The Research Collection’s Black History Display in the Enquiry Desk room
As Oxford University’s library of modern languages and literature, the Taylor Institution has around 750,000 items in its care. These collections represent and explore a wide range of research interests, from Europe to the Caribbean, Celtic nations to Africa, and beyond. In doing so, the collections also recognise the problematic, colonial role Europe has played in Black history around the world. To celebrate Black History Month 2023 at the Taylor, and to demonstrate the diverse yet complex nature of our subject specialisms, I was given the opportunity to put together two book displays, one in the Teaching Collection and the other in the Research Collection, to celebrate this BHM’s theme: Saluting our Sisters. Here, I want to describe the display to you, as well as explain some of the reasoning behind picking out the books that I did!
The Books
Deciding where to start when choosing books for the display was difficult, to say the least – there were so many books that deserve the spotlight! Eventually, I settled on attempting to provide a taste of the wide range of resources we provide at the Taylor, while sticking to the theme as closely as possible. I also wanted to demonstrate the ever-evolving nature of the scholarship available. As a result, I decided to start with texts on Black feminism to give readers the chance to understand the theoretical background of the other materials on display. For the most part, these texts can be found in the gender studies section of the Main Reading Room and include the likes of Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (2009) and Jennifer C. Nash’s Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (2019). These texts focus on theories of intersectionality and the lived realities of Black women. Collins explores the complexities of Black women’s experiences in dealing with hierarchies of oppression and power. Meanwhile, Nash’s more recent work provides a new perspective by challenging the direction that Black feminist theory is currently headed within the field of women’s studies. By suggesting these two texts, I hoped to provide a basis from which to understand Black feminist theory, as well as an indication of where the field is headed.
The Black History Month Book Display on the First Floor of the Teaching Collections.
Works on the literature of Afro-Caribbean and Lusophone African writers also feature on the displays. In particular, they focus on the works of Black women such as Maryse Condé and Gisèle Pineau, with the likes of Reimagining Resistance in Gisèle Pineau’s Work (2023) and Conversations with Maryse Condé (1996) highlighting their work. Pineau’s novels are especially important in challenging Europe’s “colour-blindness,” and many of her works are available at the Taylor in the original French, such as Un Papillon dans la Cite (1992) and L’exil selon Julia: Récit (2020). Condé, on the other hand, is famous for her transgressions of identity, whether that be racial or gendered. She draws heavily on history to inform her own writing, for example in her work Ségou (1984) and Moi, Tituba, Sorcière (1986). To offer background for these texts, I also included American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South (2012), as I thought this shed an up-to-date and exciting light on the historical impact and future potential of Caribbean literature.
Natalya Vince, Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012
In terms of history, some of the texts also explore the contributions that Black women made in establishing civil rights, as well as national independence from colonial oppression. Two that stood out to me the most included Tiffany N. Florvil’s Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German women and the making of a transnational movement (2020) and Natalya Vince’s Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012 (2015). Florvil focuses on sexuality and race to demonstrate the impact that Black German women played in forming the cultural, intellectual and social movement of Black German liberation in the 1980s. Meanwhile, Vince bases her research on women’s oral testimonies of the Algerian fight against French colonialism from 1954 to 2012. In doing so, she provides insight into how women perceived their nation post-independence and how this impacted wider national memory. Both are completely different in their methodological undertakings but are equally fascinating areas of twentieth century history!
Tiffany N. Florvil, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement
Lastly, as I pulled the displays together, picking books and narrowing down my choices, I found that themes of resistance and identity were very strong in almost all of the texts. To provide background for this, I felt it was also necessary to display Franz Fanon’s seminal work on anti-colonialist theory, The Wretched of the Earth (2004 [1961]), as well as the more recent work on postcolonial writings such as postcolonial writings such as American Creoles. Ultimately, this tied into my aim with the display: to recognise where today’s scholarship in Black history and literature stems from, and where it is going now.
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Check out our X (Twitter) page to find out what else we Trainees have been doing to celebrate Black History Month!
Bibliography:
Collins, Patricia Hill Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd edition, (London: Routledge, 2009)
Florvil, Tiffany Nicole, Mobilising Black Germany: Afro-German women and the making of a transnational movement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020)
Although Black History month has now come to an end, we wanted to highlight some of our resources that are available year-round regarding the work of people of colour. This is also a way to kick-start a series of blog posts we intend to write shining a spotlight on some of our favourite lesser-known databases available to staff and students at the University.
A lot of work goes into creating and curating collections of resources like these, and they can often prove invaluable in helping to better direct and inform research. Part of our job as Graduate Trainees is learning more about what collections our readers have access to, so that we can signpost them to readers in need!
African Writers Series
Nelson Mandela
About: Here you can read the full text of over 250 works of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose published by Heinemann’s African Writers Series. Heinemann’s has an over 40-year history in publishing postcolonial writings by prominent African authors, including important figures such as Ama Ata Aidoo, Steve Biko, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Nelson Mandela, Dambudzo Marechera, Christopher Okigbo, Okot p’Bitek and Tayeb Salih.
Where can you find it? You can access the database hereOR go to SOLO > Databases A-Z (under useful links tab on SOLO’s homepage) > All databases are listed in alphabetical order – you can scroll down until you find the database, or you can use the little search box (top right-hand corner) which will allow you to search for specific databases!
Black Authors 1556-1922
Frederick Douglas
About: Curators of the Afro-Americana Imprints collection created the database ‘Black Authors 1556-1922’ using resources from the Library Company of Philadelphia; a library that specialises in 17th-19th century American history research. The database has over 550 works written by Black authors, including fiction, poems, play, sheet music as well as biographies, cookbooks, letters, sermons and more.
Where can you find it? You can access the database hereOR go to SOLO > Databases A-Z (under useful links tab on SOLO’s homepage) > All databases are listed in alphabetical order – you can scroll down until you find the database, or you can use the little search box (top right-hand corner) which will allow you to search for specific databases!
Black Drama, Third Edition
Zora Neale Hurston
About: Here you can find (and read in full!) over 1,700 plays written by a wide variety of playwrights from America, the Caribbean or Africa in the mid-19th century. This collection comprises of many works that are out of print or that are normally very difficult to find. You can browse the collection by title, playwrights, genres or subjects.
Where can you find it? You can access the database hereOR go to SOLO > Databases A-Z (under useful links tab on SOLO’s homepage) > All databases are listed in alphabetical order – you can scroll down until you find the database, or you can use the little search box (top right-hand corner) which will allow you to search for specific databases!
Black Studies Centre
Boy selling the Chicago Defender
About: This digital collection of primary and secondary sources combines several key resources that record and expound on Black experiences across history. It includes scholarly essays, articles, indexes, and the historical full-text of one of the most influential black newspapers in the US, The Chicago Defender.
Where can you find it? You can access the database hereOR go to SOLO > Databases A-Z (under useful links tab on SOLO’s homepage) > All databases are listed in alphabetical order – you can scroll down until you find the database, or you can use the little search box (top right-hand corner) which will allow you to search for specific databases!
Black Thought and Culture
Assata Shakur
About: This incredible collection contains approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders – teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures – covering 250 years of history. Much of the material in this collection was previously inaccessible but is now presented in one easy to access and searchable database.
Where can you find it? You can access the database hereOR go to SOLO > Databases A-Z (under useful links tab on SOLO’s homepage) > All databases are listed in alphabetical order – you can scroll down until you find the database, or you can use the little search box (top right-hand corner) which will allow you to search for specific databases!
Oxford African America Studies Center
Ernestine Jessie Covington Dent
About: The Oxford African American Studies Center is an incredible resource for African histories, encyclopaedias, and biographies. With over 10,000 articles it is one of the most comprehensive collections of scholarship on the lives and events shaping African and African-American history and culture.
Where can you find it? You can access the database hereOR go to SOLO > Databases A-Z (under useful links tab on SOLO’s homepage) > All databases are listed in alphabetical order – you can scroll down until you find the database, or you can use the little search box (top right-hand corner) which will allow you to search for specific databases!
One of my favourite trainee jobs is getting to spend time with all the new books that arrive at the EFL – from stamping and stickering to putting them out on display. I also write a blog post each month highlighting a few of the new books that caught my eye. Some months, we have so many interesting books that I simply can’t choose and end up writing two posts! That’s what happened in October – we had a lot of new books by black British and African American writers arrive at the library and, seeing as October is Black History Month, it seemed like a good opportunity to spotlight a few. If you’re interested in other new books at the EFL, you can check out our monthly blog posts or find all our new books on LibraryThing. If you’re visiting the library, be sure to check out the selection on the new books display!
Ferdinand Dennis was born in Jamaica before moving to London with his family at the age of eight, and themes of migration and one’s roots are woven into the very fabric of his work. The Black and White Museum, a short story collection which follows a series of characters in London, is no exception. Together, the stories encompass ‘generational conflict, the social threat of black men, the wistful longings that disrupt lives, [and] the powerlessness of the old’ (from the publisher) against a backdrop of gentrification and change in London since the mid-twentieth century. As Dennis’s characters grow older, some are tempted to leave London and return ‘home’, only to find that just like the London of their youth, home has changed too. Dennis often leaves his characters and their stories abruptly, before any sense of resolution is reached. This has the effect of underlining the uprooted, interrupted, and diasporic experiences of so many of Dennis’s characters, all of whom ultimately want only to feel that they belong.
Perhaps the first thing you might notice about Natasha Brown’s debut novel is its brevity – it runs to only 100 pages, and even the narrative style is characterised by brief and fleeting vignettes in the life of its unnamed narrator. That narrator is a black British woman who has achieved all the trappings of success, from an Oxbridge education to homeownership and a successful career. But when she is diagnosed with cancer, those successes start to ring hollow. By unpacking her narrator’s experiences, Brown confronts the reader with the endless, everyday racism black British women face. This, then, is ‘a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers’ (from the publisher). The brevity of Brown’s prose does not detract from the relentless and exhausting racism her narrator comes up against, nor does it diminish the emotional punch of the novel’s conclusion.
June Jordan (1936-2002) was an American poet, activist, journalist, essayist, and teacher. She wrote prolifically, publishing over 25 works of poetry, fiction, and essays, as well as children’s books, journalism, and even lyrics for musicians, plays and musicals. Not only was she an active participant in the politics and struggles that defined the USA in the second half of the twentieth century – from civil rights and feminism to the anti-war and gay and lesbian rights movements – she chronicled those movements too. In this collection, you will find poems exploring issues of gender, race, immigration, and much more, all characterised by Jordan’s ‘dazzling stylistic range’. These are poems ‘moved as much by political animus as by a deep love for the observation of human life in all its foibles, eccentricities, strengths and weaknesses’ (from the publisher). While her poems can and indeed should be read as revealing the heart of the politics, debates and struggles of twentieth-century America, they should also be celebrated for their beauty and musicality.
This anthology of African American poetry, edited by Kevin Young, covers an incredible breadth of poets, poetry, and time periods. The poems are presented in chronological blocks, taking the reader all the way from 1770 to 2020. The poetry styles range from formal to experimental, vernacular, and protest poetry. The selections are hugely varied in terms of theme, too, encompassing ‘beauty and injustice, music and muses, Africa and America, freedoms and foodways, Harlem and history, funk and opera, boredom and longing, jazz and joy’ (from Young’s Introduction). Featuring contemporary African American poets alongside little-known and often out-of-print older works, this is a truly expansive anthology. But Young doesn’t only offer us an enormous breadth of poetry and poets. Each work sits alongside a biography of its author, as well as comprehensive notes which highlight the cultural and historical contexts of the works and, indeed, of the African American experience since the late eighteenth century.
Gloryis NoViolet Bulawayo’s second novel and, just like her debut (We Need New Names, 2013 – also at the EFL), it features on the Booker Prize shortlist. Bulawayo here satirises Robert Mugabe’s surprise fall from power in Zimbabwe, in the form of a reimagining of Orwell’s Animal Farm described as ‘allegory, satire and fairytale rolled into one mighty punch’ (from The Guardian’s review, March 2022). The country of Jadada has the longest-serving leader any country has ever had, a horse named Old Horse – that is, until he is deposed and supplanted by his erstwhile vice-president turned rival. The hope that regime-change brings quickly gives way to despair once it becomes clear that the corruption, violence, and struggles of daily life in fact remain the same. Into the gap left by lost hope steps Destiny, a young goat newly returned from exile, who seeks to witness and document the cycle of revolution and violence. While anyone familiar with the events in Zimbabwe of late 2017 will recognise certain figures and moments, there is also a universality to Bulawayo’s observations and the innovative dexterity of her prose that speaks to something timeless and entirely human.
In this volume of essays, edited by John Ernest, you’ll find explorations of the representations of race in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, representations which – it is argued – are key to understanding the whole of the United States. After all, race shapes everything, from economic policy to where people live, forming the ‘ominous subtext’ of the legal, judicial, and wider governmental infrastructure of the state. The contributors to this volume explore how literature has variously been used both to cement racial visual images in the public consciousness and to fight back against those images, to separate people along racial lines and to form communities. Taken together, the essays do not aim to provide a comprehensive or chronological history of race in American literature; rather, they seek to ‘place readers in this chaotic process of literary and cultural development – caught up in a story, already in progress’ (from Ernest’s Introduction).
In my introductory post, I mentioned a Black History Month display, and in this post I hope to talk a little more about how it was put together at the SSL. While I organised and physically constructed it, the credit for text and research goes to the subject librarians. I asked them in the last weeks of September to put forward a book with an accompanying recommendation, either reviews of the book that they thought held it in high regard, or their own words on why they thought it was an important, worthy read. A balance had to be found between books that were good recommendations, but also ones that we had in the library as physical copies.
The main Black History Month Display in the SSL
As I received e-book recommendations as well, I provided posters with QR code links through to the online resource, as we would normally for the month’s new e-book acquisitions. As a rule, these tend to be titles on reading lists, and are on balance intended for a more academic audience. The books we displayed physically are by and large a little more appropriate as general reading for people regardless of their academic background.
I transcribed the recommendations onto documents in the SSL’s house style and sourced some display stands, then arranged to replace half of our new books display with the BHM display for the duration of October. I was keen to get the display on show during 0th week when we had our tours going around the library; it’s of course important when welcoming new students that you give a positive impression of the library (and university). I hope that we therefore established ourselves as an institution that is keen to engage in learning how to be anti-racist, and indeed one that is keen to take anti-racist action. This is just a display, and to live up to that hope we’ll need to take action year-round and be conscious of what we can do to stand up against racism (and anti-blackness in particular) both within the university and outside it.
The books and recommendations can be seen in more detail on the SSL blog.
If anyone has suggestions for other books we should highlight, I’d be delighted to hear in comments below, or marked for my attention in an email to ssl@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Working at the University of Oxford gives the trainees access to a huge range of events, exhibitions and talks. While not directly related to library work, we wanted to take the time to highlight some of the events celebrating Black History Month that are taking place in Oxford and are open to the general public. There are a variety of lectures, talks and exhibitions designed to recognise the work of people of African and Caribbean descent, both globally and locally here in Oxford. For a full calendar, please visit this site.
Annan Affotey is an Oxford-based artist. He graduated from the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in 2007 with a degree in Drawing and Painting, and has had exhibitions in London, Los Angeles and New York City. His exhibition ‘My Complexion’ features his portraits of people of colour.
The exhibition is free and no booking is required. More details can be found here. On Thursday 20th October at 16.30, Annan will be giving a talk and providing a walk-through of the exhibition. Tickets are free and available here.
Black Women at Oxford: Exhibition
Date: October 3rd – October 31st
Location: The Hub (Kellogg College)
The University of Oxford began admitting Black female students in the 1930s. Kofoworola Ademola, the first Black African Women to graduate with a degree from Oxford University, is one amongst many Black women who feature in this exhibition curated by Urvi Khaitan. The exhibition features a variety of sources including photographs, biographies and other pieces of writing to explore the experiences of some of the first Black women at Oxford. For more information, please visit this site.
Paolo Scott: Reading and Q&A
Date: 19th October
Time: 14.00
Location: Colin Matthews Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building
In collaboration with the English Faculty, Brazilian author Paulo Scott will be giving a talk and answering questions on his work. After teaching law for ten years, he moved to Rio de Janeiro to focus on his writing. Scott has published four fiction books and four poetry anthologies. His latest book, Phenotypes, was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.
For more information, please contact the English Faculty.
Professor Kehinde Andrews: Sam Sharpe Lecture: ‘Bringing Down the House’
Date: 19th October
Time: 19:00 – 21:00
Location: The Mathematics Institute (or online)
The Sam Sharpe Project was founded to raise awareness of Sam Sharpe, an enslaved man who helped to instigate the 1831 Slave Rebellion. For the past 10 years, the University of Oxford has partnered with the Sam Sharpe Partners to offer an annual lecture. The 2022 lecture is being given by Dr Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University. After the lecture, there will be a Q&A session facilitated by Dr Patricia Daley, Professor of the Human Geography of Africa at the University of Oxford.
Attendance is free, but due to limited places, registration is required- you can do so here.
Dr Victoria Showunmi, UCL: Sophisticated Racism: Navigating the Terrain:
Date: 20th October 2022
Time: 17.30 – 19.00
Location: Worcester College (or online)
Dr Victoria Showunmi is an Associate Professor at University College London’s Institute of Education. Her work revolves around education, identity, gender, empowerment and leadership. This year the Equality and Diversity Unit and the BME Staff Network at the University of Oxford, have invited Showunmi to give her lecture ‘Sophisticated Racism: Navigating the Terrain’ at Worcester College. Dr Victoria Showunmi’s talk will reference her co-edited book ‘Understanding and Managing Sophisticated and Everyday Racism: Implications for Education and Work’, which can be found at Mansfield College Library (shelfmark: 1055 SHO) or electronically via Bodleian Libraries reading room PCs.
This event is free, but you will need to register if would like to attend either in-person or virtually.
Black History Month Lecture – Decolonising EU Law: Purpose, Principles & Practice:
Professor Iyiola Solanke is the Jacques Delors Chair of EU Law at the University of Oxford. Her lecture ‘Decolonising EU Law: Purpose, Principles & Practice’ will be introduced by Shreya Atrey (the Racial Justice Fellow at Kellogg College who researches feminist theory, disability, poverty, and discrimination law) and the Decolonising the Law Discussion Group will co-host the talk.
This event is free, but you will need to register if you would like to attend – you can do so here.
Dr Machilu Zimba and Dr. José Lingna Nafafé: AfOx Insaka
Date: 28th October 2022
Time: 17.30 – 19.00
Location: Blavatnik School of Government (or online)
The Africa Oxford Initiative is a collaborative platform designed to promote connections between the University of Oxford and African universities through various means, including developing academic networks and increasing the number of scholarships for African students to study at the University of Oxford, as well as offering talks. This event features two speakers. Dr Machilu Zimba will discuss barriers to progression for international graduate students, and how they can be overcome. Dr. José Lingna Nafafé will present a paper on the Black Atlantic Abolishonist Movement.
This event is free. For more information, and to register, please visit this site. There will be a drinks reception after the event.
Hi! I’m Morgan, the trainee at the Social Science Library!
The front entrance to the SSL
I’m a former bookseller and I’m a medievalist, interested in the transmission of the romance genre between Anglo-French sources and Old Norse-Icelandic. I’ve wanted to work in libraries for several years, and had applied to college traineeships, but not the Bodleian one, which has such an early application window!
In the last year I put more time into job applications for library work, and it was when I got a part time position at the SSL last October that I felt I had actually got somewhere. I began working at the Taylor Institution Library in January 2022, again with part time hours, and these bits of experience meant I was able to put forward a much stronger traineeship application. I don’t think that previous work in the library sector is by any means necessary for the traineeship, but it does undoubtedly demonstrate an interest in the field. I was able to talk much more clearly about what was happening within the library environment and where I wanted to go in the sector. Nonetheless, I’ve got lots to learn and benefit from in my trainee year, and something I’m really looking forward to is speaking to colleagues involved in the areas that interest me. I can find out if they’re right for me, and how to work towards them.
I’ve had a great first month (and a bit) at the SSL so far. The role of the trainee here is a blend of reader and technical services. We take a turn staffing the desk like everyone else and are the main staff responsible for managing the enquiries inbox, sorting room bookings et cetera. We also spend a considerable amount of time off desk, processing books, looking for missing ones, and assisting technical staff when their workload increases at key points in the university year.
The last three weeks have been a busy period of anticipating and meeting demand for readers later in the year, in terms of reviewing reading lists, scheduling and conducting training sessions, and most of all, leading tours of the library. I am scheduled for 15 across 0th week and am about halfway through at the time of writing – I think I’ve spoken more this week than I have since I stopped working in retail!
I’ve also really enjoyed producing a display for Black History Month, which I did with contributions from subject librarians. Sourcing texts from across the social sciences’ subjects was opportunity to consider how racism can be studied and interrogated differently in diverse disciplines. I’m particularly keen to read The Color of Law (Richard Rothstein), as well as Against Decolonisation (Olúfemi Táíwò), a legal deposit item that came through amongst lots of interesting recent publishing in the last month or so.
The Black History Month and New Book Displays at the SSL
With all that said, I’m looking forward to getting past 0th week, and getting into the regular rhythm of term and resuming our Wednesday training sessions!
Prompted by Black History Month, we trainees have come together to share contributions from Black voices across our libraries and different disciplines. We invite you to look through our selection, consider them through the coming months, and continue celebrating Black history within your reading throughout the year.
Lizzie Dawson, All Souls College Library
Amo, Anton Wilhelm, & Abraham, W. E., Inaugural philosophical dissertation on The “[apatheia]” of the human mind, Accra: Department of Philosophy, University of Ghana. (Psych.18)
While researching All Souls Library’s collection, I found this translation presented by All Souls’ first African-born Prize Fellow, William Abraham (born 1934).
At first sight, this unbound dissertation is easy to overlook, tucked away on the shelves in the book stacks, but it too is an example of a first.
Front page of Abraham’s translation
This document is a translation into English by Abraham of a dissertation by Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1700-c. 1750) – born in what is now Ghana, enslaved, and then gifted to the Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel – he became the first African person to earn a PhD in philosophy at a European university.
On the 16th of April, 1734, at the University of Wittenberg, Amo defended his dissertation, De Humanae Mentis Apatheia (On the impassivity of the human mind), in which he investigates the logical inconsistencies in René Descartes’ (1596-1650) res cogitans (mind) and res extensa (body) distinction and interaction. One of the 18th century’s most notable Black philosophers, Amo went on to teach philosophy at the Universities of Halle and Jena. You can read the original version of the dissertation with an English translation here.
An influential champion for the cause of abolition, Amo ultimately became embattled by racism and opposition to his beliefs. In 1747, he sailed back to present-day Ghana, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Lorde, Audre, Sister Outsider, London: Penguin, 2019. (DE / POL / 261 / LOR)
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) self-defined as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”. She was also a School Librarian in New York during the 1960s. As a feminist and activist for the rights of Black and LGBTQ people, Lorde directly challenged white feminists and Black male intellectuals who neglected the experiences of Black and lesbian women.
Front cover of Sister Outsider
Although the term ‘intersectionality’ was not coined until the late 1980s, Lorde’s work repeatedly stressed the danger of neglecting differences between women. Sister Outsider (1984) features essays and speeches including her landmark “The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master’s House.” In this essay, Lorde argues that although women have been taught to use these differences to separate themselves from other women, or else ignore them, it is only by acknowledging these differences that women’s oppression can be understood and overcome.
Lorde also comments that women are expected to educate men, and Black women are expected to educate white feminists. Reading and listening to the voices of Black women helps people of all races and genders understand how Black women’s experiences are impacted by race, gender, sexuality, class, and age, but relies upon the emotional labour of often marginalised writers. As Lorde writes, poetry is the most accessible and economical form of literature because it can be written ‘between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway and on scraps of surplus paper’. Her perspective challenged me to reconsider poetry, a form I had often associated with elite white male writers, a legacy perhaps of the kind of poets still studied most widely in schools.
Sister Outsider is part of our Diversity & Equality Collection, which showcases writing by and about people in underrepresented and marginalized groups. This collaborative project began last year, with members from across the College making book recommendations. The Collection includes various disciplines, from History and Politics, to Classics, Music, Languages and more. My predecessor as Graduate Trainee was involved with the beginning of the Collection, helping reclassify items in the existing Library catalogue and acquire new material. Now, when I process our latest acquisitions, I am involved in helping the Collection grow.
Babalola, Bolu. Love in Colour: Mythical Tales From Around the World, Retold. London: Headline, 2021. (S33 BAB:Lov (A))
“It’s important to be able to see Black people and people of colour in love – and in these hopeful contexts that aren’t mired with darkness and strife […] reality is that we’re just living our lives and we’re falling in love as Black people”
(Bolu Babalola, ‘Interview: Bolu Babalola on Love, Diversity, Redefining Romance’ (2020)
Joining the Black History Month 2021 campaign ‘Proud to Be’, Teddy Hall Library worked closely with student BAME Officer Jeevi Bali (2019, Jurisprudence) to showcase Black authors this October. Bolu Babalola’s debut book Love in Colour was one of the books bought new for a display specifically celebrating Black British authors.
Teddy Hall’s display of Black authors
In Bolu’s own words, Love in Colour is a“step towards decolonizing tropes of love”. Through brand-new tales and retellings of love stories from history, folklore and mythology, Bolu explores love as at once intrinsically universal, and complexly personal. We move with Bolu and her characters across time, continents and genres; as she brings together West African folklore, her own bad date experiences, Greek mythology, and her parents’ romance. Perhaps most moving in the collection is Bolu’s attention questions of sight. Who is seen, who wants to be seen, who is allowed to see, are questions which circle all love stories, and they are questions which Bolu beautifully considers and handles throughout her collection. For Bolu, Love in Colour is at its core about romance. To potential readers, she says: “If you like romance, you’ll like this book; it’s as simple as that”.
Himid, Lubaina, Lisa Panting, and Malin Ståhl. Lubaina Himid: Workshop Manual. London: Koenig Books, 2018 (N6797.H5635 A4 LUB 2018)
‘Using her theatre background Himid construct ambiguous scenes, at times populated and other times not. We are not quite sure if what we are presented with is a safe place or a place of danger, if the protagonists are under threat or are in control of the situation. The vibrant colours and beautiful patterns, clothes and landscapes attract the viewer into situations that are not yet fixed. Himid’s protagonists are mostly black, and well dressed in clothes that point us to different moments and contexts; inviting us to consider our position and role in histories and what we subsequently do with them.’
(‘Introduction’, Lisa Panting and Malin Ståhl, p 52)
Lubaina Himid is a Zanzibarian-born British painter, based in Preston. She has spent the course of her career exploring untold stories and Black history through reams of colour and carefully-composed figures. Indeed, her singular work championing Black creativity, institutionally obscured throughout history, lead to Himid winning the Turner Prize 2017. She was the first Black female artist to win the prize, and continues to celebrate other Black artists through her work in curation and activism.
Front Cover of Lubaina Himid: Workshop Manual
Lubaina Himid: Workshop Manual is a collection of Himid’s work and writings, encompassing over four decades of canvas painting, cut-out figures, and installation art. Although varied, her works tie together in a kaleidoscope of colour and vibrancy. Readers can see British crockery overpainted with maps, faces, and west African patterns; selected pages of The Guardian show how images and words connect in the press to harm perceptions of Black identity; painted planks of wood which celebrate the importance of one’s own past, which she reflected on when travelling in South Korea. Each are incredibly meaningful and evocative. Unfailingly, her works prompts viewers to consider hidden narratives of Black history within British culture and beyond. This is the crux of Himid’s work, creating an internal response within others and reminding them of the true world they live in.
The Manual includes ‘The Lost Election Posters’, a series of paintings mimicking typical political campaigns. Himid intends – and successfully, too – to evoke questions of who is represented across powerful institutions. In her own words, the later part of the series ‘are essentially portraits of potential power’ (see photographed). These comprise some of my personal favourites in the book, and I would recommend anyone in the Sackler taking time to appreciate it.
‘I make this work, and have always made it, for other black women. These conversations are and have always been important. I want to show that our lives are complex yet ordinary, filled with the same weight of what has been done to us but at the same time normal and boring too’ (‘A Conversation between Lubaina Himid, Lisa Panting and Malin Ståhl, Hollybush Gardens’, p 293-299)
You can read more about Lubaina Himid here: https://lubainahimid.uk/
[NB the Sackler Library has now been renamed to the Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library]
Jemima Bennett, New College Library
Marechera, Dambudzo. The House of Hunger. Harlow: Heinemann,2009. (LIT/MAR)
‘My whole life has been an attempt to make myself the skeleton in my own cupboard. I have been an outsider in my own biography, in my country’s history, in the world’s terrifying possibilities.’
(Dambudzo Marechera)
Front cover of The House of Hunger
Novelist, short story writer, and poet, Dambudzo Marechera (1952-1987) was born in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. A student at New College, Oxford, from 1974, he was eventually sent down after a turbulent two years and repeated clashes with staff and students. Shortly afterwards, in 1978, his first book, The House of Hunger, was published, winning the 1979 Guardian Fiction Prize. Two more of Marechera’s books were published in his lifetime,Black Sunlight(1980), Mindblast(1984), with three others, including a collection of poetry, published posthumously.
The House of Hunger, a collection of short stories, consists of nine interlinked stories concerning Marechera’s childhood and youth in a Rhodesian slum, with the rest of the stories focusing on his time in Oxford. Marechera leaves his readers in no doubt of the sense of otherness and alienation which he felt while he was in Oxford: the story, ‘Black Skin What Mask’, begins with the statement ‘my skin sticks out a mile in all the crowds here’. His writing has been described as abrasive and he himself called his experience of writing in English, rather than his first language Shona, as a matter of ‘discarding grammar, throwing syntax out, subverting images from within, beating the drum and cymbals of rhythm, developing torture chambers of irony and sarcasm, gas ovens of limitless black resonance.’
‘“I got my things and left” is the coolest opening line in African fiction. Marechera is nothing like any African writer before him’ (Helon Habila)
Sources:
All quotations taken from The House of Hunger (see reference).
Boakye, Jeffrey. Black, Listed: Black British Culture Explored. London: Dialogue Books, 2019. (HT1581.BOA 2019)
“Call me Black and you’ll remind me that, racially, I’m everything I’m not, which makes me everything I am. Call me Black and I won’t even flinch because I’m so used to calling myself Black that it’s become the invisible lens. A perspective that has hardened into an objective truth. Call me Black and I’ll welcome the definition, despite the fact that it denigrates just as much as it defines. Call me Black and I’ll flinch. Call me Black and I won’t even flinch.”
Front cover of Black, Listed
Black, Listed by Jeffrey Boakye is an exploration of Black British culture through the descriptors used by and for Black people in the UK. Boakye examines how words and labels can reinforce stereotypes or alternatively create a sense of community. He explores 21st Century Black British identity through an analysis of pop culture and autobiographical anecdotes. The book begins with Boakye recalling how he’s “been Black since about 1988”, the first time that he was made aware of the “otherness” of his skin colour by his classmates in primary school. The theme of Black identity in the UK being perceived as an otherness runs deep throughout the book, as Boakye explores how the Black British community has been represented, oppressed, celebrated and discriminated against.
Touching on everything from the Grime scene to global Black history and the experiences of the Windrush generation, Boakye provides an accessible and entertaining yet raw and insightful view of what it means to be Black in Britain today. I would recommend it to anyone looking to question what purpose labels serve, and in what ways they can be helpful and in what ways they isolate.
Marson, U. & Donnell, A., 2011. Selected poems, Leeds: Peepal Tree Press. (PR9265.9.M37 A6 MAR 2011)
Una Marson was born in 1905 in Saint Elizabeth, Jamaica. By the time she first left Jamaica, she had published two poetry collections, founded the feminist periodical Cosmopolitan, and wrote her first play and had it staged. She bought her first ticket to London in 1932, but moved back and forth between Jamaica and London multiple times throughout her life. Outside of poetry, her career was busy and varied, with highlights including:
Author and Director of the first Black production on the West End with her play At What Price.
Editor of and Contributor to The Keys, the journal of the League of Coloured Peoples (of which she was a prominent member)
Head of the West Indies Service for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Founder of the BBC’s ‘Caribbean Voices’.
Speaker at the conference of the British Commonwealth League
Speaker at the conference of the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage and Equal Citizenship
Secretary to Haile Selassie (Emperor of Ethiopia) during his exile to London
Front cover of Selected Poems
In the words of Alison Donnell, editor of this collection, Marson is not often enough noted as the “women poet whose works pioneered the articulation of gender and racial oppression, brought Jamaican vernacular voices alongside a Wordsworthian passion for nature, and ventured to give subjectivity to powerless and marginalised subjects.” (p.11) This collection pulls together a broad selection of her work (published and unpublished) to try to present a complete picture of Marson’s poetics – as contrasting as it is enlightening.
In total, Marson published four poetry collections. Her work as a poet is as varied as her life, with a wide range of influences from European forms and models of her earlier work to the use of blues forms and dialect in her later work. Thematically speaking, her poetry often focused on Black representation, gender politics, religion, immigration, nature, love, Jamaica, and war. Despite the heavy topics, she often dwells on beauty, hope, and the uplifting. See this extract, for example, from the deceptively titled ‘Black Burden’ (pp.146-147):
Black girl – what a burden –
But your shoulders
Are broad
Black girl – what a burden –
But your courage is strong –
Black girl your burden
Will fall from your shoulders
Una Marson: Selected Poems is now available to loan from the English Faculty Library, newly acquired this month.
Marson, U. & Donnell, A., 2011. Selected poems, Leeds: Peepal Tree Press.
Snaith, A. (2014) “Una Marson: ‘Little Brown Girl’ in a ‘White, White City,’” in Modernist Voyages: Colonial Women Writers in London, 1890–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 152–174. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139018852
e Jordan, The Essential June Jordan (2021). Edited by Christoph Keller and Jan Heller Levi.
Years of Struggle & Song (2020). Edited by Kevin Young.
ace in American Literature and Culture (2022). Edited by John Ernest.
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