of a Black/Caribbean/Woman Writer/Scholar
Patricia Glinton-Meicholas
Remembering, Re-membering
Slavery Redux
Woman Unconquerable
Carmen Harris
Hello . . . Goodbye
Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Boahema Laughed
Donu Kogbara
Losing My Fragile Roots
Andrea Levy
From Small Island
Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
Home is where you mend the roof
Tess Onwueme
The Runaway’s Daughter: A Diary
Zuleica Romay Guerra
Something About Me
Andrea Rosario-Gborie
1992
Marina Salandy-Brown
Lost Daughter of Africa
Sapphire
From Push
Claire Shepherd
Unforgotten
Verene A. Shepherd
Historicizing Gender-Based Violence in the Caribbean
SuAndi
Intergenerational Trauma
Aroma of Memory
Charlotte Williams
Small Cargo, from Sugar and Slate
Makhosazana Xaba
#TheTotalShutdown: Disturbing Observations
Tongues of their mothers
1960s
Leila Aboulela
A Very Young Judge
Sade Adeniran
The Day I Died
Patience Agbabi
The Doll’s House
Agnès Agboton
1
30
Omega
Ellah Wakatama Allfrey
Longchase
Amma Asante
The Power of Defining Yourself
Michelle Asantewa
Rupununi affair
Sefi Atta
The Cocktail Party
Gabeba Baderoon
I forget to look
Old photographs
War Triptych: Silence, Glory, Love
Doreen Baingana
Tuk-Tuk Trail to Suya and Stars
Ellen Banda-Aaku
87 Tangmere Court
Ama Biney
Creating the New Man in Africa
Malorie Blackman
Letters
Akosua Busia
Mama
Juanita Cox
Guyana Poems
Nana-Ama Danquah
Saying Goodbye to Mary Danquah
Edwidge Danticat
Dawn After the Tempests
Yvonne Denis Rosario
the roach and the rat at the library
Yvvette Edwards
Security
Zena Edwards
In A Walthamstow Old People’s Home
Four (and then some) Women
Aminatta Forna
Santigi
Danielle Legros Georges
Poem for the Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere
Lingua Franca with Flora
A Stateless Poem
palimpsest dress
Songs for Women
musing
Wangui wa Goro
Looking down from Mount Kenya
Kitamu
Nouvelle Danse on a Rainbow’s Edge
Zita Holbourne
I Died a Million Times for my Freedom
The Injustice of Justice; Extradition
Nalo Hopkinson
Snow Day
Delia Jarrett-Macauley
The Bedford Women
Catherine Johnson
The Year I Lost
Susan Nalugwa Kiguli
The Naked Truth or The Truth of Nakedness
Lauri Kubuitsile
The Colours of Love
Goretti Kyomuhendo
Lost and Found
Patrice Lawrence
Sin
Lesley Lokko
“No more than three, please!”
Karen Lord
Cities of the Sun
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
She i
s our Stupid
Reneilwe Malatji
My Perfect Husband
Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika
The Ambassador’s Wife
Ros Martin
Being Rendered Visible in The Georgian House Museum, Bristol
Karen McCarthy Woolf
Of Trees & Other Fragments
Wame Molefhe
I’m sure
Marie NDiaye
From Three Strong Women
Juliane Okot Bitek
genetics
genuflections
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
These Fragments
Winsome Pinnock
Glutathione
Claudia Rankine
From Citizen
Leone Ross
Why You Shouldn’t Take Yourself So Seriously
Kadija Sesay
Growing Up ChrisMus
Dorothea Smartt
Poem Beginning With A Line From Claudia Rankine
Adeola Solanke
From Pandora’s Box
Celia Sorhaindo
Creation
In The Air
Survival Tips
Andrea Stuart
A Calabash Memory
Jean Thévenet
Sisters at Mariage Frères
Natasha Trethewey
My Mother Dreams Another Country
Southern Gothic
Incident
South
Hilda J. Twongyeirwe
From Maisha Ndivyo ya Livyo
Yvonne Vera
From The Stone Virgins
Phillippa Yaa de Villiers
Marriage
Foreign
Heritage
Song
Kit de Waal
From My Name Is Leon
Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw
Ashes
Rebecca Walker
From Adé: A Love Story
1970s
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
From We Should All Be Feminists
Zoe Adjonyoh
A Beautiful Story
Lisa Allen-Agostini
The Cook
Monica Arac de Nyeko
Running for Cassava
Yemisi Aribisala
A book between you and me
Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro
Midwives (fragment)
Mildred K. Barya
Black Stone
Jackee Budesta Batanda
You are a stammerer!
Jacqueline Bishop
The Vanishing Woman
Malika Booker
The Conversation—Ruth & Naomi
Letter from Hegar to Sarai
Eve Tells Her Creation Myth
Saint Michael
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
After Edwin
Gabrielle Civil
From Swallow the Fish
Maxine Beneba Clarke
Hurricane Season
Nadia Davids
From What Remains
Camille T. Dungy
From Dirt
Aida Edemariam
Seven types of water
Esi Edugyan
The Wrong Door: Some Meditations on Solitude and Writing
Zetta Elliott
Women Like Us
Last Visit with Mary
Diana Evans
Thunder
Deise Faria Nunes
The person in the boat
Roxane Gay
There Is No “E” In Zombi Which Means There Can Be No You Or We
Hawa Jande Golakai
Candy Girl
Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Chosen Family
Cathedral of the Snake and Saint
Seeing the Body
Joanne C. Hillhouse
Evening Ritual
Ethel Irene Kabwato
After the Roses
The Missing
Women’s Day
Fatimah Kelleher
To Chew on Bay Leaves: on the Problematic Trajectory of Instrumentalist Justifications for Women’s Rights
Rosamond S. King
This is for the women
(the hotbox and the flood)
Untitled Poems
for Isatou for Haddy for Adama for Elle
Beatrice Lamwaka
Missing Letter in the Alphabet
Lebogang Mashile
Requiem for Winnie
Invocation
Isabella Matambanadzo
A Very Recent Tale
Maaza Mengiste
This Is What the Journey Does
Sisonke Msimang
Black Girl in America
Blessing Musariri
Signs That You Were Here
A Poem I Wrote Standing Up—Indictment
On Platform 3
She, on the way to Monk’s Hill
Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ
Hundred Acres of Marshland
Ketty Nivyabandi
Home
Nana Oforiatta Ayim
Abele, from The God Child
Nnedi Okorafor
Zula of the Fourth Grade Playground
Louisa Adjoa Parker
Black histories aren’t all urban: tales from the West Country
Hannah Azieb Pool
Nairobi, from Fashion Cities Africa
Olúmìdé Pópóọlá
The Swimmer
Minna Salami
Searching for my Feminist Roots
Noo Saro-Wiwa
A Fetching Destination
Taiye Selasi
From The Sex Lives of African Girls
Lola Shoneyin
How We Were
Falling
Buni Yadi
Zadie Smith
Speech for Langston
Attillah Springer
Castle in the Sand
Valerie Joan Tagwira
Mainini Grace’s Promise
Jennifer Teege
From My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me
Chika Unigwe
Nchekwube
Ayeta Anne Wangusa
My Mouth Carries Few Words
Zukiswa Wanner
This is not Au Revoir
Jesmyn Ward
From Sing, Unburied, Sing
Tiphanie Yanique
Monster in the Middle
1980s
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
From Everything is Wonderful
Harriet Anena
The stories stranded in our throats
My depression . . .
Step by step
Ayesha Harruna Attah
Unborn Children
Jay Bernard
I resist the urge to destroy my own records by reflecting on archives, how I use them, and what they have meant to me
Candice Carty-Williams
Body Hair: Conversations and Conflict
Yrsa Daley-Ward
What they leave you with—three poems
Tjawangwa Dema
Born Sleeping
Pugilist
Confinement
Edwige Renée Dro
Courage Became Her Friend
Reni Eddo-Lodge
Women, Down your Tools!
Summer Edward
Love in the Time of Nationalistic Fever
Old Year’s Melody
Forest Psalmody
Eve L. Ewing
The Device
home-going
Epistle to the Dead and Dying
Vangile Gantsho
smallgirl
Mama I am burning
Her father’s tractor
zakia henderson-brown
unarmed
A Man Walks into a Bar
I Was Getting Out of Your Way
ex-slave with long memory
Afua Hirsch
What Does It Mean To Be African?
Naomi Jackson
From The Star Side of Bird Hill
Donika Kelly
Sanctuary
/> Where We End Up
Brood
Imbolo Mbue
A Reversal
Nadifa Mohamed
A lime jewel
The symphony
Natalia Molebatsi
a mending season
the healer
Melody
Aja Monet
hexes
what riots true
Glaydah Namukasa
The last time I played Mirundi
Selina Nwulu
The Audacity of Our Skin
Half-Written Love Letter
Trifonia Melibea Obono
Let the Nkúkúmá Speak
Irenosen Okojie
Synsepalum
Chinelo Okparanta
Trump in the Classroom
Yewande Omotoso
Open
Makena Onjerika
The Man Watching Our House
Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida
From That Hair
Alake Pilgrim
Remember Miss Franklin
Zandria F. Robinson
Memphissippi
Namwali Serpell
The Living and the Dead
Warsan Shire
Backwards
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Mr C
1990s
Yassmin Abdel-Magied
Eulogy for My Career
Rutendo Chabikwa
Mweya’s Embrace
Panashe Chigumadzi
From These Bones Will Rise Again
Anaïs Duplan
Ode to the Happy Negro Hugging the Flag in Robert Colescott’s “George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware”
“I Know This Is No Longer Sustainable,” Etc.
Safia Elhillo
border / softer
how to say
boys like me better when they can’t place where i’m from
ars poetica
Ashley Makue
mali
Bridget Minamore
New Daughters of Africa
Chibundu Onuzo
Sunita
Acknowledgements
Copyrights and Permissions
1992 Daughters of Africa
About the Author
Also by Margaret Busby
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
What a joy to be introducing New Daughters of Africa—a truly collaborative venture that will have an inspiring legacy for years to come! Enabling it to be assembled in record time, writers not only came on board with enthusiasm and alacrity but often steered me in the direction of others whose work they admire, lest these were not already on my radar. Altogether, more than 200 living writers have contributed work to these pages—an amazing party guest list!
A template of sorts was provided by the anthology I compiled more than twenty-five years ago, Daughters of Africa; yet this present volume represents something of a fresh start, since it duplicates none of the writers who appeared in the 1992 collection.1
New Daughters of Africa begins with some important entries from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—and that a limited number of names represent these periods is not to say that there are not many others whose words could have expanded the early sections; however, these few names serve as a reminder of the indisputable fact that later generations stand tall because of those who have gone before. The chronology continues in the ordering of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers who follow by decade of birth, primarily to give context to the generational links.
Beginning this anthology with Nana Asma’u2 (1793–1863) signals that there are foremothers who could have occupied a leading place in any era. A revered figure in northern Nigeria, she spoke four languages and was an educated and independent Islamic woman who can be considered a precursor to modern feminism in Africa. In her “Lamentation for ’Aysha”, epitomizing the depth of connection that at best can be found between sister-friends, she mourns the loss of her lifelong confidante with the words: