"atlantic is a sea of bones" —Lucille Clifton
Voicing Hope for Black Mermaid Dreams
I have nothing to say to Black mermaid haters. But I will say a gentle warning to those who need it: this post contains content about racial violence (i.e.) slavery, lynching, and drowning.
I have watched the news surrounding Disney’s live-action production of “The Little Mermaid.” I am deeply happy for Halle Bailey and after seeing and hearing the trailer, I was mesmerized along with many of us by her voice and her presence. I have watched with joy, the reaction videos of happy young Black girls seeing a mermaid who looks like them.
Melanated mermaids for the win.
Well, it is apparently not a win for everyone, with so much racist backlash.
But in this space, even if only in fragments, I just want to honor what has come up for me as I heard her gentle soprano voice sing: “Out of the sea….wish I could be…..part of that world.”
First, a Lucille Clifton poem to honor the sea of talking bones:
them bones
them bones will
rise again
them bones
them bones
will walk again
them bones them
bones will
talk again
now hear
the word of the Lord.
—Traditional
atlantic is a sea of bones,
my bones,
my elegant afrikans
connecting whydah and new york,
a bridge of ivory.
seabed they call it.
in its arms my early mothers sleep.
some women leapt with their babies in their arms.
some women wept and threw the babies in.
maternal armies pace the atlantic floor.
i call my name into the roar of surf
and something awful answers.
—Lucille Clifton, [untitled]
“The Ones Who Chose the Sea”
Ever since I saw the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL., the statue that commemorates “the ones who chose the sea” became a permanent fixture of my mind and heart. I stood there, longer than was physically comfortable for me to imagine their voices.
I am amazed by those who stand before such images and choose to remember, and in their remembering give us the space to imagine a world.
A world for their survival.
A world that reminds us that they are still here.
Even when the world wishes to forget they ever were, their voices are carried in the waves of the sea.
Imag(in)ing in the Wake
There is something here. Beyond just the idea of a melanated mermaid. The sea has always contained within it imaginings of possibility and adventure for white people. For the people of the Black Atlantic…our relationship with the sea is complicated. In her book “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being,” Christina Sharpe describes “the wake” as
“the track left on the water’s surface by a ship; the disturbance caused by a body swimming or moved, in water it is the air currents behind a body in flight; a region of disturbed flow1
“a state of wakefulness, consciousness”2
“the recoil of (a gun”3
“The Past—or more accurately, pastness”4
“a watch or vigil held beside the body of someone who has died.”5
“a way of marking, remembering, and celebrating a life.”6
I believe we [Black folks, formerly subjugated peoples] are all called to the task of “wake work,” which Sharpe describes as the continual “imag[ining of]new ways to live in the wake of slavery.”7
Wish I Could Be….Part of that [Tidalectic] World:
The oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes of this world have never felt “habitable” for me. I do not know how to swim, but I know how to stand on the edge of the beach and let the ways push and pull me into trance-like appreciation. Large bodies of water for me are meant to be admired and feared.
As a poet, I collect words I think are fun and I live in them or let them reveal to me where I have always lived or found life. So in hearing and looking into the word “tidalectics,” a world was revealed to me. A world where my people have always lived.
“Tidalectics,” is a poetic method developed by Kamau Brathwaite, Bajan poet and historian. It’s a theory of creolization that seeks to understand our relationship with the world as an oceanic one. It theorizes that we have understood ourselves as people on land, but often forget our relationship with, to, and on the water. It is about the spaces where we can experience the “both-ands” and the constantly emerging. There is an embrace of the fluidity of life and being, that begins for Brathwaite in the fluidity of language. Time is not linear, but fluid, and the past is constantly crashing onto the shores, making memories present. 8
Water remembers.
And in the tidalectic, those whose voices have been stolen from them have a voice, and the suppressed voices rise to meet the waves.
Final fragments, for now
“Out of the sea….wish I could be…..part of that world.”
The little mermaid is a story about a mermaid who trades her voice for an experience in a foreign world. It is a story familiar to so many of us, whose voices have been silenced and suppressed to varying degrees. When I found myself gasping as I watched the trailer, it was the overwhelm of hearing a Black mermaid sing underwater about belonging. It touched something in me that, for many reasons, needed to hear Black bodies singing underwater.
There’s more. So much more.
But for now, if you are wondering how do I feel about a Black girl playing the Little Mermaid? The answer is pretty damn good.
Landing Tracks
Read Black mermaid stories: Stories about Black mermaids and Black people surviving underwater have been part of Black folklore and imagination for a long ass time. My friend Camille Hernandez (thique theopoetique here on Substack) put together this lovely IG stack to honor these stories and remind us that our reviews matter. Consider reading these stories and reviewing them.
An actual track: This song, called “The Deep” by clipping is imagined as a futuristic memorial song. The song is in remembrance of an uprising led by Black underwater dwellers who founded a whole civilization.
Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being 3.
Sharpe, 4
Sharpe, 8
Sharpe, 9.
Sharpe, 10.
Sharpe, 11.
Sharpe, 18.
These are my own poetic reflections on Brathwaite, but you are welcome to read this and other sources for a deeper understanding. I will warn you though, that nothing about tidalects is simple, and I think the more you read, the more confusing it might be. It’s like when you watch the waves hit your feet back and forth and after a while it feels as if you are moving. Perhaps that is the point, to disrupt a sense of settledness and rigidity.
I saw The Woman King yesterday. Now I’m rethinking the usage of water in the story telling. Thank you for your words.
I feel this substack entry down to my marrow, Rose. I admire how you tied together memorials, mermaids, tidelectics, bones. Black bodies ALIVE and under the sea is itself a redemption song.