May 14, 2023
A Mama’s Day Letter
Dear Mama,
I miss you! But, I’m out here in the world doing my thing, hopefully making you proud. It’s been more than 10 years since you transitioned to a new journey in 2012. I’m now the Vice President of Strategic Affairs and Diversity at Virginia Tech, and Professor of Education. I’m a full professor just like you!
I’m trying to “lift high your banner out of the dust” in the words of the Langston Hughes poem, Negro Mother, that you recited for the DVD played at your funeral. That day was something else. You had recorded those two DVDs: one of you reciting poetry,
and one of you singing spirituals,
with instructions to play them at your funeral. It was as if you were still alive, performing at your own funeral. You graciously shared so much wisdom in the words you sung and recited that day: that we have to often walk this lonesome road alone; that death is inevitable, so we must focus on our life; that we must remember the sacrifices of our ancestors and elders; and that we should help to create a just and equitable world. I’m grateful for those recordings and words of wisdom. It was a wonderful gift that you left behind.
You left another gift behind. A charge and a challenge. To “lift high your banner out of the dust.” Your banner is a heavy one. A banner of justice, equity, righteousness, riot-eous ness. You were always radical, not settling for protocol and status quo.
And, I can never forget how you chastised anyone who could refer to you as a guy, with the colloquial, “how you guys doing today?,” provoking a well-deserved ire and retort: “I am not a guy.” No mama, you are not a guy. You are a powerful, inspirational, and awe-inspiring Black woman: a Black woman who motivated me to get 5 degrees, to have one more than your 4; a Black woman who was a role model and educator, becoming a full professor and motivating me to do the same.
Another gift you left behind were your words and the autobiographical writing that you had been documenting for years, about your journey as a little black girl picking cotton to becoming a college professor. What a journey of perseverance, resilience, and persistence against so many obstacles of race, class and gender. I did a book tour on “our” book in 2019, From Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about Race, Class, and Gender in America across the United States
and ended the tour by delivering the commencement address at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work – the same program where you got you PhD.
You would be proud to know that the education tradition continues. Emmanuel finished his bachelor’s degree and Raebekkah had her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree at 20 years old. Raebekkah was the commencement student speaker at her graduation! She was incredible, sharing the poem that your grandmother shared with me: “The heights that great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upwards through the night.” She used the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to encourage her student graduates to “never stop toiling.” You would be so proud of both children: they are doing their thing – using their gifts. Emmanuel is an artist and painter, and Raebekkah is working in sports management. Three generations have 12 degrees!
I’m following in your footsteps in another way. I’m finishing a book about my life. It’s called Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower. It’s about the power of writing to help us find ourselves and is based on 45 years of journals. Let me share a bit more about it:
Blackwildgirl, a childhood queen superpower dethroned in a bargain made by her parents, emerges through a 45-year initiation journey in this deeply reflective autobiography of acts, stages, scenes, and letters to Love beginning at the age of 8, as a writer shares her quest to reclaim her crown and become Blackwildgoddess—a fierce warrior for justice in the world.
It is an interactive adventure exploring the private life and journals of a young Black girl, beginning at the age of 8, as she struggles and evolves from a tennis player, musician, and college student to become a wife, mother, lawyer, scholar, and writer. Documenting revelations and reflections during her twelve-stage initiation journey in America and the African diaspora, this autobiography reveals how writing can unearth and give life to women’s powerful, sassy, and willful spirits.
It will come out next year in April and I look forward to sharing it with you, because our lives are inevitably intertwined. I am because of you and I love you.
And I have a gift for you. I wrote a poem called “When A Black Woman Walks Into A Room,” inspired by you.
https://menahpratt.com/when-a-black-woman-walks-into-a-room/
I’m sharing a little bit in this letter:
When a Black woman walks into a room, something happens. For how could it not? For when we walk into a room, we bring the ancestral power of generations, centuries of Blackness and Womanness — intertwined, inseparable, immutable. …
When a Black woman walks into a room, there is often something else, something submerged and sublime, simmering below the surface, like fine wine – maturing in barrels of our body until it’s time to be poured out – sometimes smooth and silky. Other times explosive, unrelenting, wounding. Formed from the bowels of the earth — marinated for decades in juices of dirt, decay, and death. Formed from the misery and madness, the malfeasance and the mischief, and the mistreatment by miscreants. It walks with us. It has no name; but It is part of us.
Yes, Yes, when a Black woman walks in a room, It comes with us. For It is Us and It is our power.
For when Black women — saavy, street-smart, and sophisticated — informed with the White man’s knowledge, and infused with the wisdom of African queens, walk into rooms, each step is imprinted with power and purpose. Each step marking and imprinting permanence and existence into the earth. Each step proclaiming and pounding out the right to be: to be validated, to be heard, to be seen, to be acknowledged, as a Black woman.
Yes, Yes, for when a Black woman walks into the room, let the room take notice. Let us, as women, keep pushing forward into rooms; entering with energy, like earthquakes, shifting tectonic plates. Let us walk confidently and courageously into more rooms; for we do not walk alone. We walk with the invisible and invincible presence of one thousand ancestors and angels. Let us, therefore, boldly strut and stride into our destinies of greatness.
I love you.
Menah
Here’s a little music for you, Mama. Holy Mother and Ave Maria, Yes, I’m still playing piano. I named her Simone, after Nina Simone. I’ve got a little baby grand now. I donated the piano you and Papa bought for $100 to Virginia Tech Adult Day Care. I’ve been meaning to get over there a play for them. I’ll do it soon!