Abstract / Excerpt
In her essay, Bonét details the significance in the practice of collaging, highlighting its place in Black imagination and liberation, focusing specifically on the artist Lorna Simpson’s pieces about Black femininity.
“One day, we must acknowledge that Black women birthed this nation. Since its inception they have been a source of emotional comfort, of reliable drudgery, sexual laborer, physical laborer, your nanny and your mammy, your punching bag, your liberator, your organizer, your siren, granter of your manhood, the soft warm pink place for you to deposit your darkness. The most precious and valuable tool of the empire was the womb of the Black woman. In order for America to reconcile its reality with its image of itself, it has to reckon with this history first. And it hasn’t, and it can’t, because it has forgotten who its mama is.”
