As part of pur 2024 literature series »Making Wor(l)ds. Contemporary African Diasporic Women Writing in Europe« we welcomed Minna Salami for a talk at M.Bassy. She is a Nigerian-Finnish and Swedish feminist author, social critic and former Program Chair at THE NEW INSTITUTE in Hamburg and dived into an intimate conversation with the British-Ugandan writer, journalist, and musician Musa Okwonga talking about her latest book »Sensuous Knowledge - A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone« (2020) and her engagement in Black feminism, ancestral knowledge systems and embodied writing practices. The reading and talk were part of our 2024 literature series »Making Wor(l)ds. Contemporary African Diasporic Women Writing in Europe« with Minna Salami, Jackie Thomae, Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström & Samila Anyaas.
Excerpt from the talk:
Musa Okwonga:
This book »Sensuous Knowledge - A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone« - what was the genesis of the idea? When did you first start forming the thoughts for this project?
Minna Salami:
The genesis of »Sensuous Knowledge« is very layered - as books are. In some sense, it's a book that I've been writing my entire life. It’s about the circumstances of my life of growing up in Africa, in Nigeria, and living in a world that was a neo-colonial state. And receiving an education that was shaped by that and then also living in a society that was so patriarchal in many ways, but also seeing really powerful role models at the same time. All these themes inform my beliefs and my identity as a black feminist. That's like the broader scope of the genesis.
Musa Okwonga:
When was your first awakening of, "Oh my god, there is this incredible knowledge of the gut, that is rooted to the Orishas (The Orishas (also known as Orixás) are nature spirits or deities that are worshipped in the Yoruba, Santería, Candomblé and Umbanda religions.) and the mystical and it's being disrespected!“ When was your first moment where you thought, "We have a problem here.“?
Minna Salami:
The honest truth is that it was a quite a mystical experience. I'm happy to share it, but I'm aware that it can come across as "being a little bit out there". I grew up in an interfaith household. My dad is Muslim and my mother is secular, but Protestant (she is from Finland). When I was a teenager, I moved to Sweden because there was a dictatorship in Nigeria. I was in my early twenties and I was writing in my journal one day. All of a sudden, I decided that I wanted to stop writing, but I couldn't. I tried to stop my right hand with my left hand because it was freaking me out. I was writing things that I didn't know to have ever thought about and in a handwriting that wasn't quite mine. Because I have had this Christian Islamic upbringing, my immediate thought was that I was possessed by some kind of evil spirit. I was really scared. I was ripping out pages and by the end of the session my entire room was covered with paper. This experience scared me, but it led me to look for answers to what had happened. And I couldn't find answers in any kind of empirical scientific rational place.
I couldn't go to my teachers in school. I couldn't go to a priest in a church. I couldn't go to any sort of institution that was influenced by the western dominant, conventional way of thinking. So I went to more esoteric arenas including Babalaowo which is a high priest of the Ifá oracle; that my dad eventually took me to. This very personal experience showed me that there was knowledge that was not from in here (in the head). And that was ancestral and mysterious and spiritual.
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Musa Okwonga:
When writing a book, you talk about the Yuroba mythology. You talk about spirituality and it feels like this is very much the moral core of your thesis. How natural was it for you to write a book with this moral code?
The feminine and the masculine are not what our ancestors would have used. But what it shows us is that there is a lot of fluidity when it comes to gender roles and norms.
Minna Salami:
Very natural, because that is the world that I come from, and that is also a narrative that has been so central in feminist work. Over the decades, the exploration of female powers is at the center of feminism and inquiring into what kinds of roles women had in the past. For African feminists, of course, the question is concentrated within the continent. There is so much evidence of cultures, belief systems, practices and cosmologies that didn't have the same kind of derisive view about the feminine. I say this because these are western narratives. The feminine and the masculine are not what our ancestors would have used. But what it shows us is that there is a lot of fluidity when it comes to gender roles and norms.
Musa Okwonga:
When you were doing your research, were there any facts that jumped out at you that were revelations to you? What elements in your book were a discovery for you?
Minna Salami:
Partly this thing about blue being a feminine color in Africa, which I knew from stories that my grandmother used to tell me. I knew it through this fabric, for instance, which is called Adire (Adire (Yoruba) textile is a type of dyed cloth from south west Nigeria traditionally made by Yoruba women, using a variety of resist-dyeing techniques.) But when I started doing the research I was quite blown away by how true it is across the continent.
Musa Okwonga:
The process of writing this book, this is a hard one, you can feel the scholarship, you can feel the intellectual work, but also the emotional work.
Minna Salami:
There were days when I was almost scared to sit down and write because I thought, “Oh, this is too painful!“, because you are revisiting some personal experiences that are painful. But I'm not even referring to those, but to the overall suffering that women and people of African heritage have had to go through, all minoritized groups had to go through, and the suffering that humanity undergoes underneath these delusional prisms of domination. A white person or a white feminist might just write about the patriarchal experience. Or a Black man can write about the racial experience alone. A white man can just write about anything mundane. The topics in this book are universal topics - beauty, identity, knowledge - and yet it is impossible for the words for race, for trauma, for gender not to come into that. That is a kind of grievance.
Musa Okwonga:
How have you found your process in writing »Sensuous Knowledge« and how different is that process from your upcoming book »Can Feminism be African?: A Most Paradoxical Question and a Vision of African Political Philosophy«?
Minna Salami:
When writing »Sensuous Knowledge« I was dealing with grief. I was sometimes writing it in a hospital, but I also had long chunks of time where I wrote it in my library at home - which is one of my favorite spaces in the world. I spoke about having days when it felt too difficult to write, but I would say 7 out of 10 days I was pinching myself. I am so in love with writing this book. I wrote it in really different kinds of spaces and mindsets and moods. But I had a lot of time with it - I didn't have a short deadline. I was immersed to the point that I couldn't function outside of writing. If I went out with friends, if I went to a party or something, literally like anything anybody said, I would associate with the writing process - I was just terrible company.
Musa Okwonga:
What was your state after finishing this project?
Minna Salami:
I wish it was some kind of sexy story, but what happened was that I literally crashed for two weeks. I couldn't move and I didn't understand how I could have had so much body ache. I was on my couch for two weeks and every day I just felt like I had been running a marathon. I was exhausted. So that was what happened.
Musa Okwonga:
Thank you, Minna. This has been an absolute delight. Thank you so much for your wonderful book, but also for this fantastic conversation. All remains is to thank you for your time and applaud you.
Minna Salami:
I enjoyed it so much, thank you!