Diarist History: The Mothers.
Keeping a journal is part of our ancestral legacy. In this blog, glance into the lives of a few teastained women throughout history whose diaries I’ve had the chance to peruse.
From their writing styles we perceive various ways of recording ourselves and our journeys
and the beauty in the rhythms with which we are able to do so. Inarguably, from their diaries we have historical evidence of our foundation for the Divine leading we have to chronicle our lives.
A dark-skinned single mother and favela-dweller recording her life from her shanty in the outskirts of Sao Paolo, documenting as a pariah: ruminations, antiBlackness, dejection from poverty, politics and her determination to move she and her children out of the slums.
Carolina Maria de Jesus
Juanita Harrison
A Black woman who financed her
WORLD TRAVELS by freelancing
as a housekeeper for 6 years, keeping
a travel diary along the way!
Nancy Elizabeth Prophet
A brilliant Black-Indigenous sculptress whose diary
chronicled her artist journey in Paris, unfortunately patinated by relentless, brutal financial hardships and destitution.
Laura Hamilton Murray:
The dark entries of a Black woman documenting marriage, pregnancy, miscarriage, and life between.