Dr. Rama Salla Dieng is an African feminist scholar-activist and lecturer of African Studies and International Development at the University of Edinburgh, who believes deeply in the power of oral tradition and history. In her transformative work on gender, labour, care, and development, she centres the experiences of those most marginalised across African societies. Her in-depth interviews can be heard via her series 30 Minutes With... and Talking Back: African Feminisms in Dialogue.
In her latest book, Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond, Dieng expands on the complexity of African feminist parenting with intention. Rama (and co-editor Andrea O’Reilly) bring together the voices of parents of diverse gender, religious, and sexual identities, children of feminist parents, and allies - including one who has made the decision not to have a child. She shares more on her journey as book editor and as feminist parent herself, beginning with her teenage years in Senegal.
Dr Olivette Otele: Historian, Author, Academic and Britain’s First Black Female Professor of History
Previously, on motherhood, you’ve shared “I decided I should know who I am first before giving birth, so that I will be able to tell this little one: who she is, where she comes from, and what her story is.” What have been the experiences, and who have been the women, that most shape your views as a Senegalese feminist, scholar-activist, mother?
I was inspired by women’s writing and art during my teen years, mostly women who were writing their way to their freedom. Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter was another crucial encounter with some of the challenges Senegalese women faced; one which also made me decide during my teen years that I did not want to be married or to be a mother. I’ve changed my mind since. I was also inspired by the writings of the late Aminata Sophie Dieye: her novel La nuit est tombée sur Dakar, and her chronicles under the pen name “Ndeye Taxawaalu” in a local newspaper narrating her experiences as a free woman in a society which did not want to let her be. I also read almost every novel from Cameroonian writer Calixthe Beyala (and later Hemley Boum); Senegalese writer Ken Bugul’s novel Le Baobab Fou, made a lasting impression on me during my student years in France.
But I must say that my first inspirations were women around me: my mother who, despite not self-identifying as a feminist, embodied many principles of resistance and subversion. Her 20-year long fight to reclaim her land after it had been seized by the state for a large-scale ‘development’ project was very inspiring to me. So much so that I wrote my doctoral thesis on the 2007-2008 land rush and its implications for the social reproduction of classes of labour and capital, capitalist development, and how ordinary people related to land as a source of life and a resource for livelihoods. I have been inspired by my aunt who, because she fell in love with a foreign migrant in Senegal, faced omerta in our own family. I have been inspired by my four sisters, especially my older sister, Ndeye Anta Dieng, who lost her life two years ago in October, while giving birth to a child, who is very healthy and joyful. My sister and I were best friends and were like twins (only one year between us). Her unwavering joy and wholeness inspires me a lot, and this month, my family and those who knew her are celebrating a life well lived. I am inspired by Black women’s joy and solidarity, beyond stories of resistance.
Earlier in the year, Senegal caught the attention of the world. The call for a #FreeSenegal was met with growing calls for justice and accountability in defence of Adji Sarr. As a feminist, scholar, and mother, how did you experience and process this moment in your nation’s history? What makes you fearful and what makes you hopeful for your people during this era of mass protest for societal change?
During the March 2021 political events [and sparked by the growing anger towards the current president Macky Sall due to the state of governance and increase in cost of living and lack of employment opportunities for the youth], I felt that a feminist analysis of the moment was missing and wrote this article as the protests started unfolding (French version). I was angry and shocked because one of the events that sparked those protests was the arrest of one of the opposition leaders: Ousmane Sonko, 47, was 'summoned to court’ because of rape accusations by a 21-year old masseuse Adji Sarr. Yesterday, Sonko was elected Mayor of the city of Ziguinchor despite the yet-to-be concluded investigations. In addition, Barthélemy Dias, a left-leaning political leader known for his violence and who held sexist, misogynistic and homophobic comments live on TV was also elected Mayor of the Senegalese capital city in replacement of Ms Soham Wardini. I am still angry that the bodies of young women and young men from poor backgrounds are being used as an arena, a battleground for political contests. I am angry that these human beings, these citizens, were murdered because some people in the police felt they could use their legitimate monopoly of violence to kill them rather than to protect them, to make examples of them and stop the protests. I am angry that the Senegalese state failed to keep up to the social contract that links it to its citizens and keeps failing the most vulnerable citizens.
Seeing young Senegalese citizens take to the streets and mobilise on social media was a proud moment, and makes me confident in the power of social movements. Senegalese feminists played a key role in organising which is also something to be celebrated. As a citizen, an academic and a mother, I am more and more concerned by the fact that political protests are more and more reflecting divergences about gendered and classed meanings of citizenship.
The second year of the COVID-19 pandemic has come to an end, and the pandemic is still taking a heavy toll on all aspects of life. In an article for Corona Times, you speak on the fatigue experienced by parents and carers, a need for rethinking “the meanings and value of work”, and a need for care for parents and carers. How does parenting continue to evolve for you throughout the pandemic? What has the COVID-19 pandemic unveiled about the needs of mothers of African descent?
There is increasing evidence on the impact of COVID on women, including working mothers, and this impact is differentiated along class, ability, nationality and race. You (Nana Brantuo) have recently written about the historical invisibilisation of the work of some key social actors such as Black nurses. Now think about the situation of precarious migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. We remember 34-year old Ugandan asylum-seeker in the UK Mercy Baguma who was found dead next to her starving one-year old. The case of pregnant Angolese asylum seeker Adna who lost her child while 35-week pregnant because she was refused emergency care was also reported in the media: her asylum accommodation to call an ambulance while she was bleeding.Therefore, I believe restoring collective forms of care and parenting that are dominant in most African, [Afro-]Caribbean and Black American cultures can relieve many carers at this critical juncture.
In addition, states have a critical role to play as funding childcare and providing social safety nets for vulnerable carers and parents whose work is not per se recognised as work that is urgent. We also need to think about the interconnectedness of our condition and global challenges that governments across the world are currently facing: the crisis of care, climate change, record waves of “illegal” migration (think about Haitian migrants at the US border, Senegalese migrants to the Canary islands, African migrants trying to reach Europe through Ceuta enclave), loss of income, reduction of remittances and other economic outcomes due to COVID-19. All these issues require concerted, coordinated and consistent policy responses from states, we cannot just keep relying on the resilience of some categories of workers, we need to address the root causes of these issues, not just their manifestations.
Your co-edited book, Feminist Parenting: Perspectives from Africa and Beyond, is another of your transformative projects that centers the experiences and agency of mostly African feminist parents. What motivated this book project and what did you enjoy most about co-editing the contributor’s narratives?
This book is a collective project with 30 other parents from all over the world, but the majority of contributors are from Africa and its diaspora. As feminist parents who took different trajectories to feminist parenting, we wanted to share our experiences and learn from each other. For me, it was a privilege to initiate the project and to work with Andrea O’Reilly (my co-editor, and founder of Demeter Press) to publish this work. What I enjoyed the most about co-editing the contributors' narratives is finding a community and learning and sharing experiences. Despite being scattered all over the world, the parents in this edited volume shared similar challenges because of the pervasiveness of heteropatriarchy and capitalism, and found creative solutions to them through love, friendship, solidarity, and caring.
I felt it was also important to share the things I was grappling with during my parenting but also the joys and the wins. Writing my contribution was a learning process (I am still learning). As an academic (and I hope, a scholar-activist), I am more and more convinced of the need for governments to recognise unpaid care work as essential work, and the need for parents to re-politicise parenting as a collective project which benefits societies at large. I am grateful I found a community of othermothers and “others” parents for my kids, as new friendships formed, old ones were strengthened. I was in conversation with many friends and parents throughout the writing process. As I mother in a national, transnational context: writing was cathartic as I am also part of the community parenting my late sister’s children, in addition to parenting my own. And as a Black female academic who is a part of the African Diaspora, I am more and more understanding the role Black academics, especially women are playing in their communities, the city and the university, a role that Patricia Hill-Collins described by ‘othermothering’ and ‘mothering of mind’.
What do you hope African women and women of the African Diaspora readers take away from your book, and the contributors within? What does Feminist Parenting reveal about parenting across the continent and Diaspora?
I hope African parents (not just African women), across gender, sexuality, class, nationality, ability, can find these lived experiences useful. I do hope that they find out, as I did with Ghanaian Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, one of the contributors that: ‘There is no one way to be a parent’, especially a feminist one. I hope they will reckon, as I did, with queer South African feminist Masana Ndinga that rage could be liberatory, especially as we face the realisation that parents alone can’t do this parenting thing. It still ‘takes a village, as long as you have one’ as Nigerian feminist OluTimehin Kukoyi, the author of Mothers and Men puts it. With Keyti, a Senegalese feminist father, and Françoise Moudouthe, a Cameroonian feminist, I hope they seek to unlearn what they have been taught, as I did and listen more to their children as ‘with every child, a parent is born’. With Neela Ghoshal, I hope they understand the importance of ‘colouring outside the binary’. I hope they listen carefully as Gambian feminist Satang Nabaneh and Liberian Feminist Kula Fofana share about what feminist parenting meant for them as Muslim women, as British Feminist Angelica Sorel shares about navigating feminist parenting and a career in academia, and as Elisabeth, a German academic living in France, shares her thoughts about Feminism and Ecology.
I also hope that the feminist parents who have faced the excruciating pains of losing a child or faced trauma, can take their own personal journey to self-affirmation and healing as they read the stories of Americans Nikki Petersen and Joanna Farmer. Buy the book. Read the book. Watch the video of our book launch, and share your thoughts with me, Andrea, or any of the contributors! Feminist parenting is a journey, not a destination.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.