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37 2 Creation Out of Bounds Toward Wholistic Identity E. CHR ISTI CUNNINGHAM Nine medium sweet potatoes or yams, two sticks of butter, a half cup of granulated sugar, a half cup of firmly packed brown sugar, a half teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon of nutmeg, three eggs, well beaten, two cups of milk, and one tablespoon of vanilla. —National Council of Negro Women, The Black Family Reunion Cookbook Mary McLeod Bethune’s recipe for sweet potato pie filling, found in the Black Family Reunion Cookbook, represents one of many that validates Black women’s self-image and resists “dominant cultural memory” (Eves, 2005, p. 280). According to Eves, cookbooks function as “memory texts: to memorialize both individuals and community, to invoke ‘memory beyond mind,’ and to generate a sense of collective memory that in turn shapes communal identity” (p. 280). They also preserve a “countermemory” in response to the “official memory” of the dominant culture (p. 281). Eves is one of many scholars from a variety of disciplines that has observed the relationship between memory and identity and advocated memory work as a tool of resistance. De Jorio (200) also explicates the role of memory in shaping the political process in several West African nations; for her, past recollections inform present agendas. Similarly, literary works of Black Caribbean writers Maryse Conde, and Marian Goslinga observe that Caribbean women of all language areas have used memory as a tool to traverse time and recover authentic identity (Goslinga, 2001). A common theme among memory scholars is that identity—individual and communal—is a function of memory. For that reason, the dominant power often manipulates memory as a form of control. Authors have recognized the power of individuals and communities to reclaim memory, not only to oppose the dominant culture but also to heal from trauma. Neither identity nor Blackness nor 38 E. CHRISTI CUNNINGHAM sexuality is monolithic or homogenous; therefore, the purpose of this chapter is not to attempt to essentialize or pathologize identity by imputing a common status to all Black people or by suggesting that all Black people manifest a particular condition. At the same time, the descendants of enslaved people in the United States share the common experience of surviving trauma, and there seems no denying that a post–civil rights movement malaise of disenfranchisement and resignation lingers and festers. Re-membering among Descendents My concept of descendant experience and sexuality attempts to trade the social construct of race (which was created as a tool of oppression) for common experience as an identity mechanism. It also acknowledges and links the identified people to their ancestors, as opposed to juxtaposing us with the dominant culture (Black, not White). Toni Morrison’s Beloved provides an example. The novel illustrates the process of recovering from the places and choices that we make in response to extreme oppression. By acknowledging and linking descendants of enslaved people to our ancestors by reference and name, we can understand that healing requires “re-membering.” Re-membering in this context means the re-creation of ourselves and communities into wholeness. Alexander et al. (2002) posits that developing a living memory is correlated with one’s relationship to time and purpose. This chapter suggests, instead, that the two are the same and that the movement of the people of the African Diaspora through this period in our history must be inevitably to triumph over loss and trauma. That triumph, however, requires a re-creation that involves resolving the past—living it over and over again, searching it, confronting its danger, creating space for its rage, releasing the loss, and migrating into a whole and consistent present. In the context of a fractured society, whole identity is not discovered or revealed. It is created. Sexuality is both an engine and an outcome of the re-creative process. Therefore , the control of sexuality—sex, sexual expression, and sexual identity—is political and distorts our ability, as individuals, communities, and societies, to re-collect and re-create. Wholism is an ideological perspective that prioritizes wholeness and the movement toward whole identity in framing meaning. Yearning for Home: Memory, Identity, and Sexuality Memory is the present manifestation of past identity and reflects who we have been through time. Identity, at any given moment, is a collaborative process between past and present, genetics, biology, and culture. Sexuality is a particular type of remembering. Sexuality is one of the central engines in The Color Purple driving the movement of...

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