An Emotional Conference on Women, Myth

Surely few conferences convened in academe--after a familiar format of scholars delivering papers, moderators fielding questions and comments from the audience--are the emotional workout that the one held by UCLA’S Center for the Study of Women was last weekend.

It set out to be a conference. It wound up a happening.

“The Dark Madonna: Women, Culture and Community Rituals” was the theme of this first public effort of the newly established center, approved in 1984 as an interdisciplinary organized research unit of the university.

Response Called Overwhelming

Partial funding was obtained from the California Council for the Humanities, the flyers went out and, to the organizers’ surprise, the response was overwhelming. As people began arriving at Dickson Auditorium Friday evening, Karen Rowe, center director, said more than 600 had pre-registered. More overwhelming, however, was the response of those intrigued, excited people at the opening session. It was a diverse group of all colors, cultures, ages, religions, sexes and sexual persuasions and life styles that had been drawn to the topic.

For a few tense moments at the close of that session, it seemed the whole innovative effort would end prematurely in a shambles, or as one man walking out declared, “a sad blunder.”

The brochure had promised the following: “In mythic images of women, we see ourselves reflected. The Dark Madonna symposium will identify goddesses and madonnas from different times and cultures, particularly figures representing women of color. Speakers will consider the origins and transformations of spiritual images of women, the community rituals that celebrate their powers, and the contemporary meanings of female icons in multi-ethnic cultures and in women’s lives.” Next to the printed message, a logo of a Negroid-featured Madonna and child.

Speakers Tackle Racism

Imagine the audience’s surprise then, and discomfort, and consternation as the speakers at the opening session turned out to be six white women whose presentations contained either no reference to the Dark Madonna or tangential ones at best. Considerable reference was made, however, to racism in U.S. society and some of these women’s struggles in coming to terms with it.

The evening focused on the political uses of art by women, specifically within the context of the 19th-Century U.S. suffrage movement and the re-emergence of the women’s movement in the ‘60s. Scholars read papers and showed slides of women, mostly upper-middle class, liberal or iconoclastic white women, engaging in rituals, tableaux, pageants and, in later times, performance art.

There was a reason for this: The symposium was conceived as part of a project the center is engaged in, which will culminate in the spring with performance art directed by feminist artist Suzanne Lacy in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden on campus.

Between the symposium and the performance, the center, and some on-and-off campus co-sponsors, will conduct small group discussions where women will explore women’s relationships across racial and ethnic barriers. There was mention of this near the bottom of the brochure, but most arrived unaware of any larger context and it was not fully explained until Saturday when Friday’s blow-up required a response.

On Friday night, the first to pose a question from the audience was Esther Broner, a writer from Wayne State University who would speak the following day on modern rituals, especially women’s adaptations of Jewish rituals.

Describing herself as a little confused, she asked why there had been no mention of black women. Were there no rituals, or pageants or tableaux they had participated in?

“I hunger for this knowledge,” she said.

“Well, God bless you ma’am. God bless you,” a black man seated behind her spoke out.

Indeed, a panelist answered, there had been black pageants put on by churches, camps and women’s clubs.

Next, a Latina stood and spoke up: “I drove a long ways to get here. I was very excited about learning about the Dark Madonna and the opening session has six white women up there.”

Looking somewhat stunned at the direction things seemed to be taking, Karen Rowe answered that there had been no attempt to balance each session, but to balance the conference as a whole. She pleaded, as did the others, that they not be judged by one session. There would be much discussion of women of color, just as there would be panelists of all races.

From a white woman: “Is this really going to be about white women’s pain in dealing with racism? I mean, is that why we’re here?”

The audience was not through: Charges ranged from one outraged black man who took everyone to task for leaving out reference to the Catholic Church, “the treasurer of the black Madonna,” to the incensed response from a goddess worshiper from a local coven who shouted across the room that the church had co-opted that image to oppress women.

In general, there was as much pain as anger in people’s voices, both those in the audience and on the stage. No one had come looking to pick a fight. But they had come with high and specific expectations.

‘Political Oversight’

Finally, Suzanne Lacy, whose work has often involved interracial explorations, said, “There has been a strategic error and a deep political oversight. One of the problems is the racism evident in the choice of the panel. Also, we’re beginning to explore very new material. This kind of confrontation will probably occur again tomorrow. It’s important to acknowledge the criticism, react, and act. It’s important to stay and stand up.”

Her words proved prophetic. Most people did return the next day. As promised there were black, Chicana, Native American and Asian panelists, and much discussion of the history and significance of the Dark Madonna.

The black Madonna of Montserrat in Spain, who continues to be revered by the Catalans, was discussed by historical anthropologist William Christian and historian Mary Elizabeth Perry. The faithful have nicknamed her “La Moreneta,” the dark one, having made her one of them. Scholars and churchmen however tend to dismiss her darkness, seeing it as an embarrassment or as insignificant.

Joking somewhat about the tendency of some scholars to attribute the darkness of the black Madonnas found throughout Europe to centuries of candle smoke rather than design, social anthropologist St. Clair Drake talked about the gradual “attenuation of blackness.”

Using the word Negro deliberately, he said, to connote the characteristics of African people, he contended that “Negro women had special exotic, mystical, moral and aesthetic significance for centuries in Europe.” Early Christianity had its roots in North Africa, where the Egyptian goddess Isis, “who looks like a Negro woman when she is found on the Nile,” was worshipped. The Madonna, brought to Europe from Africa, borrowed from that earlier image. Gradually, he said, the blackness of the features became more Caucasian as people tended, as they do in all cultures, to remake them in their own image. That was not racist, he said. Racism came later, with the expansion of Europe and the beginning of the African slave trade. That is one reason why, he said, the black Madonna was not exported to the New World.

Chicana scholars Tey Diana Rebolledo and Shirlene Soto talked of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the dark virgin of Mexico, the positive role model held up to young Mexican and Chicana women. And they spoke of the much maligned La Malinche, the Indian woman sold into slavery by her parents who later served as Cortes’ interpreter and mistress. She has gone down in history as a traitor to her race, seen as one who cooperated in her own rape. The conquest of the Indians by the Spanish is often blamed on her, and, Rebolledo said later, a popular epithet to hurl at a Chicana feminist is “La Malinche.”

Chicana writers have been attempting to retrieve her reputation, Rebolledo said. They have been understanding her as a survivor, and one who, by casting her lot with Spain, ensured the survival of the race which could have been exterminated completely. Modern Chicana writers have sometimes linked her to the curandera , or healer, one who can heal but has the capacity for death and destruction.

There was more to discuss: Secret religious societies of Sea Island coastal Negroes, deriving from West African rituals, where women were the custodians of the rituals. Buddhist images of the feminine that go beyond the maternal to represent perfection, wisdom and bliss. Native American goddesses whose power extends far beyond that of a passive fertility figure to that of a “creatrix” who holds the primary potency in the universe. Jewish women in New York creating rituals, inviting black women to join them in the mikvah, traditionally the ritual bath taken after menstruating, where together they cleansed themselves of racism.

The self-hatred and self-love of Afro-American women--”queen, sex object, house slave, nanny, mama, bitch, girl--we’ve survived this all,” Mary Jane Hewitt, of the Museum of African American Art told the audience before showing slides of black women represented in art and reading poetry.

It was, in short, a rich, full banquet of information and speculation, almost impossible to assimilate in one sitting. Yet the audience was hungry for it, fascinated, frustrated. If anything, the hunger to explore the topic of women’s significance and role in worship and spirituality was such that even this fare left them wanting.

Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, director of UCLA’s Afro-American Studies Program, handled a question/comment session with diplomacy. Comments brought not only applause but the hoots, yelps and “Hos” and “Right ons” that characterize many a modern audience.

Hindu Goddess Kali

Why had they left out the Hindu goddess Kali? Had they considered the black Madonna might trace its origins to the human race’s common beginning in East Africa? Didn’t they know California was named after Calafia? Why no mention? (She was a black Amazon, another called out.)

“I think the problem for me is the emphasis on the Madonna and not the goddess,” a woman who later identified herself from a local coven said. “Madonnas and virgins came along (later in history) and were a way of denaturing the goddesses. They were co-opted and used to oppress women.”

To that a black woman said, “You don’t like the virginity stuff, you like the stuff about getting on with the power, I know. But let’s be willing to look at all of it. If we find there really was such a thing as virgin birth, you might find you can do it, too.”

To the hilarity and cheers she laughingly protested, “That does not mean I’m encouraging us to do that. Let’s just be open and not limit ourselves.”

It had been a full and heavy day, and Jean Shinoda Bolen, a Jungian analyst who has written “Goddesses in Everywoman,” summarized it for them: “In this symposium on the black Madonna, we’re going back. We’re reclaiming what we know of the power of the dark goddess . . . We’ve been told women are a group that has no history. We are claiming our history. We don’t have to reinvent. We have to remember and reclaim the power that is within us. It is in those real dark nights of the soul. That’s when you go down into the cave and discover the reality. You leave, still facing life in the morning, but strengthened by the experience in the dark.”

Appropriately enough, it ended at night in a ritual.

“In many cultures the night belongs to the female deities,” they were reminded by Ariska Razak of a group called Women’s Quest.

Many felt awkward or apprehensive about participating in any ceremony, but they let Hallie Austen Iglehart, Bolen and Razak, all from Women’s Quest, lead them out into the dell of the sculpture garden. Accompanied by Lisa Theil’s drum, several women carrying bowls of burning sage and a little chanting, they gathered around the platform. Solemnity, awkwardness and humor were inextricably blended as they touched Mother Earth and remembered their mothers, grandmothers and role models, calling out Tina Turner, Eleanor Roosevelt and Lizzie Borden into the night.