"Black woman" by Nancy Morejón the identity problem
"Black woman" by Nancy Morejón
The identity problem
The poem "Black Woman" written by Nancy Morejón, expresses a perfect picture of the theme of the identity of the black woman in America in relation to the complexity of the human being and her socio -economic, political and cultural environment. To be able to understand the concept of identity a little better in the poem "Black Woman" you have to expose important historical events. As well as previously said, the poem manages to expose details that go beyond the mere exterior. Manages to capture from the beginning of becoming a slave being a victim of colonialism and imperialism under European superior powers since the fifteenth century. In this case representing Cuba as the colony. This covers even the release and recovery of its independence.
In the poem "Black Woman" the author’s personal experiences are reflected as part of her identity. That is, from the point of view of black women it is classified as a slave, brought without will and be part of a low social class. This shows the poem very well by saying "I still smell the foam of the sea that made me go through". Also saying "his mercy bought me in a square". In addition, he suffers hunger, mistreatment and marginalization by his buyers. As explicitly observed in the poem:
And because I worked like a beast,
This is the land where I suffered bocabajos and whipping.
I got out throughout all its rivers.
Under his sun I sowed, I collected and the crops I did not eat.
At home I had a barrack.
Stanza after stanza, the author describes the experiences and their feelings regarding these. The image that is projected is that the black woman at all times was treated as an object by the hegemonic power. Once enslaved, he led a life of hard work, injustices, live under inhuman conditions and both physical and emotional abuse. The slave woman only longed for freedom, to be able to break with everything that tied her to the colonizing world and resume her origins.
However, even with these experiences, she is a woman who does not give up and continues to fight in a harmful and harmful situation. In the poem these facts are shown since in each stanza there are words of manifestation "I rebelled", "Anduve", "I revolted,". The ideology that is shown is marked in the history of Cuba since it takes a certain role to defend what is believed to be appropriate in order to end these imperialist ideas. "Black woman" shows all these ideas at the end of the poem when I quoted "I rode between the Maceo troops" and later continues to express,
I got out of the mountains
To end capitals and usurers,
With general and bourgeois
Also when he mentions communism:
My own, here I see them dance
Around the tree we plant for communism
There are brief references to her gender identity and how to be a woman, black and slave, puts her in a relationship of power where she is inferior, despised and victim of machismo. The black woman, according to the poem, barely had dominion over themselves and were often physically and mentally abused. The simple fact of "I embroidered the jacket of his mercy and a male son Parí" is representation of the domain of an abusive power towards slaves and Cuba.
This last sentence would also make references to duality in the identity of the human being in terms of public and private image. What is interesting of this poem, is the evolution in the identity of the black woman. When she arrives, forced, to that new land, Cuba, her cultural identity, her national identity, it is different;The nation in which she is going to live the rest of her life is not the same in which she was born ("My lost coast," Guinea "" Cabo Verde?), This fact assumes that the black woman will be exposed to other customs, other social classes, with another political and social context.
Without losing customs, folklore and the inherited beliefs of his homeland, Africa, which he shares with the community of black slaves in Cuba ("Epopeya Mandinga", "Millennial Songs" "Ancestral Language", "Chimera", "My own… I see them dance ”), and due to the active role she takes in this new nation, Cuba, and her future, she states with full security that her identity changed and was born again:" Here I was born again "," now I am". In fact, its struggle, its revolution, changes the identity and fate of Cuba, now Cubheaven"). Definitely for all the above in this reflection, this poem is a song to identity, its complexity and its capacity for transformation. A tribute that the author makes, through the black woman, to the identity inherited from her ancestors () and to the people who like her fought to change the identity of a nation.
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