by Gayl Jones
Directory
Some of the Daughters of Nzingha have asked for a directory listing all the Daughters of Nzingha internationally. Although we would like to accommodate you, for security reasons we are unable to do so. If we were a social club or a political organization, we would print a directory and send it to everybody. The FBI and CIA probably know who we are anyway, but we believe that your unsigned membership cards are sufficient. They are color-coded so that only we know who you are. Please note that your membership cards are valid even if you do not choose to carry them, that is, you do not have to be a card-carrying member of the Daughters of Nzingha to be a Daughter of Nzingha.
Guidelines for Submitting Stories
Send us only the stories you want us to hear.
Note: Your story may already be on file with us if you told it to anybody who might be a Daughter of Nzingha or even a Not for Members Only Daughter of Nzingha.
Notes from the Secret Membership
If you have any ideas for Daughters of Nzingha, please let your Daughters of Nzingha representative know.
Daughter of Nzingha T-shirts are available in all sizes.
Sophia, are you in Russia?
The Fundamental Nature of the New World Africa Woman Lectures. Please send us lecture topics. We also like controversy. You scientists out there, what lecture topics do you have? We do not just want to be lectured to by social sociologists. All lectures are kept in our archives.
The Official Guide to the Daughters of Nzingha is not being published for security reasons.
Ulysses Johnson, write to your girlfriend c/o the Nzingha Bookshop in Kansas City.
Whoever sent us the Spiritual Mother Project documents, we are keeping them in our archives.
Along with the newsletter there was another publication which contained information and an excerpt from the Daughters of Nzingha archives:
FROM THE
Daughters of Nzingha
ARCHIVES
Our archives contain novels, novellas, short stories, journals, plays, poems, screenplays, film treatments, nonfiction and various other documents. The following is an excerpt from one of the manuscripts included in our archives. Our archives contain other Electra manuscripts.
THE MYSTICAL AND PROPHETIC WRITINGS OF ELECTRA
In her “native cultures” (Native Hawaiian, Native American, Native African, Native Spanish, even Native Irish—her maternal grandmother was Irish, born at a time when the Irish were also “niggers” in America, before being allowed to “play white”) Electra might have been considered a mystic or a shaman in such cultures that allow women to be shamans. She had visions, heard voices, had prophetic dreams and intuitions, even practiced an intuitive form of Chinese feng shui—is it a form of Chinese household philosophy? You have probably heard it talked about as it is more well known in the West now and even Western corporations sometimes hire feng shui specialists. It is where things in a household or building must be arranged in a certain order to promote household harmony and well-being. She would have chronic pains. She would be misdiagnosed once as having epilepsy. She would be put on a drug for epileptics, which would do her more physical harm than good. It would be discovered she was not epileptic. Yet, epilepsy was a “name” for what she had. When she was no longer an “epileptic,” no longer taking the drug for epilepsy, there was no longer a name for what she had. Was she just crazy? Was she neurotic? She would be diagnosed as being schizophrenic. There was no way for Western culture to deal with a woman such as Electra but to label her these things. She would defend her own so-called schizophrenia by naming intelligent people who were schizophrenics.
I do not know if she was really schizophrenic or whether this was another misdiagnosis from a culture who couldn’t categorize a woman such as herself in any other way. And schizophrenia was a way not to take her chronic pains seriously, to give her drugs. Could she have healed herself if she had been born into one of her “native cultures” or among their “alternative healers,” or even stayed in the country where she was born in a country town among the healing plants and flowers? Fresh air, spring water, sunshine. I read once of a culture who lived in a certain valley in Mexico, who drank a certain water rich in minerals and nutriments, who breathed unpolluted air, who ate natural and fresh foods and fruits and vegetables and herbs. People in that certain valley were always healthy. It was only when people from that valley would go into the city that they would become sickly and would have to return to that valley to be made well again. Even their bodies, used to the natural medicines, became sick when taking the artificial city medicines. The so-called medicines that made the city people well, or supposedly made the city people well, actually made them sick. They were only made well when they took their own natural medicines and were in their own natural environment. Because my mother’s mother, my grandmother Amanda, for whom I am named, grew her own fruits and vegetables, kept an orchard and a grape arbor, got mineral-rich water from Spring Station or from a well, Electra was mostly well when she lived in the country. Her bouts of sicknesses would seem to occur whenever she’d move to the city. She tells of once living in the city so she could go to school. She became sick. I do know when we moved from the country to the city, she became sick. It is then that she began to develop chronic pains. Was it the city water with its chlorination, was it the polluted air, was it taking Western medicines—Standbacks for headaches, Ex-Lax for constipation, etc.—rather than natural medicines that Amanda knew about and used. (Amanda never took aspirin or other Western medicines, except for Fletcher’s Castoria occasionally. She would probably use such things as codliver oil and other essential, healing oils.) Electra lived for a couple of years as a baby in Indiana with her mother and father, a Native Hawaiian who was also intermixed with Spanish.
Amanda my maternal grandmother (who wrote plays herself and song lyrics, but never published; whose father or grandfather, after Emancipation, founded his own town, purchasing the land from his former slave-owner—I do not say “master”—but who herself worked as a housekeeper and “domestic” to support her fourteen children, except for a time in Indiana during the First World War when she worked at the roundhouse polishing engines) had when I was a baby wanted to adopt me to keep me in the “healing” country. She had not liked our “city house.” Perhaps she had presaged my mother’s physical miseries there, her development of uncontrollable, chronic pains. Her misdiagnoses by medical doctors, maybe even what the medical doctors would eventually do to her. (I had my own mystical experience involving my grandmother, but I won’t detail it here. The Daughters of Nzingha have asked me not to include other details, including human rights abuses, for security purposes.) My mother would not have known about environmental pollutants. Did my grandmother know about them? When such things were even suggested to her Western doctors as possibilities for my mother’s chronic illnesses, they would laugh or dismiss them and prescribe their medicines. Or say the cause was schizophrenia, or even hypochondria. This is not the essay of “Electra’s Adventures with Western Medicine,” although I believe that such an essay should be written. This is told only as a background and context for her prophetic and mystical writings. I have mentioned that Electra’s Native Hawaiian father was intermixed with Spanish (hence her love for both the ukulele and the guitar). I do not know about the other “native cultures,” but I do know that the Spanish have been said to have produced more mystics than any other culture, thousands and thousands of them. There are surely mystics from her other native cultures. The Spanish, of course, because they had “literary mystics” we know more of them, while other cultures’ mystics and mysticism are seen as an indication of their primitiveness rather than an indication of culture.
There are other things that I could say about Electra’s mysticism, but I would probably be labeled schizophrenic myself. Some other things I say in fictional or poetic form in an epic poem for Electra.
A poor black woman born in the South near the beginning of the century—even if that
was not her own sense and vision of herself—would not have been called a mystic or a shaman, but would have been called just plain crazy, or epileptic, or schizophrenic, or whatever. But I think her writings reveal otherwise.
The Prophetic Writings
There are at least four of Electra’s writings, a novel, a screenplay developed from the novel, a short story (listed in New African Women in Literature and available from the Daughters of Nzingha Archives), and an experimental poem. There is still a strange sense of prophecy in these writings and in their very vocabulary and setting. (Additional details omitted for security purposes.)
The Mystical Writings
This section discusses mostly the poetry and song lyrics and the poetics of Electra and their mystical quality and subject matter. It also considers some of her unpublished and unrevised writings that suggest the mystic in their language and vocabulary or in Western tradition “the schizophrenic.” Electra is from the generation of African Americans who would study such things as Latin and recite Latin and Greek literature and the classics. In the structure of some of her poetry and her use of rhyme and subject matter one can see some of these traditions. Her chronic illnesses kept her from pursuing much of her learning and even developing and revising her writing in ways that it could have been developed. However, there is a high-mindedness and love for learning and “cosmic” subject matter that is revealed in her poetry, creative nonfiction, and unrevised writings. There are also the folkloric novels that show the range of her cultural intelligences.
As a student in Middle America and the southern commonwealth, Electra was considered the top student. (She was also noted for her great beauty, which transcended mere physical beauty to Beauty Itself, but our concern here is the intellectual.) She even tells in her autobiography of classes, such as her Latin class, where certain teachers would send her to the library to study, since she already knew the material. In other classes she frequently heard the teachers remark, “Go to the board, [her maiden name].” Having the responsibilities of wife and mother as well as being chronically ill, much of Electra’s intellectual and literary ambitions were unrealized except for the encouragement of editors, readers, listeners, and various others. One has the “sense of possibility” in many of her writings and subject matter, her often apparently simple but deep style. (Electra has an experimental autobiographical book called Think Deep which is an expression we’d often hear her say when things seemed simple at interpretation or surface meaning.)
Some of the works included here are also discussed in a book-length literary study of The Writings of Electra.
The Writings of Electra, in the Daughters of Nzingha archives, include novels, novellas, stories, poems, song lyrics, plays, interviews, screenplays, and film treatments. Photocopies are available from the archives on request. Selected works may also be viewed on the Internet at our ftp site.
Do you have questions about your Nzingha membership? Want to receive another newsletter? Looking to start a business? Want to know when is the next Daughters of Nzingha meeting? Want to buy a T-shirt? Contact:
You-know-who
Secret Statement of Faith Mission
Zurich, Brazil, Morocco & Georgia
Dear Daughters of Nzingha,
Although you may not be a member of the Daughters of Nzingha, which is not an organization nor do we hold meetings, we want to thank you for your spiritual support and for being a womanfriend of one of our members who is featured in the newsletter which we are sending you. We appreciate you.
We hope you like this newsletter. If you have stories, please send them to us. You can also send us stories on behalf of others. (Unsigned for security reasons; we are not just being paranoid.) Should you wish to reach us, please contact your Daughters of Nzingha representative. (Only you know who your Daughters of Nzingha representative is.)
Dear Nzingha Booksellers,
Thank you for your support. We are sending you a copy of our new newsletter and promotional material. You will understand why we have decided not to print our directory. Please freely order books from us and also bound manuscripts and prepublications from our archives. (Unsigned for security reasons; we are not just being paranoid.)
Dear Monkey Bread,
Here is your copy of the newsletter, which you may forward to your womanfriend. We don’t want to send the newsletter to her directly. Some of our womenfriends went to your party and said the watermelon was the best watermelon they’d ever tasted. They were sure it must be a true African watermelon. However, please be advised that the Daughters of Nzingha Newsletter no longer publishes party announcements; these however may be sent to the numerous organizations. If you know of anyone who would make a good keeper of our archives, please let us know. We are especially seeking those who are hidden agenda and conspiracy specialists with a long memory. You may contact me via my e-mail address.
You-know-who-l-am
P.S. The books that you are interested in purchasing are not yet being sold in our bookshop, but you can purchase them from almost any mainstream bookshop.
We cannot answer the questions that you sent us on issues of class and social status as we are not sociologists. However, you may forward your questions to the National Association for Socioeconomic Research or “the New Class Bigots” radio show.
The Goodest Gal in Tulsa by Amanda Wordlaw may be purchased here.
We have on order My Sweet Alabama Newspaperman, Telling Good Love Stories, Sweet Sweet’s New Lover, and Dreaming Denzel.
We are unable to provide you with additional information on The Writings of Electra other than the information available in our Archives or on our ftp site. Yes, we do have certain documents on file, but they are only available to our guerrilla lawyers. Is she someone you think you know?
The organization that you are looking for is:
International New World African Writers and Artists Association
New Africa Corporation of Turtle Island a.k.a. America
Atlanta, GA 30324
Note: This is not a confabulatory organization, so only send them real letters.
Yes, we have received letters from the League of Campus Revolutionaries Reunion Committee asking us not to admit you to the Daughters of Nzingha. They mistook us for an organization and thought that we hold meetings to which you should not be admitted. However, we believe that you are a reformed person now. Even if you aren’t, you do good work with our archives and we like your stories and poems. And so far, you’re the only Daughter of Nzingha who reads and rereads the wisdom books in the Truth Room.
For light reading, however, this is a list of the New World African romance titles we have on order:
Temptation’s Serenade, Forever Sweet Thang, A Beguiling Fugitive Slave’s Refrain, Sweet Sweet for Always Rapsong, Devoted Sincerity Rapsong, Seasons of Love’s Night Magic, Hidden Agenda Conspiracy Love, Intimate Rapsong in Neo-African Ecstasy, Jim Dandy in Love, and Nefertiti Johnson and the Nefertiti novels:
• The Passion of Nefertiti
• Nefertiti’s Promise
• Valentino’s Kiss
• Nefertiti’s Moon
• Sweet Neferiti’s Seductions
• Nefertiti Incognito
Monkey Bread, don’t bullshit us. If you are not requesting this list of books for yourself but someone who is not a Daughter of Nzingha, please let us know.
Also, we know you have been asking about the true identity of Electra. We cannot provide you with that information, nor can we tell you the true identity of Nefertiti Johnson, whether you want this information for yourself or someone who is not a Daughter of Nzingha.
We are adding some of Electra’s maxims to our wisdom books. We are also seeking a curator for the Electra manuscripts. Our curators should have the same qualifications as our archives keepers. Most of our curators are also archives keepers. Monkey Bread, you are the most eclectic of our readers, but we think you are bullshitting us about Nefertiti Johnson. No, Nefertiti Johnson is not Amanda Wordla
w, as she writes all her romance novels using her own name.
Note: The Rapsong novels were originally rhapsody novels.
All books may be ordered by calling 1-800-NWA-4444.
I ain’t as eclectic a reader myself as that Monkey Bread, but that newsletter have kinda whetted my appetite to know the true identity of Electra, ’cause it seem like from reading about her I’ve read her work myself. And like every fan of African-American romances, I wants to know the true identity of Nefertiti Johnson. Anyway, so Delgadina’s sweeping. That was before the time of me receiving that newsletter, but I still wanted y’all to read that newsletter, and if it’s a real newsletter some of y’all might want to send in y’all’s stories. Even if it’s a confabulatory newsletter it might inspire some of y’all. I think it’s a confabulatory newsletter composed by Monkey Bread and pretending to be from the true Daughters of Nzingha myself. I do know that while some of them romance titles by African-American women authors is real, I ain’t never been able to find none of them other titles. To tell the truth, I think it’s a confabulatory newsletter and that it’s really a story written by Monkey Bread but in the form of a newsletter, and that she added that seemingly real letter to herself to make it seem like it were a more realistic story when it is probably more surrealism than reality. And another reason I think that newsletter is confabulatory is because she mentions people in it that I know to be confabulatory theyselves. Them is Mada and Coliene and Paul Condor, ’cause I played them in a play. I played Mada in a play and Monkey Bread played Coliene. That Paul Condor’s name were Paul Konder, but it’s still the same individual. That were the time that I went to Lexington to visit with my cousins and I brought Monkey Bread with me. We went to visit the neighbor woman that wrote poetry and stories and played the piano. She weren’t feeling well, so we told her that we was going to the movies. I don’t remember what movie, but when we told her what movie, she told us we could make our own movie. You know in them days there weren’t mens like Denzel Washington and them other variety of New World African men in the movies, except for Sidney Poitier, whom the girls amongst us all adored—we had all just turned teenagers, you know—even though he were an “older man” we still adored him, although he were never loving any women who resembled us in them movies. I don’t know what movie we said we was going to. We was waiting for her to give us maybe one of them movie cameras, so’s we could pretend we was making us own movie, but instead she give us the script for a little movie. It were really a play, but she said that we could use the words in the dialogue of the play and go out on the patio and pretend we was making us own movie. We didn’t have all the props for the movie, but them we didn’t have, she said, we could pretend was there. We did two movies. One were about a man that kinda reminded me of my uncle Buddy, ’cept his name was Luther, and he weren’t exactly like my uncle Buddy, ’cause he weren’t going about searching for no Unicom Woman to romance. He were on furlough during the Second World War and he come back to this little town to romance his girlfriend, who had the same name of the neighborhood woman who wrote the play, except the character were a character in a play which we made into an imaginary movie. I believe the name of the play were Luther. I believe my uncle Buddy had a friend whose name was Luther though I don’t believe he were the same Luther as the Luther in the play. Monkey Bread and me got to play love interests in that play, and we got a couple of good-looking boys in the neighborhood to play Luther and Joe who were the principal male characters in the play.