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This week we have a dark and stirring image that serves as the book cover of the debut collection of poems by slam poet and theatre practitioner Koleka Putuma. The book is called Collective Amnesia and it aims at “undoing an amnesia, silence and the erasure of black women and our narratives”, Putuma explained to #Trending this week.
She has been writing for seven years and her performance art is chilling, to say the least. For the cover of her book, she worked with rapper and photographer Andy Mkosi, who took the photo and, together, the two women creatives opted for an image that “conjures up the memory of black girls with white dolls and black mothers raising white children and the history behind those images”.
They have, through a powerfully constructed image, referenced swathes of our troubled history, playing into everything, from the apartheid-era photos of David Goldblatt through to the futurist tinges of Margaret Atwood’s The Hand Maid’s Tale.
The design also touches one on a visceral level. Many of us grew up with our mothers having to raise someone else’s children in order to provide for their own – and the many conflicts around this situation.
In the image, a woman holds a white baby doll. She wears a veil referencing a Xhosa design. Perhaps it is Putuma behind the veil; certainly, her image rises powerfully from the back cover, her dress wet, drowning, but rising – a water spirit.
The back and front covers speak of the act of both veiling and unveiling the realities of a black woman’s life.
And then there’s the fact that the black nanny on the cover has no identity and is foregrounded by the baby. Add a masterful use of black-and-white photography and you have goose bumps.
Putuma has already launched the book in Nairobi and is now planning a South African launch tour – but is still in need of financial backing to do this. To provide assistance in exchange for a signed copy and maybe even a performance, Putuma can be reached at cocoputuma@gmail.com
Collective Amnesia is available now and costs only R100 a copy. It can be purchased by ordering from nick@uhlangapress.co.za
