Rooted: Black Women, Southern Memory, and Womanist Cartographies

This essay explores the connections between Black southern women and the voiced memory of southern landscapes. The author uses her own lived experiences in what she calls “Afro-Carolina,” along with the voices of other Black southern women, to reveal a multi-vocal counter-cartography. Personal reflection, oral history excerpts, a “runaway slave” advertisement, and descriptions of land through a womanist lens all weave together to demonstrate a modality the author names “Womanist Cartography.” Using the tools of memoir, folklore, and experimental prose, the author invites readers to re-engage the notions of southern land through the lives, dreams, and minds of Black women. The inclusion of multi-modal artist Allison Janae Hamilton’s photography further amplifies these counter-cartographic concepts. In the wake of contemporary cataclysms around southern monuments and place-making, based on traditional hegemonies, this essay presents alternative narratives for what and where is deemed sacred in the American South, and by whom.