RETURN TO SENDER

PORTUGAL

But if we would speak the unspeakable, if we would name and say the source of our sorrow and scars, we would find a tender and a powerful company of others struggling as we do, and we would know we should show to the world, at last, that shame belongs with blame, not on the victim.

— June Jordan, Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dreams (1986)

Along the cliffs of Portugal’s longest shore in Costa da Caparica, and within the confines of its traditional architecture, I contemplate rape as the origin story for producing the Western world’s labor force and power as we know it today. Titled after the colloquialism, prayer, and Black American hoodoo ritual, Return to Sender, is the first installment in an ongoing multimedia project of self-portraits, writings, and ritual objects that form a vessel for rethinking the inner life and healing of Black rape survivors who descend from the Black diaspora formed, in part, by the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

With a fidelity to ancestor veneration, I use Black feminist poetics and afro-surrealism to situate my body as a rape survivor between the aliveness of ancestors and the land that first entrapped them. I hold a mirror, sourced from Lisbon’s oldest flea market, and one of Europe’s earliest sites for slave auctions, to form an ocular shield and vessel. Under its veil, I hear myself, spirit, and the undertow speak: You cannot undo rape, but you can undo the imposition of its shame. This is the promise of a return to sender.

Ritual objects in progress with glass artist and ceramicist, Marjani Hall, based in Lisbon, Portugal. For fine art prints, inquire here.

HER HATREDS ARE MONUMENTAL (AFTER MORRISON)