Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International

Introduction

For black women, autobiography has functioned as both a way to invent the self and as a form of resistance. Johnnie M. Stover asserts that autobiography "presents itself as a vehicle for the establishment of self while at the same time allowing black women the capability of attacking the sociological, political, and literary systems that attempt to bury that self."¹ In the twenty-first century, the field of African literary studies continues to blossom in part because of the desire and willingness of African writers, Africana studies scholars, and other researchers to analyze the human condition using the experiences of continental Africans as a basis. In championing the human rights of people of African descent and (re)framing African cultures and societies in ways that accentuate a growing consciousness of the politics of race, gender, and [End Page 19] class, these writings necessarily became what Margo V. Perkins described as a form of "political intervention" wherein autobiographers "use their narratives as sites of critical pedagogy to share stories of the struggle and to convey other important (usually historical) information that might otherwise be lost."²

African women activists like trade unionist Emma Mashinini (1929–2017), anti-apartheid advocate Mamphela Ramphele (1947–), and environmentalist Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) were beacons of revolutionary activism, what Perkins defined as "disinclined to seek concessions within the existing socioeconomic structure."³ In articulating their struggles for freedom, Mashinini, Ramphele, and Maathai revealed a counter discourse that problematized the dominant narrative of gender, state power, and resistance in their countries and beyond. The benefit and beauty of considering these activists together stems from three intersectional considerations: the fact that these women were contemporaries challenging dominant discourses on black agency somewhat simultaneously, the diverse causes (such as labor rights, civil rights, and environmental rights) they championed, and their activist contributions to a more comprehensive understanding of black women's global struggles for social change.

The political narratives I have chosen to examine are germane to black women's global struggles for freedom and, more specifically, the transnational discourse that continues to crystallize around gender and state power.⁴ One way in which we can broaden this discourse and thereby make it more comprehensive is by integrating the experiences of marginalized women vis-à-vis their life writings. In doing so, their subjectivities are substantiated and affirmed. Black women's intellectual work combined with their acts of self-representation bolster "radical subjectivity" and contribute to a revolutionary black feminist intellectual tradition that has succeeded in giving voice to black women's experiences and charting their trajectories of resistance. Most notably, these African women activists deliberately troubled the privileging of male voices in the discourse on state power using a genre that historically privileged white male western voices.⁵

In the midst of political strife, civil unrest, and government repression, these activists' consciousness around the role of the state in generating, perpetuating, and sustaining political tensions, economic instability, and social conflicts continued to develop, influencing how they negotiated the conditions that threatened their lives and communities.⁶ In fact, it proved essential to their survival. What distinguishes these African women activists from their male counterparts is how they reinvented themselves into radical agents of social change—freedom fighters—in racially divided and patriarchal societies wherein black women's roles were tightly circumscribed. Despite the "triple oppression" constraining their lives, Mashinini, Ramphele, and Maathai fought against deleterious systems that sullied the culture, and as a result they gained a deeper [End Page 20] awareness of the polarizing and racially discriminatory conditions that threatened both...