In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Prose

by Alice Walker

  By making their revolution, the Cubans proved that oppression needn't last always. Three years after the beginning of the revolution, they had also begun to kick out of their country the greedy and antisharing. Which is to say, they had begun "to overcome." This was profoundly important to me. I think part of my "illogical" despair had been due to my sense of political powerlessness, caused to some extent by a lack of living models. I believed poor people could not win. (And, in fact, no matter how many people, poor or otherwise, protested against nuclear testing, the testing--both in the United States and in the Soviet Union--continued.) But here at last was a revolutionary people I could respect, and they made it quite clear they did not intend to lose.

  For several years, I tried to get to Cuba. Because the Cuban Revolution had been achieved through armed struggle, I was eager to see the effect on the people of having used violence to liberate themselves. I was, after all, a pacifist and a believer in the use of nonviolent means to effect social change. After the birth of my own child, I had understood fully the evil of waiting interminably for conditions to change at someone else's convenience, but I still needed to know that the use of violence did not necessarily destroy one's humanity. I wanted to confirm the truth of one of my favorite lines from Flannery O'Connor: "Violence is a force that can be used for good or evil, and among the things taken by it is the Kingdom of Heaven." For the poor of Cuba, their own country had become "the Kingdom of Heaven." It was in their own hands, thanks to the Cuban Revolution.

  Before the Revolution only 60 percent of those of working age had regular full-time employment.

  In the rural population, only 11 percent drank milk, only 4 percent ate meat, only 2 percent ate eggs.

  Forty-four percent had never gone to school.

  Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Havana did not have enough to eat.

  --Ernesto Cardenal, In Cuba

  Today, there is work for everyone in Cuba. Everyone has enough to eat. Every Cuban child goes to school, as do many adults. Illiteracy has virtually disappeared.

  Many Americans who visit Cuba complain that life there is hard. And it is. But they do not seem adequately impressed by the fact that poverty has been eliminated, or that nearly all the people can read: that a 300,000-copy printing of a new book can be sold out in days. They do not seem awed by a country that provides free medical care to all its citizens, and labors daily to provide decent housing for everyone. They do not say--as I feel--that a hard life shared equally by all is preferable to a life of ease and plenty enjoyed by a few. Standing in line for hours to receive one's daily bread cannot be so outrageous if it means every person will receive bread, and no one will go to bed hungry at night.

  I went to Cuba with a group of African-American artists who were selected by the editors of the Black Scholar and the Cuban Institute for Friendship Among Peoples. We were there for two weeks--not nearly long enough to comprehend all the things we saw. What follows are fragments of my experience, offered with an acute awareness that my view of Cuba is neither definitive nor complete.

  I am sitting in the Pavilion dining room of the Hotel Habana Libre, which, before the revolution, was the Havana Hilton. It is full of people who, twenty years ago, would not have been allowed through the front door. It is as if, in New York, everyone one saw on the Lexington Avenue IRT during rush hour was accustomed to spending the weekend in the Palm Court of the Plaza. I am talking to Black Panther exile Huey Newton and his wife, Gwen. He is saying:

  "If I come back to America talking like Eldridge [Cleaver], I hope black and progressive people renounce and reject me."

  I assure him we will.

  When the Newtons came to Cuba two years ago, they asked to live "like the people." They were sent to Santa Clara, "a very small, country town," says Newton, but a good symbol of how the revolution has changed habits and attitudes in Cuba. He tells me about the Santa Clara park, in which, before the revolution, black people could not walk. And of how this park--now used by all the people--represents the fall of racist institutions throughout the island.

  Unable to live "like the people" on rationed food that invariably ran out before the end of the week (and unable to get the knack of wringing the necks of their own live chickens), the urban-raised Newtons moved eventually to their present suite (two small adjoining rooms, for the family of four) in the Habana Libre. Like the majority of exiles and guests of the Cuban government, they use a special identification card that allows them to eat in the hotel restaurant and to order up quantities of strong Cuban cigarettes and light and dark rum.

  The resemblance of Huey Newton to some large human cat is striking. One feels his bright brown eyes would glow in the dark. His manner is quick, graceful, lithe, and of a sinewy gentleness.

  Before mentioning the chameleonic Cleaver, now a "born again" TV Christian, Newton was speaking of his father, who died shortly after Newton arrived in Cuba.

  Now he says, apologetically, "You would probably not approve of him."

  I realize he is wary of me because I am a feminist. It pains me to assume Newton is not. But, thinking how much easier it is to approve of dead people than of live ones, I shrug. "I'm prepared to like him," I say, puffing on a cigarillo, and hoisting my glass of rum. "Give me his case."

  "We lived on a farm in Louisiana and he did not want my mother to work. He told the white bossman, 'When you send Miss Ann out in the fields to work, I'll send out my wife.'"

  This did not seem impossible to comprehend. We were eating delicious stewed rabbit, like my father used to make. I smiled to think of myself eating rabbit in a fancy Havana restaurant, talking to Huey Newton about whether I approved of his sharecropper father or not. It was a moment.

  "The problem," said Gwen, "was that the choice of not working was not made by your mother."

  "You mean she wanted to work?" I asked.

  "Well, yeah, I guess so," said Huey.

  Suddenly I remembered Louisiana, certainly one of the ugliest American states. Flat, hot, with houses miles apart. Black women and white women might go crazy there from boredom.

  "Well," I said, "I guess I don't approve of your father. I understand, but don't approve. Your father's concern was for his own pride, his rebellion against the white man. It wasn't about your mother."

  Earlier we had been together in their suite. Their two children made a brief appearance. I had brought the family gifts of magazines, books, T-shirt iron-ons for the children. Gwen is a stunning woman, with large, serene black eyes and hair that stands by itself. She and Huey seem to be the only blacks in Havana wearing the Afro hair style. The Cubans apparently consider long hair an expression of antisocial behavior. This is incredible, considering that "longhairs" won the revolution.

  Before I left the United States I had heard ugly rumors about Newton. That he'd been a pimp, and had murdered a young black woman prostitute because she called him a punk; that he'd pistol-whipped his tailor (!), and other such charges.

  To my indirect questions, he responds that he was vilified and framed, probably by the FBI, and that he fled to Cuba to save his life. He will be returning to the United States, however, because he is both homesick and innocent.

  To dissipate the tension that accumulates around this exchange, we talk about trivia: an ideal way to spend an afternoon with exiles who miss their country and who don't speak the language of the country they're in. We discuss movie stars. (He knows some personally, I know none.) Gwen encourages Huey to explain to me the meaning of his favorite movie: it is a Japanese classic called The Forty Outcasts. His eyes become brilliant as he describes the story: it is apparently about the sacrifices involved in maintaining one's honor in a society of men whose rules for membership are patently absurd.

  Our best poets

  write poetry full of holes:

  The women who love women, never tell.

  The men who love men write of wombs.

  The genius who loves both is rendered mute

  by the complexity of cho
ice.

  The black father of white children suffers in silence.

  The mother of the dope fiend is ashamed to reveal her

  shame

  The poetry is full of holes, I say.

  They will not give you life,

  but pseudo-life

  where all halves can be made to fit.

  Is it because they know that even Cuba

  that liberated country

  would tolerate anything

  that helped the Revolution

  except a gay discoverer of a cure for cancer

  or a Jehovah's Witness

  whose musing paradisical agronomy

  would provide milk and honey

  dirt cheap

  for this Promised Land?

  --ruminations of the author

  And the story of the Cuban writer who was living abroad and came home when the Revolution triumphed. The Revolution became the center of his life. He worked as a journalist with great enthusiasm, with great euphoria, writing propaganda for the Revolution. But they found out that he was a homosexual. They didn't want to wound him by any accusation, and they didn't fire him from his job. They just said that he could go on drawing his pay but that he must stop going to the office. He understood why they told him this and became deeply depressed. He was rejected by the Revolution he loved so much. He left Cuba and committed suicide in Rome.

  --Ernesto Cardenal, In Cuba

  We are sitting in a bus outside the Moncada Barracks (now part museum, part school); it was here, in 1953, that the Cuban insurrectionists, led by Fidel Castro, attempted to seize the weapons that would have meant control of the surrounding Oriente Province. They were defeated, temporarily. Fidel fled to the mountains: others were tortured, murdered, or jailed--as Fidel was--after capture.

  The Dramatist in our group declaims dramatically that it is a matter of record that half the city of San Francisco is homosexual. She declares further her intention, because of this threat to her and her children, to move. We are ten black American artists--painters, poets, musicians, novelists. I feel a sad bitterness in the air. Some of us say, with disgust, "Move!" It is not that we are gay; it is probably that we have known the pain of moving into neighborhoods where we were not wanted.

  When I heard that Jehovah's Witnesses are banned in Cuba and considered counterrevolutionary, I did not feel deeply disturbed, though it meant that some of my relatives, as recent converts to this religion, would be unwelcome there. Cuba's government-sanctioned dislike of homosexuals, however, seemed to me unfair and dangerous. An affront to human liberty and a mockery of the most profoundly revolutionary statement in the Cuban Family Code: "All children are equal." Surely homosexuals are born as well as made? One assumes a Jehovah's Witness chooses her or his religion. But if a child is born a homosexual what is to be done about it?

  "Tell us," we ask our hosts, "just what is it about homosexuals that threatens the revolution?"

  "We do not bother them, as you do in New York," they reply. "You'll never hear of homosexuals being beaten up in the street."

  "But you do not like them."

  "We do not condone their actions. We do not approve of them. In Cuba, because of poverty, before the revolution, the Cuban family was nearly destroyed. We believe we must strengthen it."

  "So homosexuals are seen as a threat to the family?"

  "We believe homosexuality is an aberration in nature--and that the more corrupt the society becomes, the weaker the family structure, the more homosexuality perpetuates itself."

  "What are the legal sanctions against homosexuals?"

  "They are not permitted to teach," says one of our interpreters. "And they cannot become doctors. They are not allowed to hold positions in which they can influence youth."

  This is all to our Dramatist's liking. She nods her approval. The rest of us are silent. It is their revolution, after all. Perhaps some of us are chilled, thinking of gay friends back home who would not feel as free as we do, in Free Cuba.

  What Cuba teaches is that revolution is not a flash in the pan of injustice. It is, as Fidel says, "a process." It takes years and years and generations to build a just society. The overthrow of a repressive government is only the beginning of that struggle.

  Everywhere we go, we stress the fact that we are cultural workers, not tourists; that we have come to Cuba to learn, but also to teach. We do not want simply to see films, we want to discuss them with film makers. We don't want simply to visit museums, we want to see art schools. We want to share our poetry and music and painting with the poets, musicians, and painters of Cuba. We are permitted to do this, and spend long afternoons with writers (there is a scarcity of women writers, and we are offered no plausible reasons why this is so), film makers, and musicians. We can see that great efforts have been made to have Cuban art reflect the masses of Cuban people, that the African heritage is given equal time with the Spanish, and that the "dominant culture" is recognized as being a synthesis of the two.

  All of this is developing. It is by no means complete. The status of the arts is analogous to the development of the rest of the country in direction and change. For example: during our first days in Cuba we were dismayed that the inevitable refreshment of rum and sweets offered us was presented by a black waiter; invariably an older person, male or female. What was this? we indignantly asked our Cuban hosts. Though we realized the occupation of waiter is not in itself demeaning, the consistent use of blacks to fill it is. We were told what should perhaps have been obvious: that before the revolution, blacks were disproportionately employed in menial jobs, in which many remained. Before the revolution, they would have been destined to remain in these jobs until they died. Now, everyone, including the black waiters, studies constantly in order to improve their positions. Education is free, and once having prepared and been tested for a higher position, they could take it. But the main thing, our hosts pointed out, was that the revolution made it virtually impossible for any group to be relegated forever to a servitude of any kind.

  When we saw Cuban child-care centers and high schools, we could see that this was true. No distinctions are made between black, brown, and white, or between male and female. All learn to speak languages (including Russian and English), to make computers, to swim, to study math, the dance, music, science, and geography. In their trim school uniforms, it is impossible to tell a child's background. Color remains, but beyond color there is a shared Cuban-ness.

  Watching young black Cubans is exhilarating but, frankly, I also felt bereft. Unlike black Americans, who have never felt at ease with being Americans, black Cubans raised in the revolution take no special pride in being black. They take great pride in being Cuban. Nor do they appear able to feel, viscerally, what racism is. The more we insisted on calling ourselves black Americans and spoke of black culture, the more confused and distant they grew.

  Young white Cubans seem equally unaware of themselves as white. (Though older white Cubans certainly retain the racism they grew up with, the revolution does not permit them to display it, except by attitude. The only people who treated us with the arrogance that in this country one considers racist were some of the senior members of the Union of Cuban Writers and of the Institute of Cuban Films. They seemed annoyed that North American blacks dared to question anything about Cuba--including the absence of women in film-making and writing. Nor did they appear attentive to our carefully documented presentation of the experience of black actors in North American films. It was good to feel that these men represent attitudes that belong to Cuba's past and not to its present or future.)

  At the Lenin school outside Havana, an institution for especially bright pupils, I came face to face with my own prejudice. Our group was taken on a tour of the school, given a glimpse of its large outdoor swimming pools and sports area, and shown photographs of its surrounding cedar fields. (In Cuba, all students, even first graders, work as well as study in an educational plan that is almost exactly like that begun at Tuskegee Institute in t
he late 1880s by Booker T. Washington. Young children raise lettuce; older children raise trees and citrus fruits.) Then we were entertained by what I perceived (with North American eyes, seeing narrowly) as an "integrated" group. Such a group! Black, brown, white, yellow, pink, gold complexions. And such music! Mellow, rhythmic, soulful, lovingly presented. When the group of teen-agers finished, we surged forward to thank them. They were happy, open, expectant. Cuban and human from the blackest to the whitest. And then we presented ourselves as "black" Americans (they presented themselves, unselfconsciously and without words, as Cubans, of course), and their faces changed. For the first time they seemed aware of color differences among themselves--and were embarrassed for us. And I realized that as I had sat listening to them, I had separated them, mentally, into black and white and "mixed," and that I had assumed certain things on the basis of my own perverted categorization. And now I saw that these young Cubans did not see themselves as I saw them at all. They were, like their music, well blended into their culture and did not need to separate on the basis of color, or to present any definition of themselves at all.

  "Of course they know what racism is," their headmaster explained. "They study it in their schoolbooks."

  Eldridge Cleaver makes much of racism in Cuba, and it is useless to claim it does not exist. But the older Cubans, in whom racism is endemic, will be dead someday. Young Cubans will not have the social structures that allow racism to flourish. That is revolution. Not instant eradication of habits learned over a lifetime, but the abolition of everything that would foster those habits, and the creation instead of new structures that prevent them from returning.

  A week before I flew to Cuba, I began to dream about my father. For several nights he appeared in a pose I recognized but could not place: standing by the side of a road in front of a filling station, his hat in his hands, watching me as I moved farther and farther away from him.

  It was not unusual for me to dream about my father: he died in the winter of 1973, but my dreams of him before were solely about an absence of something 1 observed, sometimes in his eyes.

  My father, near his death, was a gaunt, coffee-colored man, with a fine large nose and immense dark and intelligent eyes. All his life he worked for other people; rough, unpleasant labor that forced him (along with a wife and eight children) to subsist on as little as three hundred dollars a year. My father, then, was a poor man exploited by the rural middle-class rich, like millions of peasants the world over. But as a child I was not aware of any others. I thought it was my father's own peculiar failing that we were poor.