A Letter To My Same Gender Loving Ancestors
by Louis "Azucar Negro" Farmer
(A Guest Nubian Knight's Perspective)
I don’t know you, but I feel your presence.
You, my ancestors, the ones who loved the SAME gender.
You, my ancestors, who often were the ones that possessed the ability to communicate with the dead or offer spiritual harmony to family, tribes, villages, the physical and spiritual world. Yet, able to love the same gender with no questions or frowns.
You were respected, revered, considered sacred, admired, sought after, and most of all LOVED by our people.
You were called many spiritual names by others since the beginning of time, before slavery, during slavery and after slavery: sooth sayer, gate keeper, priest, priestesses, sangoma, elder, mambo, iya, babalao, houngan, mambo, santero, ialorixá, babalorixá.
I feel your magic, power, supernatural abilities, love for nature and animals in me.
Thank You!
You, like your other tribe members, were captured by the so called “God Fearing Europeans” and by our very own misguided, greedy and foolish hearted brothers and sisters.
You also had wives, husbands, boyfriends, a mother, a father, siblings, aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers and clans. How did you keep their memories as you were torn away from them, never to see them again?
You, my ancestors, loved the same gender before the identities to ‘explain’ who and what we are were given to us. Yes, there was a time before we felt the need to identify as
‘Gay’
‘Queer’
‘Homosexual’
‘Bisexual’
‘Transgender’
Some of these words make many cringe, while others celebrate being associated with them.
Some have found solace with the various sexual identities, while others have fallen further into an emotional hell because of them.
You must be shaking your heads while seeing many of us follow more of an often constricted, culturally insensitive and manipulated sexual identity while wandering aimlessly, spiritless and empty seeking approval and acceptance from others who give less than a damn about us, your children.
You, my ancestors were in the bowels of the slave castles, asking yourself, like the others around you “why?”
Both men and women regardless of sexual orientation were raped at the hands of savages who saw themselves as saviors spreading the word of Christ or Allah.
Many of you fought, more died and countless survived the Middle Passage.
How did you do it? How did you deal with a once alive but now dead body chained to you on the ship headed to the new world, as it rotted and gave a toxic odor in front, behind, above and below you? How did you deal with seeing your brothers and sisters die one by one on a ship bound for the new world? How could you stomach the scraps and moldy food given to you for nourishment while smelling feces, urine, puss, blood, vomit and peeling flesh?
How did you my ancestors, handle strange hands touching your body, every crevice being pulled, tugged, pinched, sometimes burned?
How did you keep faith, or did you lose it?
No, you didn’t lose faith because the Orishas and Loas came with you during this horrible, heinous, and soul wrenching trip. Many African Gods and Goddesses wept with you. And many more spirits sank to the bottom of the ocean with the dead Africans thrown off of the ships, as well as those that chose death over slavery, and jumped to the depths of the ocean to be in the arms of Olokun, Yemaya, Mami Wati, Agwe, La Sirine and many more.
My same gender loving ancestors what was it like to be pulled up from the hull of the ship to a new land? I can only imagine what it was like to see a sea of White smiling faces surrounded by angry, sad, sullen and strong Black faces.
How did you handle being forced to worship a God that looked nothing like you? When the Catholic priests threw ‘holy water’ on you as you marched in a line chained to one another and branded, were you confused? What went through your mind as your natural beliefs had to stop or be hidden behind Catholic saints?
Were you angry or did you laugh at the idiot slave masters who had no clue that you were indeed establishing another way to preserve OUR Gods and Goddesses?
I have read many slave narratives that many of you left. Often the meanings about same sex relationships were discussed in secret and hushed tones. When you talked of slavery you probably already felt that discussing being a slave was enough, let alone discussing loving the same gender to a Christian White person recording your experiences.
I know that many same gender loving men were forced to fuck, suck and feed their male masters. Oh the anger I feel for ALL of my people.
I know many of you lived openly in a same gender relationship, living together as a couple. Oh yes, it was documented. Yet, many don’t want to believe it.
How horrendous was it for my female same gender loving sisters alongside with their straight sisters to be treated as cattle, forced to “breed” with and/or marry men. I know that many of you were raped mentally, sexually and physically just like your non same gender loving people at the hands of overseers, masters, mistresses, owners, slave traders and slave catchers.
But I also know many fought, maimed and sometimes killed those that dared to touch you!
What was it like my same gender loving ancestors if you were deemed effeminate or soft by your master and made to be a house slave? You had to have been upset, hurt and angry. But this is not to say that some of you weren’t field slaves too.
How did you, my more masculine male and female same gender loving ancestors, handle often being a field slave because you were deemed to be a stronger ‘buck’ or ‘wench’, when often your ‘lover’ was in the big house, or even working next to you picking cotton?
Are you upset that so many so called Afro centric speakers and writers today dismiss your existence during slavery, minimize your presence or claim that White people ‘made’ you gay? I can only imagine what it was like for you to hold your head up high as you long to be next to the one you love, while being forced to ‘make babies’ with a stranger and not losing your mind when the children are sold away, abused or even killed.
You were clever my same gender loving ancestors when many of you used the bible to free your people. You were called preacher, prophet, minister and other names. Dispensing advice, solace and encouragement to your flock.
Yet, still a slave.
When you ran away with your boyfriend or girlfriend, holding hands in the dark, avoiding the slave catchers with their barking dogs, how did you know to wrap hot peppers on the bottom of your feet and on your clothes to throw off your scent from the dogs pursuing you?
How did you know how to make the Voodoo bags called gris gris to protect the runaways including yourself from being caught?
How did many of you feel participating in slave rebellions and dying for freedom?
My same gender loving ancestors, I have vivid dreams about being a slave. I have visions of being at a camp fire and instructing others what to do as we plot our escape. I have also had dreams of being a slave and sold away as a teenager screaming and begging to stay. I have had dreams of running away for freedom with a blue black muscular man, who loves me with all of his heart, both ready to die for our love and our freedom.
Are you trying to send me a message?
Is it to not……….forget?
I shall not.
I shall not.
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