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Black is the Journey, Africana the Name
Maboula Soumahoro
Translated by Kaiama L. Glover
polity
Copyright Page
Originally published in French as Le triangle et l’hexagone: Réflexions sur une identité noire © Éditions La Découverte, Paris, 2020
This English edition © Polity Press, 2022
Cover artwork: ‘M. Angelou’ | In ‘The Malediction of Cham’ series | 2020
Painting, mixed media, 47 × 47 in
Artist | Marielle Plaisir
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4832-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4833-0 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
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Dedication
I dedicate this book to the late Dr. Colin A. Palmer (1944–2019), master of the diaspora, H.N.I.C. without parallel. In addition to the invaluable knowledge he imparted, he proclaimed me “Miss France” as of 1999. Astonished and perplexed at first, I was incapable of grasping the symbolic importance of this pronouncement until many years later. I have since held onto and taken care of that precious title. For this, I want to offer him my eternal gratitude.
Epigraph
With Naïma Yahi. Together, at the intersection. Head held high.
Quote
“If it was up to me …It is up to me.”– Saul Williams, The Wind’s Song, 1998.
Acknowledgments
My deepest gratitude to Natalia Brizuela, my editor at Polity Books, for her so precious warm, constant, and cheerful support and encouragement.
I would like to thank the Éditions La Découverte: Thomas Deltombe, Stéphanie Chevrier, and Valentine Dervaux, for their faith in me, their indefatigable support, kindness, and professionalism. The Centre international de recherches sur les esclavages et post-esclavages (CIRESC) at the CNRS (International Centre of Research on Slavery and Post-Slavery), directed by Myriam Cottias, kindly offered me a comfortable space in which to write this book. I am eternally indebted to it.
This work unfolds over and evokes three geographical spaces, adding a tricontinental dimension to my list of people to thank, necessarily rendered incomplete and necessarily diasporic. I offer my apologies in advance to those people and institutes whose names I may have omitted here, and have aimed to organize my thanks into two categories: “those who helped me to think” and “those who helped me to live (thinking all the while).”
Throughout the years, I have been invited by several universities to lecture on what was then still a project under construction. I would like to thank them warmly, since every such opportunity gave rise to feedback, remarks and suggestions, all of them wise, which contributed to the development of this work: Noëlle Rouxel-Cubberly (Bennington College); Madeleine Dobie, Kaiama L. Glover, Emmanuelle Saada, Shanny Peer (Columbia University); Astride Véronique Charles, Barbara Savage, Lydie Moudileno (University of Pennsylvania); Peter J. Hudson, Jemima Pierre, Robin D. G. Kelley (University of California, Los Angeles); Bernard Moitt (Virginia Commonwealth University); Pauline Guedj (New York University); Crystal M. Fleming (Stony Brook University); Cédric Moreau (University of Strathclyde, UK); Sabine Broeck, Carsten Junker (Universität Bremen, Germany); Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Éric Fassin, Achille Mbembe (Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis); Ary Gordien, Ingrid Château, Ndeye Fatou Kane, Laura Khizar Hayat, Guita Nilavannane (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, EHESS).
I would equally like to note my great respect and gratitude towards all the professors, colleagues, and artists whose teachings, projects, productions, and intellectual exchanges nourished my thought in a lasting way: my mentor Ehiedu E. Iweriebor, Mark W. Payne, Joyce Toney (Hunter College, City University of New York); Judith Ezekiel (University of Toulouse/Wright State University); Édouard Glissant, Francesca Canadé Sautman (Graduate Center, City University of New York); Maryse Condé, Manning Marable, Abosede George, Kim Hall, Tina Campt, Samuel K. Roberts (Summer Teachers and Scholars Institute 2017), David Scott, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Mamadou Diouf,
