Reflections of a Prodigal Daughter
By Lisa B. Thompson | @DrLisaBThompson | with thanks to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Monday, September 10, 2018.
My new play Monroe is dedicated to my maternal great uncle, Aubrey C. Holmes, the gentlest man that I have ever known. He grew up the son of a preacher in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, the site of the fifth highest number of lynchings in the US from 1877 to 1950. It breaks my heart to know that my maternal relatives came of age in a city steeped in violence against men and women who looked like them. Just like my grandmother, mother, and father, my Uncle Aubrey moved to the San Francisco Bay Area during the Great Migration. I still wonder how he remained so kind and caring despite coming from a place mired in such horror.
Growing up in California in the 1970s did not shelter me from racial violence. When I was a child, I discovered my father’s copy of Ralph Ginzberg’s 100 Years of Lynchings. I felt both aghast and fascinated by the numerous accounts of those killed “at the hands of persons unknown.” I also recall overhearing stories about “trouble” back home during Sunday morning breakfasts of grits, eggs, bacon, biscuits and fresh squeezed orange juice while the San Francisco fog rolled in.
As a new professor, I poured over the lynching photos in James Allen’s Without Sanctuary but my mind did not linger on the vicious white mobs that brutalized black people. Instead, I imagined the family and friends of the victims who were also terrorized by these heinous crimes. How did they survive, love and dream in the aftermath of such agony?
I find it remarkable that my parents and I never spoke directly about lynching. I just stored what I overheard, read, and saw deep inside me. Those images are intertwined with my curiosity about my family choosing California as their destination when they fled the south for a better life. I’m the cousin, niece, grandchild, and daughter of those who abandoned the south for the west coast. Now, as part of what is considered the reverse Great Migration, I’m raising my son in the south. I wonder what stories he’s storing inside his soul as a black boy growing up in Texas and what he will eventually do with them?
During rehearsal, I carried a list of all the lynching victims in Monroe with me. I needed their names near. I pray that this play honors their lives and their memory. I hope thatMonroe inspires us to more bravely encounter what Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison describes as “unspeakable things unspoken.” Here’s to speaking the unspeakable, listening to history, and imagining a better future.
***
Lisa B. Thompson is a playwright and a professor of African & African Diaspora Studies at UT Austin. She is the author of Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the African American Middle Class and the playsSingle Black Female, Underground, and The Mamalogues. The world premiere of her new play Monroe runs September 7-30, 2018 at the Austin Playhouse.
An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If possible, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this blog post!
I have been surfing on-line more than three hours nowadays, but I never found any attention-grabbing article like yours. It is beautiful worth enough for me. Personally, if all site owners and bloggers made good content as you probably did, the web will probably be a lot more useful than ever before. “Perfection of moral virtue does not wholly take away the passions, but regulates them.” by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
I am only writing to let you know of the awesome experience our girl encountered reading your web page. She figured out a lot of details, most notably what it is like to possess a wonderful teaching mood to make the mediocre ones really easily learn about a number of very confusing things. You really exceeded our own expectations. Many thanks for providing such priceless, trusted, edifying and even unique guidance on this topic to Evelyn.
You have brought up a very good details, regards for the post.
You should take part in a contest for one of the best blogs on the web. I will recommend this site!
Would you be interested in exchanging links?
Good write-up, I am normal visitor of one?¦s web site, maintain up the nice operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a lengthy time.
Very nice design and style and excellent subject matter, nothing else we require : D.
I would like to thnkx for the efforts you have put in writing this blog. I am hoping the same high-grade blog post from you in the upcoming as well. In fact your creative writing abilities has inspired me to get my own blog now. Really the blogging is spreading its wings quickly. Your write up is a good example of it.
Thank you for some other informative web site. The place else may I am getting that kind of info written in such an ideal means? I’ve a venture that I am just now running on, and I have been at the glance out for such information.
I like this post, enjoyed this one regards for posting.
I was suggested this web site through my cousin. I’m now not certain whether or not this post is written by him as nobody else recognize such exact approximately my trouble. You are amazing! Thanks!
Well I really liked reading it. This subject provided by you is very effective for good planning.
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wished to say that I’ve truly enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I will be subscribing to your rss feed and I hope you write again soon!
My partner and I stumbled over here by a different website and thought I may as well check things out. I like what I see so i am just following you. Look forward to looking over your web page repeatedly.