This book charts the journey of Black feminist, artist, researcher and curator Nydia A Swaby as she pieces together a biography of Pan-Africanist and feminist Amy Ashwood Garvey from her scattered archive. In turn, it offers a reflection on the future of Black feminist archival practice.
Often referred to as the first wife of Marcus Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey’s contributions to movements for social justice, and in particular Black women’s rights, have largely been forgotten, not least since archives about her life and work are spread across the various places she lived.
After helping Marcus Garvey set up the UNIA, one of the most influential Pan-African movements in the world, Amy moved to New York, where she thrived in the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1930s she emigrated to Britain, where she set up a boarding house and social centre called the Afro People’s Centre, and a club called the Florence Mills Social Parlour. Swaby recovers Amy’s life and work as an important political activist, cultural producer and Pan-Africanist in her own right, retracing her steps across the Caribbean, US, Britain and West Africa.
In addition to conducting traditional archival research, Swaby creates a series of ‘curatorial fabulations’, imagining into the gaps in the archive with her autoethnographic practice. Drawing on the work of contemporary Black feminist researchers, archivists, curators and artists, and her own creative practice, Swaby animates the process of creating and curating Ashwood Garvey’s archive. In doing so, she reflects on the practice of Black feminist archiving past, present and future.
This is the third book in LW’s Radical Black Women Series. It will be essential reading for scholars and students of Black feminism, Pan-Africanism, Black British history, Black arts and archival practice. Endorsements forthcoming from leading scholars in the field including Carole Boyce Davies, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Kelly Foster, Kesewa John and Lola Olufemi.
Contents:
Preface
Introduction: Archival Assemblages
Chapter 1: Auto/biography as archival activism
Chapter 2: The City as a Living Archive
Chapter 3: Towards a Visual Archive of Diaspora
Chapter 4: The Future of Black Feminist Archives
Postscript
Nydia A Swaby’s Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives is a labour of love, produced by deliberate research and reliable documentation of this amazing major contributor to the definition of Pan-Africanism itself. At once personal and political, wonderful photographs from Amy Ashwood’s archives extend the telling of her lifestory in ways unavailable up until this publishing. Her work reveals the value of archival conservation but also of the importance of scholarly interventions that engage and make visible the women who have contributed to our current political and intellectual visibilities.
Dr Carole Boyce Davies, Professor and Chair of the Department of Literature and Writing, Howard University; author of Black Women’s Rights. Leadership and the Circularities of Power (2022) and Left of Karl Marx. The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (2008).
‘Nydia A Swaby has woven for us the first biography of Amy Ashwood Garvey written by and for Black feminist women. Swaby’s narrative seamlessly takes in the stakes and politics of Black feminist remembrance in the UK and beyond, captures the dynamism, creativity, passion and boundless, borderless energy of a brilliant peripatetic Pan-African woman, and considers the convergences of her own research and artistic practices with those of Amy Ashwood Garvey. Nydia Swaby succeeds in illustrating how, for many of us, deepening historical knowledge shapes how we engage with the future almost as much as it equips us to navigate the present.
Interweaving recent histories of Black British feminist activism in Britain with her history of the arch-feminist and pan-Africanist Amy Ashwood Garvey in a text as theoretically stunning as the kente Amy Ashwood Garvey often wore, I cannot wait to get Nydia A Swaby’s Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives on all my reading lists – and into discussions with my students.’
Dr Kesewa John, Lecturer in Black British History, Convenor MA Black British History, Goldsmiths, University of London
A twenty-first century biography for a giant of the twentieth century Pan-African world, Amy Ashwood Garvey. Swaby chronicles the life of Garvey and on both sides of the Atlantic, and her impact on the politics and culture in the cities she called home.
The book is also the lovingly written record of the Black women who continue to recover, preserve and share the histories of daughters of the diaspora and define Black feminist practice.
Kelly Foster, public historian
Nydia A Swaby has been retracing Amy Ashwood Garvey’s footsteps for a long time. In her love-laced narrative, she shows us all ways they have changed one another. Swaby’s deft, precise and inviting prose takes us on a journey of Black feminist retrieval, revitalising the past that entombs Amy Ashwood Garvey, insisting on her continued presence in the here and now.
Dr Lola Olufemi, Black feminist writer and researcher, author of Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (2021) and Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power (2020)
Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives is a comprehensive exploration of the Pan-Africanist, feminist, activist and internationalist that successfully pays tribute, honours and amplifies her life story whilst expanding our understanding of this key figure. Swaby interweaves her own interconnected lived experience, family history and geography into the narrative, as she maps, traces and retrieves the fragments of our diasporic archival legacies, in order to present an insightful, candid and contemporary Black feminist portrayal of Garvey.
Swaby confidently encourages us to push beyond the boundaries of auto/biography, with her critical offering that nurtures a collective sense, understanding, and responsibility towards Black feminist histories – past, present and futures.
A must read for anyone who is interested in transnational Black feminisms, archival practice and curatorial methodologies.
Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, Independent Archivist, Mixed Media Artist and Designer
