Since their arrival throughout the American diaspora, black people have relied on trans- ported cultural practices to assist in their New World survival. The chattel slave system pre- sented black women with new identities and familial challenges. The very ideas of individuality, family, and ownership of self within slave-holding societies conflicted with the institution that sought to divide, conquer, and destroy. Ordinarily, enslaved women could not wholeheartedly nurture and rear their children because they lacked ownership of themselves as well as their children. Enslaved children could not truly function as innocent, frolicking youths because they were forced into roles traditionally reserved for adults. Hazel Carby further iterates that en- slaved men could not function as protectors, guides, and providers because they were mere chattel (5). Many did not know if they would be punished for a slightest indiscretion or witness brutal attacks or acts that violated their loved ones. Thus, the threat of slavery, including all of its unspeakable physical and mental degradations, served as an ultimate haunting barrier for people of color throughout the diaspora. Black women were especially privy to threats of sexual exploitation and violation from both men and women. Many black women who suffered from sexual assaults by white men also birthed the evidence of these violations. These children pos- sessed the potential to disarm racial oppression and disrupt privileges based solely on race. Ac- cording to Nancy Boyd- Franklin, “The rape and sexual exploitation of African American women by slave masters produced a large number of light-skinned babies. These children were valued
more highly by their white fathers and were often given certain privileges” (333). Within this context, many black women writers exposed the secrecies slavery sought to erase.
As previous chapters mention, Leslie Lewis argues that chattel slavery provides a reason for secrecy within nineteenth century African American narratives. She sees the master/slave relationship as formative in the continuation of secrecy. Lewis states, “Secrets are at the heart of African American narrative literature and are a legacy of slavery. The institution of slavery itself engendered secrets because it created a group of people (masters) who could forbid an- other group of people (slaves) to share certain kinds of information”(5). While her argument has merit, Lewis fails to consider the spiritual implications of secrecy maintained by African- descended people. Georgene Bess Montgomery identifies a similar problem as she researched the sparse scholarship that failed to consider African spiritualities in the criticism of African novels. She notes, “I realized then that perhaps there is a lack of literary criticism because many scholars pay little attention to the spirituality embedded in those texts because their approach to, definition of, and paradigm for spirituality is Western oriented” (3). Although Lewis’s work makes some valid claims concerning secrecy, it leads to the realization that there is more to consider outside of the master/slave relationship. When reading African-derived texts, we must regard the spiritual ties to sexual secrecy and subversion as neither abstruse nor far- fetched.
To aid in the reading of African American texts for sexual secrecy and subversion, I con- sider feminist poet, essayist, and “autobiomythographer” Audre Lorde. In her essay titled “Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power” (1989), Lorde contends that the erotic is a source of female power, embedded in women as energy and used to generate change. Similar to Eurocentric
perspectives that omit considerations of African spiritual transports, Lorde interrogates male- centered ideologies that charge women, particularly black women, to suppress their power and to perceive such power as worthless. As a result of this lack of recognition and of a devaluation of erotic power, women become oppressed by the very societies which instruct them to dismiss and to undermine this inherent influence.
Although Lorde’s concept is often misconstrued as merely sexual, “relegated to the bed- room alone” (57), the erotic encompasses more than a sexual act. Lorde describes the erotic as a “nurturer or nursemaid of all [women’s] deepest knowledge,” recognized in any experience that feels right or that satisfies (56). Most notably and pertinent to pre-Middle Passage trans- ports, the erotic may be used as a tool of resistance. Accordingly, women must recognize and use the erotic as a powerful means to tap into their creativity. Women must not receive the erotic in fear because it “. . . is a resource within each [woman] that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of [their] unexpressed and unrecognized feeling [em- phasis mine]” (53).
Within this context of secrecy and sexual subversion, Lorde’s position aligns female spir- ituality with African spirituality. According to Farah Jasmine Griffin, since Lorde’s theory pre- cedes many feminists’ perceptions of female erotic power and resistance (526), a cultural tie with her African spirituality may explain the erotic’s resistive nature. For African-derived wom- en, Griffin’s point is relevant, particularly for those in clearly defined oppressive situations such as chattel enslavement. The erotic points towards the Afro-spiritual connection maintained within the African psyche. If we recall Henry Louis Gates’ description of Esu’s collective quali- ties, more specifically, this trickster figure’s sexual mediations (6), then this link is certainly
plausible. Furthermore, Gates’ position of the trickster topos as maintained in diasporic areas, “even today,” bolsters this notion (4). Thus, combined with secrecy as an African transport, we see the erotic’s duplicitous nature as an essential tool of female resistance.