by Ashley M.
Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment
Edited by Carole Boyce Davies
241 pages. Ayebia Clarke Publishing . $24.95.
Picture this. It is 1948 and at the age of 23, your citizenship is denied to you because of your political activities since you were 18. How would you feel?
Claudia Jones, activist of Trinidadian origin, was outspoken as early as when she was in Grade 4! Yet, her deportation case was a big part of her life because it was the first time she was arrested. Jones knew that she was a thorn in the side of racist legislators in 1930s USA: “I was deported because I urged the prosecution of the lynchers rather than the prosecution of the Communists and other democratic Americans who opposed the lynchers, big financiers and war mongers, the
real
advocates of force and violence in the United States”.
Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment is a collection of the works of Claudia Jones, who created a ripple effect for many women of colour in the United States as an intellectual pioneer — daring to speak out against racism, sexism and class exploitation. The book, edited by Carol Boyce Davies, also highlights Jones’s life story through her many writings, essays, and poetry, which reflect how her personal experiences led her to rise up and resist. Her poetry was an outlet of creative resistance, capturing intense emotions that could only be expressed outside of political, formal writing and speeches.
The work and life of Jones are relevant to us today, as many families come to North America in search for a better life for their families, often leaving many of their loved ones behind to start anew, thinking this is the land of the “free.” And yet, we are constantly faced with a reality similar to the one Jones faced as a youth of colour growing up in a time when people were lynched for being Black in a “free and democratic” USA.
Although racism today isn’t as direct and overt as it was in her day, the word multiculturalism has blinded us from the truth that Jones spoke about concerning issues of human rights and peace. She became a political prisoner for speaking out during an International Women’s Day speech. This is not too different from the case of Wendy Maxwell, a non-status queer Black woman who was apprehended at an International Women’s Day event in 2005. Maxwell refused to be quiet and was active as a community organizer. For that, she was deported despite the threat of significant danger to her in Costa Rica.
Claudia Jones constantly pointed out that the oppression of women of colour was intensified because these women were the workers: not only the most underpaid and underprivileged, but also often the main breadwinners of the families – far more so than white women. Black women were seen as inferior and as slaves, yet also as a radical threat to the white upper-classes as they could mobilize their communities. Despite their status as amongst the most oppressed segment of society – workers, Black, and women – Jones notes how they were largely shut out of the mostly white and upper-class suffragist movement, as well as the more white and more middle-class communist movements in North America, which were, by the 1930s, beginning to surrender their revolutionary principles and becoming increasingly distant to the working class.
This is an important book for all women and men to read because of how Claudia’s words still ring true. This memoir of Claudia’s work allows us a glimpse into the life a woman who caused a lot of uproar in her time and who continues to inspire many of us now.
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