Black Grandmothers: Labor, Lace, and Wide-Brimmed Hats
By Angela Carroll
“God specting womens to lay down and gurd up. Womens have to take boots on ‘deir chest and dress shoes, sneakers and cleats too. Women like carpet—all kinds of shoes gotta walk on womens.” – from Bootprints
Latonia Valencia’s dramatic play, Bootprints, is an unsettling but familiar narrative about death, family secrets, and the revelations of those who survive. Bootprints unpacks Black memory and the frustrations of younger generations who grapple with the histories, traditions, and secrets they have inherited. The perpetuity of Black mourning, Black grandmothers, labor, lace and wide-brimmed hats. Silk and sore backs from working as housemaids, Gmama’s hands, Sunday mornings, all these memories come into focus when Gmama dies. Her granddaughter Myeshia is left mourning her loss and remembering the impact of her grandmother on her life.
The play opens on Myeshia in conversation with her alternate personality Gingel as they determine what outfit to bury Gmama in. Gmama had a vast collection of colorful suits and each marked a significant event in the women’s lives; miscarriages, molestation, wealth, abandonment, love, failed marriages, poverty. As Myeshia/Gingel and Gmama’s apparition sort through the suits, they share their memories aloud as epic choreopoems. Like Ntzoke Shange’s timeless homage, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Bootstraps uses color, fashion and domestic interiors as cues for the emotional and psychological states of its protagonists. The play honors and humanizes narratives about southern Black women.
Director Nate Couser and Curator Tiffany Jones reimagine the theatrical script as an immersive installation series, Bootprints Standing Room Only at the Peale Museum. The installations convert the second floor of the museum into surreal visualizations of Gmama and Myeshia/Gingels memories. Photographs, prints and collage works from Brianna Faulkner, Antonio McAfee, and I Henry Phillips are incorporated into and/or placed opposite the installations.
In all instances, Jones installations provide powerful imagery that enunciates key moments in the play and offer new perspectives about Black women’s lived experiences. Each installation tugs at the senses. Visitors can take lollipops or mints from any of the many candy dishes spread around the museum/Gmama’s house. You may smell the sweet dense aroma of incense or the pungent funk of moth balls. You will hear the voice of Gmama, Myeshia and Gingel tell their own stories through looped audio projections. You will surely leave the experience inspired.