ALL THE WOMEN IN MY FAMILY SING: Review and interview

Today we offer something special: Reviewer Sala Wyman reviews the book and interviews the author.

Nonfiction

Make your poor husband an egg

ALL THE WOMEN IN MY FAMILY SING:
Women Write the World – Essays On Equality, Justice, and Freedom
366 pp. Nothing But The Truth Publishing
Edited by Deborah Santana

Reviewed by Sala Wyman

As I looked through the list of luminaries who have praised this book – such figures as Alfre Woodard, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Isabel Allende – my first thought was, “I have absolutely nothing more to say.”

But as I relaxed into the pages, I was met with a rich tapestry of experiences from 69 women of all diverse races, backgrounds, and cultures. Every story is told with such vulnerability, ease, and raw emotion that I felt as if I were sitting with each writer, sharing tea while listening deeply to her words. There is brilliance in how this community of women captivates while revealing the struggles, unique for each one, to achieve justice and equality.

The book is inclusive. Over several chapters, women voiced issues of racial and sexual identity, family harmony and discord, misogyny and violence, and cultural identification. Some of the writers I’ve read, like America Ferrara or Natalie Baszile, while others were new to me. Each woman represents worldly achievement in areas of literature, performance, academia, business, or social activism. Each woman also represents a sort of spiritual coming into harmony with herself. 

Phiroozeh Petigara’s essay “This is How You Do” details the author’s visit with her ancestral family in Karachi. Petigara, having spent most of her life in Canada and America, is thoroughly Western, and her family is thoroughly Pakistani. She doesn’t fit in. Her Karachi relatives welcomed her with love, but her aunt and uncle had big questions about a woman traveling and writing instead of caring for her husband:

…All this writing and all is okay, but for the sake of your marriage, you must make time, every morning, to make your poor husband an egg.

Too many of us know a woman who has left her dreams behind to cook breakfast for her husband. Petigara writes through the range of emotions – rage, sadness, and finally “a weary acceptance” of the contradictions, inner and outer. But her relatives’ reality is not hers. Thus Petigara finally embraces her own self and chooses her own life fully.

Blaire Topash-Caldwell explores “Reclaiming Indigenous Space,” a healing practice for Native peoples who have been spiritually and physically traumatized into assimilating western culture. Through the telescope of her own tribe, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, Caldwell reveals that

indigenous space encompasses the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual areas of our physical existence…Mentally, they [tribes] were forced to stop seeing the world from an indigenous view through suppression of language and ceremony, and would eventually assimilate into a western view…

Tribes heal by reclaiming indigenous space through indigenous means. Caldwell writes:

… indigenous women, especially, have the ability to heal. We have our own love medicine…We also have a healing dance called the jingle dress dance. When we dance, the curled tobacco can lids sewn into our dresses jingle with the memory of the medicinal plant and our customs. The result is the sound of rain washing away trauma…All my ancestors still sing to me in my DNA.

The chapter on physical beauty, “But Beautiful,” contains several essays on standards of beauty that denigrate nonwhite women. In her exposition on racism and colorism, “Black Dolls for Everyone,” Mercy L. Tullis-Bukhari looks at the new and expanding ownership of black dolls by people of color and white people as a cultural paradigm shift.

To own a doll that represents Africanness is a subtle yet poignant protest against the formula that we have all been brainwashed to see as beautiful and acceptable in our society of whiteness.

In “Editing Identity: Cultural Identity, Gender, and Sexuality,” we’re given several essays on race and gender identification as well as racial conflict within the United States. Natalie Baszile writes of her complicated relationship to the South from which her father migrated after Emmett Till’s death in 1955. He never returned except for yearly visits to see family. Having been raised post-Jim Crow in California, Baszile reflects her own conflicted feelings about her relationship with southern culture. She needs to experience Louisiana for herself. And she does.

She found much to love: her family, the spring weather, and the humid summers. The slow pace was tantalizing. But Baszile also had a face-to-face with residual racist traditions.

My ears will always ring with the voice of the Cajun security guard who flagged me down on the Service Rd. outside Henderson, stuck his head through my open window and berated me, spittle and flex of his sandwich landing on my shoulder for driving too fast and told me I was a “long way from home” after I explained I was driving to the New Orleans airport and had only stopped to take a picture of the Bayou. He threatened to arrest me, relenting only after I called him “Sir.”

“In the end,” she says about her relationship to the south, “I have a divided heart.”

The book’s astonishing insights into the feminine struggles for self-love, self-acceptance, and self-determination do not come from the ether. Deborah Santana herself has published her own memoir and knows how to choose stories that are courageous and inspiring. Women must continue to express, with power and grace, our right to be fully equal in this world. These stories have done just that.

An interview with editor Deborah Santana

      Sala Wyman: I loved the book. Loved it! The diversity of writers in All the Women in
      My Family Sing is stunning. What was your criteria for selecting writers?

Deborah Santana: Thank you so much.  My criteria for choosing the 69 essays from the 300 we received was what the story entailed – did it represent a clear aspect of the writer’s experience as a woman of color today; was the content unique, well-presented and well-written, and did it touch my heart.

Sala Wyman: Were writers personally selected by you or were others working with you?

Deborah Santana: I had two readers in the beginning of the process and we each read all of the essays, ranked them, and then met together to discuss our favorites. We debated about including a few of the essays, knowing how important it is to show positive qualities of people of color because of the many false, negative stereotypes promoted in the media.

      Sala Wyman: What inspired you to create this work?

Deborah Santana: The lack of diversity in the publishing industry was the original inspiration to create our book. Every aspect was achieved by a woman of color, from the cover art to the graphic design, our first assistant, the editing, and the first PR firm, were all women of color.  Favianna Rodriguez’s cover art was taken from a mural titled “Pleasure is Power” that I first saw on her Instagram account Culture Strike.  She is a world-renowned artist whose social activism is a perfect expression of the essays. Her art is the theme for our book’s women.

      Sala Wyman: What was your initial intention for this anthology?

Deborah Santana: The original intention was to inspire people – men and women -  to read more women of color authors. We want to educate people about the lived experiences of these women, to open minds to cultures that are different from the dominant narrative in America and Europe.  We wanted to express equality and justice through personal stories that expose the ways political and corporate interests can separate us, and that we are much more alike than we are different.

      Sala Wyman: Were you able to remain true to your original intention or did the focus
      shift over time? If it shifted, what caused the shift?

Deborah Santana: We were absolutely able to remain true to this focus, and we even increased our commitment to cultural inclusion and promoting books written by women of color through our Call to Action page on our website. We reference the Lee and Low Diversity Baseline Survey from 2015 that shows the lack of people of color in publishing.

       Sala Wyman: How long did it take to complete this project?

 Deborah Santana: The anthology took 3 years to complete from the moment the call
 for submissions went out.

       Sala Wyman: As a writer, do you think your personal process and, perhaps style, influenced
       the thematic choices and ultimately the essays?

 Deborah Santana: My personal style and way of looking at the world definitely influenced the   thematic choices and the final essays that are in the anthology. My standpoint is biracial woman   who meditates and is an activist in the social justice movement. A concern for the rights of all   people is always in my mind. When my parents married, anti-miscegenation laws still existed in   17 states, including California. My Irish English mother and African American father were   denied a legal union because of racism. Activism is in my DNA. My paternal grandparents   started a  holiness church in Oakland in the 1940s, so the spirit of faith is also in my DNA.
 I have prayed since I was a child, meditated since I was in my early twenties, and hold a
 master’s degree in philosophy and religion with a concentration in Women’s Spirituality. In
 each essay I sought to feel the writer’s redemption, authenticity and power.

       Sala Wyman: Do you have a favorite chapter? An essay that was particularly moving to you?

Deborah Santana: My favorite essay is the one I am reading at the time. The gift of knowing each story and author has added great meaning to my life. I dreamed the title, All the Women in My Family Sing, many years ago, not knowing there would ever be an anthology. And each voice in the book brings a stunning melody to create a transformative choir of hope to heal our world.

      Sala Wyman: What would you like for readers to receive from reading?

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       Deborah Santana: I would love for readers to deepen their connections with people who did not
      grow up like them, or travel the same paths, or eat the same foods, or even speak the same
      language. I would like people to praise difference and embrace new ideas, cultures, and ways to
      dance or worship. Compassion, love and respect for all people is my goal.