Taking Up Space

IF 0.4 4区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY
Regina N. Bradley
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It was approaching the two-year anniversary of Nana's death and her entering the ancestral realm. I turn the bowl again and look out at the water next to Molly Horniblow's resting place. Horniblow hid her granddaughter Harriet Jacobs in her attic for nearly seven years to protect her from the oppressions of slavery. Harriet Ann Jacobs was a freedom fighter, writer, and businesswoman and the author of the exceptional and heart-wrenching autobiography <em>Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl</em> (1861). There's something special about a grandmother's love and protection. Hot tears fell as our grandmothers' loves overlapped.</p> <p>It is well with their souls, and mine is working on it. I throw petals into the water. Prayers, blessings, tears. Prayers, blessings, release. A hand gently supports my lower back. I breathe out and let go of the rest of my flower petals. A duck swims by, head high, slowing down enough to watch our ritual of love and attention to the ancestors and grandmothers. She wades through the flowers like they belong to her.</p> <p>Asé.</p> <h2>_______</h2> <p><strong><small>later that day</small></strong>, I stood in front of a True Value hardware store. The two-story brick building sported a sign and an unremarkable concrete parking lot with an equally unremarkable wooden fence. Or so I thought.</p> <p>The site was where Molly Horniblow's house once stood. \"Had the least suspicion rested on my grandmother's house, it would have burned to the ground,\" Jacobs wrote. \"But it was the last place they thought of. Yet there was no place where slavery existed that could have afforded me <strong>[End Page 113]</strong> so good a place of concealment.\" I just couldn't imagine how Jacobs endured such a daunting space. The stifling lack of movement of her body and the air, the vermin that crawled on and around her, and the rigidity of the wooden garret that refused to bow to the world rotating around it had to be a Herculean task. Her concealment was life and death. Her grandmother's and her family's love also hid her and sustained her through the ordeal.<sup>1</sup></p> <p>Now, there was no concealment, just tar, brick, and memory. \"Chiiiiiile …\" I sighed. How could such a spectacular act of resistance be physically erased?</p> <p>Michelle Lanier, director of the North Carolina Division of State Historic Sites, called for my touring group's attention as she stood by the wooden fence in a hand-dyed indigo dress. Lanier's presence is commanding but not daunting. She got a calling on her. Lanier nimbly addressed our disappointment that Jacobs's hiding place no longer existed in the physical realm. She smiled and urged us closer to her and into her world-making, pointing to a small hole in the fence. She challenged us to think of the hole in the fence as similar to the gimlet-drilled holes Jacobs made herself in the same spot where the fence stood. Each hole represented a possibility of promise for Jacobs to see the world and, perhaps most longingly, her children. Each drilled hole was an adamant and intentional choice to fight back against her oppression, a chance to claim her autonomy.</p> <p>The overlap of worlds, both spiritual and physical, past and present, was a powerful excursion of imagination and will. 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Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Taking Up Space
  • Regina N. Bradley

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View full resolution

Untitled, by Minnie Evans, 1960. Colored pencil on paper, 11 3/4 × 8 3/4 in. North Carolina Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. D. H. McCollough and the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. P. Phifer Bequest, 87.2).

[End Page 112]

I'm in edenton, north carolina. I'm here to do some sacred work. I slowly turn the bowl of white rose petals in my hands. They are moist from freshly fallen tears after hearing Lois Deloatch sing "It Is Well with My Soul." That was my Nana's favorite song, and it still broke me to hear it. It was approaching the two-year anniversary of Nana's death and her entering the ancestral realm. I turn the bowl again and look out at the water next to Molly Horniblow's resting place. Horniblow hid her granddaughter Harriet Jacobs in her attic for nearly seven years to protect her from the oppressions of slavery. Harriet Ann Jacobs was a freedom fighter, writer, and businesswoman and the author of the exceptional and heart-wrenching autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). There's something special about a grandmother's love and protection. Hot tears fell as our grandmothers' loves overlapped.

It is well with their souls, and mine is working on it. I throw petals into the water. Prayers, blessings, tears. Prayers, blessings, release. A hand gently supports my lower back. I breathe out and let go of the rest of my flower petals. A duck swims by, head high, slowing down enough to watch our ritual of love and attention to the ancestors and grandmothers. She wades through the flowers like they belong to her.

Asé.

_______

later that day, I stood in front of a True Value hardware store. The two-story brick building sported a sign and an unremarkable concrete parking lot with an equally unremarkable wooden fence. Or so I thought.

The site was where Molly Horniblow's house once stood. "Had the least suspicion rested on my grandmother's house, it would have burned to the ground," Jacobs wrote. "But it was the last place they thought of. Yet there was no place where slavery existed that could have afforded me [End Page 113] so good a place of concealment." I just couldn't imagine how Jacobs endured such a daunting space. The stifling lack of movement of her body and the air, the vermin that crawled on and around her, and the rigidity of the wooden garret that refused to bow to the world rotating around it had to be a Herculean task. Her concealment was life and death. Her grandmother's and her family's love also hid her and sustained her through the ordeal.1

Now, there was no concealment, just tar, brick, and memory. "Chiiiiiile …" I sighed. How could such a spectacular act of resistance be physically erased?

Michelle Lanier, director of the North Carolina Division of State Historic Sites, called for my touring group's attention as she stood by the wooden fence in a hand-dyed indigo dress. Lanier's presence is commanding but not daunting. She got a calling on her. Lanier nimbly addressed our disappointment that Jacobs's hiding place no longer existed in the physical realm. She smiled and urged us closer to her and into her world-making, pointing to a small hole in the fence. She challenged us to think of the hole in the fence as similar to the gimlet-drilled holes Jacobs made herself in the same spot where the fence stood. Each hole represented a possibility of promise for Jacobs to see the world and, perhaps most longingly, her children. Each drilled hole was an adamant and intentional choice to fight back against her oppression, a chance to claim her autonomy.

The overlap of worlds, both spiritual and physical, past and present, was a powerful excursion of imagination and will. Lanier's encouragement to reimagine the hole in the fence was an exercise in what she coined "womanist cartography," the "recenter[ing] of Black women and femmes by rendering...

占用空间
作为摘要,以下是内容的简要摘录: 占用空间》 Regina N. Bradley 点击放大 查看完整分辨率 《无题》,米妮-埃文斯,1960 年。纸上彩色铅笔,11 3/4 × 8 3/4 英寸。北卡罗来纳州艺术博物馆,D. H. McCollough 夫妇和北卡罗来纳州艺术协会赠与(Robert F. P. Phifer 遗赠,87.2)。 [第112页完] 我在北卡罗来纳州的埃丹顿。我在这里做一些神圣的工作。我慢慢翻动手中的白玫瑰花瓣。在听完洛伊斯-德洛阿奇演唱的 "我的灵魂安好 "后,花瓣被刚流下的泪水浸湿了。这是我奶奶最喜欢的一首歌,现在听来仍让我心碎。娜娜去世和她进入祖先世界的两周年纪念日快到了。我再次转过碗,望着莫莉-霍尼布洛(Molly Horniblow)安息之地旁边的水域。为了保护孙女哈丽特-雅各布斯免受奴隶制的压迫,霍尼布洛将她藏在自家阁楼里将近七年。哈丽特-安-雅各布斯是一位自由斗士、作家和女商人,著有《一个女奴生活中的事件》(1861 年)这本杰出而令人心碎的自传。祖母的爱和保护是与众不同的。当我们祖母的爱重叠在一起时,热泪落下。她们的灵魂安好,我的灵魂也在努力。我将花瓣抛入水中。祈祷、祝福、泪水。祈祷、祝福、释放。一只手轻轻地支撑着我的腰部。我呼出一口气,放开剩下的花瓣。一只鸭子昂首游过,放慢了脚步,看着我们向祖先和祖母表达爱意的仪式。她徜徉在花丛中,就像这些花属于她一样。阿塞。_______ 那天晚些时候,我站在一家 True Value 五金店前。这栋两层的砖楼挂着一个招牌,还有一个不起眼的水泥停车场和一个同样不起眼的木栅栏。我是这么想的。莫莉-霍尼布罗的房子曾经就在这里。"雅各布斯写道:"如果我祖母的房子受到一点怀疑,它就会被烧成灰烬。"但这是他们最后想到的地方。然而,在奴隶制存在的地方,没有一个地方能为我提供 [第113页完] 这么好的藏身之处"。我实在无法想象雅各布斯是如何忍受如此令人生畏的空间的。她的身体和空气都无法流动,害虫在她身上和周围爬来爬去,木制的阁楼坚硬无比,拒绝向周围旋转的世界低头,这一切都必须是一项艰巨的任务。她的隐蔽是生与死的抉择。祖母和家人的爱也将她藏了起来,支撑着她度过难关。1 现在,没有遮掩,只有柏油、砖块和记忆。"唉......"我叹了口气。如此壮观的抵抗行动怎么会被身体抹去呢?北卡罗来纳州历史遗址管理处主任米歇尔-拉尼尔(Michelle Lanier)身着手工染制的靛蓝色连衣裙,站在木栅栏旁,向我的参观团招手。拉尼尔的存在感很强,但并不令人生畏。她很有号召力。我们对雅各布斯的藏身之处已不复存在感到失望,拉尼尔敏捷地化解了我们的失望。她面带微笑,指着栅栏上的一个小洞,鼓励我们走近她,进入她创造的世界。她让我们把栅栏上的洞想象成雅各布斯在栅栏上的同一个地方自己用铰刀钻出的洞。每一个洞都代表着雅各布斯看到世界的一种可能性,也许最渴望看到的是她的孩子们。每一个钻孔都是雅各布斯坚定而有意地选择反击压迫,是她争取自主权的机会。精神世界和物质世界、过去世界和现在世界的重叠,是一次想象力和意志力的强大旅行。拉尼尔鼓励人们重新想象栅栏上的洞,这是她所称的 "女性主义制图学 "的一种实践,"通过渲染黑人妇女和女性,重新定位她们......"。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
22
期刊介绍: In the foreword to the first issue of the The Southern Literary Journal, published in November 1968, founding editors Louis D. Rubin, Jr. and C. Hugh Holman outlined the journal"s objectives: "To study the significant body of southern writing, to try to understand its relationship to the South, to attempt through it to understand an interesting and often vexing region of the American Union, and to do this, as far as possible, with good humor, critical tact, and objectivity--these are the perhaps impossible goals to which The Southern Literary Journal is committed." Since then The Southern Literary Journal has published hundreds of essays by scholars of southern literature examining the works of southern writers and the ongoing development of southern culture.
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