TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Excerpt from Lose Your Mother
• Columbia University's Institute for Research on Women and Gender
• Dr. Hartman's bio

E-mail a friend

Saidiya Hartman on African Americans going to Africa to look for closure.
 

Tavis: Saidiya Hartman is a visiting professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. She's written several books on African American history, literature and culture. Her most recent book is a provocative one called "Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route." Professor Hartman, nice to have you here.

Saidiya Hartman: Thank you. It's nice to be here.

Tavis: I said on this program the other night that I expect to have any number of conversations around these kinds of issues, given that this year is the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement where the Africans first arrived here in the country, as you well know because you teach this stuff all the time. So the timing of this book is, I think, terribly propitious.

That said, let me do something I almost never do and go to the end of this book to quite frankly, I think, a striking conclusion that the book draws, that you draw in the text. It is that African Americans looking for closure by going back to the motherland to visit or to research or to study or to live, that African Americans going back to the motherland, back to the continent, and look for closure will be disappointed. My words and not yours, but is that a pretty accurate assessment of what you - that's what I got from the text?

Hartman: I think one will be disappointed depending on what you're looking for. I think that, if you're making the journey to Africa in the hopes of recovering some original identity, a true African self, then you'll be disappointed because identities do change over time.

I think that one of the things I tried to suggest in the book is that Blacks in the new world or African Americans have been created by that rupture, by that separation, by that loss as Africans. So I think we have to grapple with who we are in the aftermath of that separation. I think I try to suggest other possibilities for identification, but I do think disappointment awaits if we're trying to recuperate an identity that's been lost.

Tavis: Before I get to more, when you write in the book, this year is the 150th anniversary of the independence of Ghana. You spent time in Ghana researching for this text the former president of that country, Jerry Rawlings, on this program just the other night. That said, let me ask what the value then is? I assume you think there is value. What's the value then for African Americans returning to the continent to visit anyway?

Hartman: That's a great question. I think what the value of that is is that there are a certain set of dreams that connect us and one of those dreams is a freedom dream. I think of, you know, one of Martin Luther King's last speeches where he talks about "a dream of the world house." For him, that dream of the world house is about the end of poverty, racism, a context in which we'll all thrive. I think that that's the basis of our connection with Africa; that they're in a struggle to thrive and so are we, and there's an historical connection between us.

I think that that political connection is what's really vital, and I think you're right that the 50th anniversary of independence is so important to African Americans when Ghana won their freedom because if you look at the newspapers that African Americans actually thought, "These Ghanaians are free. They're independent. Maybe they'll help us win our freedom too." I think that's a vital area of connection.

Tavis: As we've already established, you went to Ghana to research for this text. Tell me what you went looking for and what in fact found or didn't find, as it were.

Hartman: It's funny because I know when I went on the trip, I thought, "Oh, I'm not naíve, I'm not romantic, I'm not here trying to recover my roots." I know that's all old-fashioned. But then I had to discover the kind of, you know, romance that I still had despite my skepticism. I think that I was surprised that I felt as much a stranger as I did and what it meant to feel so much like an outsider in the motherland. I think that that was really shocking.

I think that what I discovered on my journey is that, you know, identities are constantly remade. Identities are the product of history, of social relations, and I think the challenge of kind of taking hold of freedom is remaking your identity. So that was a lesson that I learned too on my journey. You know, I'm never going to be Ashanti or Ga, but I am, you know, this Black person in the new world and there's a whole set of possibilities that are part of that.

So I think that I was able to both kind of grapple with, you know, the pain and the terror and the tragedy that produced us and landed us in this part of the Atlantic, but also to realize that that historical experience engendered a new set of possibilities and we have to make good those possibilities.

Tavis: As you see them, what are those new set of possibilities?

Harman: Those new set of possibilities. I mean, it's interesting because, in the last chapter of the book, I talk about a group of people. You know, the slave trade had devastating effects on Africa. So when we think about slavery and Africans, we think mostly about the elite classes who were, you know, trade partners with the Europeans in the trade. But for the commoners, they were vulnerable. They were the people who were going to be captured.

So there are these internal diasporas in Africa too, people who fled to remote areas to escape traders. They have names that are like a page out of Morrison, "We Who Fled," "We Who Became Together," "Haven." There was something about also looking at the way in which they had to recreate who they were to kind of keep alive freedom. I think that that's one of the central possibilities.

I think that Black people in the United States have also kept the dream of freedom alive not only for ourselves, but for the world. Their struggle has been a model for others and I think that we have to just continue on to make good those promises of, you know, ending poverty and making good equality and taking hold of freedom. That's what I connected to, just grappling with slavery. It's actually the freedom dreams that are our connections to people throughout the world.

Tavis: I misspoke earlier and you very graciously and very smoothly corrected me. I'm going somewhere with this, so stay with me. As the Black preachers say, "I'm going somewhere with this. Stay with me." I misspoke a couple of minutes ago and said the 150th anniversary of Ghana's freedom. It's clearly the 50th anniversary this year and you corrected me, so thank you for that.

The reason why I said 150, I was just in a discussion earlier today talking about the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision, so 2007 is the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision. That was in my head and that's why I said that number. I raise that only because we got so many anniversaries this year. This is 400 years since Jamestown, 150 since the Dred Scott decision, 20th year since James Baldwin's passing, the 30th year since "Roots," which brings me back to this.

Hartman: And another, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

Tavis: Absolutely, the slave trade. We just had a conversation on this program the other night about the slave trade ending in Great Britain. So a lot of anniversaries this year. Back to my point, though. This is the 30th anniversary of "Roots." In 1977, "Roots" hits prime time. We all know the story. I raise that only because of the connection to this book in that we wish that we were like Alex Haley and could trace our way all the way back to Kunta Kinte and be Ghanaian.

Most of us can't do that, would never be able to do that, to a certain extent. Why torture ourselves? There's two questions here. One, why torture yourself and, number two, how do you respond to people on the flip side who say, "Y'all ought to forget about that. Let's move on past this slave trade stuff. Why y'all still writing books about this stuff. Get over it."

Hartman: Right. I think that certainly Alex Haley's "Roots" has kind of like - I mean, it's sounding text. You actually can't write any story that's a journey back and not have the ghost of Haley there with you, so I think you're right about that. I think it's a different story in that my story isn't about trying to recover origins. No, I'm not going to find my clan, and it's about what's the story that we tell in the aftermath of not being able to actually recover some original identity.

You know, on the note of getting over slavery, no one wants to get over the slavery more desperately than Black people do. I always say, well, you know, if reconstruction had actually made good its promises, we wouldn't actually be talking about slavery today. So I think that part of the reason we continue to talk about slavery is because of, you know, racism, of the kind of structural effect, the inequality, so that slavery again is linked to our ideal of what freedom should be.

There's a great essay about how do we define slavery. Is slavery only property in human beings or is slavery about equality of wealth, wealth being true belonging in a society? So depending on how we understand what it means to be a slave will give us some indication of whether slavery's legacy has really been abolished or if we're living with this aftermath.

Tavis: The new book - we've just really scratched the surface here. It can't do justice to a text, a polemic this provocative in just twelve or fifteen minutes - but the new book is called "Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route." Saidiya Hartman is the author, visiting professor at Columbia. Let me ask right quick in ten seconds. The title of "Lose Your Mother" comes from?

Hartman: "Lose Your Mother" is a way people describe African Americans and the enslaved. "Oh, you've lost your mother, you've lost your country, you've lost your kin." There are also all these stories about what they did to make the slaves forget their country and they'll say they've forgotten mother or they lost their mother.

Tavis: It's a provocative text.