My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 104

So there I was in Brooklyn, on July 5,
2014, walking through the cavernous
space that was also a cathedral of
business complete with altar piece
venerating sugar and slavery, practically
a century and a half after slavery was
signed away but refused to die. Instead,
sugar sustained its future. And looming
large in my eyes and in those of everyone
else in attendance were these huge
breasts of a pyramid beast woman,
recast as reproductive machine. And
she was made to suckle and perpetuate
domination, to rebirth and sustain
the sweetness of social differentiation
and hierarchy.

I did not want to dwell long in the
noxious smell of cloying sugar. Still,
I did not regret coming. I had made
the pilgrimage; I was seen and I saw,
and I witnessed first-hand the Sphinx
Mammy of empyrean whiteness.
Even so, like the young brown boys,
the Mammy Sphinx, despite her
size, was fragile. Made of dissolvable
stuff, she carried an expiration date,
perhaps stamped on her hind parts or
inside the voluptuous vulva. At the
same time, she was enigmatic. And in
those unending crowds, where was
the Oedipus who could answer the
riddle of the ages, while personally
signifying the abomination of the
mother, which is also slavery’s big sin
and curse.

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

Symbols and currencies abound.
The Mammy symbol is magnified and
so are the currency and fluidity of
sugar that can occur in various forms:
refined, raw, crude, brown, white,
spirit-infused, and molten. The show’s
penultimate day has meaning too.
It is July 5, Independence plus one.
Frederick Douglass, slavery’s virile
icon of intelligence and independence,
Mammy’s alter ego, when the Domino
factory opened, has spoken of July 4,
and why it has little meaning for
him and for the men, women, and
children of his blood who would not
accommodate being mute statues in
denigration’s gaze. Perhaps not so well
known is that many of those in the
arc of slavery’s stifling sweetness chose
not to celebrate July 4, but honored
the day following, July 5, instead.

103

The show is not just about seeing
mammy minstrel and magnificent, but
about seeing the self in her company.
The show shares limelight with the
spectator. Who comes? The families
and friends cluster together, the crowds
assemble and disassemble. How do
they act? What do they do in relation
to what is staged? When Kara Walker
was making her early silhouettes, most
of whom enjoyed the penetration of
power, she was creating visual characters,
flat yet stark. Now, with this threedimensional work, her depictive power
has grown, and moved off the wall
into the hall. Mammy’s largeness is not
just about the figure but about Mammy’s
meaning in American life, not only
then but also now, and we, the spectators,
tell that current story as we position
ourselves in mammy’s presence,
cavorting and smiling on the floor and
under the ceiling that the Havemeyers
(loosely translated as the have-mores)
of Domino wealth constructed
and reinforced.