Discussion: Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman

Hey beloveds! We’re journeying across oceans in our November book, Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman, which traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade and considers what it means to be a “stranger” in one’s motherland. We’re so pleased to have our discussion hosted by The Sanctuary, an apothecary and wellness studio owned by Black queer women. This is sure to be an evocative read and we’re grateful to be able to process this book in community and in spaces that we’ve conjured and nurtured for our own healing and belonging. Please consider supporting our host by getting a copy of the book from The Sanctuary using this link . Warmly, Jillian Book description: In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, she reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African American history. The slave, Hartman observes, is a stranger—torn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider. There are no known survivors of Hartman’s lineage, no relatives in Ghana whom she came hoping to find. She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way and with figures from the past whose lives were shattered and transformed by the slave trade. Written in prose that is fresh, insightful, and deeply affecting, Lose Your Mother is a “landmark text” (Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams). Getting the Book: Please consider purchasing the book from our host, The Sanctuary. You can have a copy shipped to you or reserved for pick-up using this link . This book is also available at the Oakland Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library. Wanna suggest a book for our reading list? Fill out this Book Recommendation Form.