2002 press release
The United States edition of dark mother was launched March 1, 2002 at the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, a graduate university whose mission is education integrating mind, body, and spirit, with an art exhibit on themes of the dark mother. At CIIS, Lucia is a professor of Philosophy and Religion in the Women's Spirituality program. Some of her students call her an "intellectual strega nonna" because she insists they know the literature of the world as well as the cultures of their own grandmothers, and that they be rigorous academic as well as creative scholars. At CIIS, scholars are encouraged to be responsible public intellectuals, particularly now in our time of unprecedented world crisis. In dark mother, Lucia upturned several paradigms of western dominant culture. She brought together evidence of geneticists, archeologists and findings of feminist cultural historians verifying that central and south Africa is not only the birthplace of humankind, but site of the oldest veneration we know that of a dark mother. After 50,000 BCE african migrants took their signs of the dark mother the color ochre red (connoting blood of childbirth and menstruation) and the pubic V to all continents. For this large story, grounded on the evidence of science and cultural history, Lucia has chosen her ancestral Sicily as case in point. Sicily's oldest people were from Africa (as were earliest ancestors of all peoples see map of migrations out of Africa). Also Malta, where sicilians migrated 5200 BCE and helped build the impressive megalith civilization of the dark mother of Malta. Also Canaan in west Asia (present day Lebanon and Palestine) whose african/semitic traders took icons and images of the dark mother to Sicily and all over the known world in the 1500 years before Jesus. A cultural historian who likes to decapitalize, Lucia follows the dark mother in stories of christian saints, rituals of her sicilian grandmothers, persecution of european others (women, jews, moors, other heretics) and in her own education/experience as a sicilian/american woman. She hopes to stimulate readers to track their own diasporas which, in her hypothesis, will lead them to Africa, and to the dark mother's values justice with compassion, equality, and transformation values she considers life-saving at this point in history. Dark mother is the third volume in a trilogy. Liberazione della donna. Feminism in Italy (Wesleyan University Press, 1986, 1988) won an American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation in 1987. Black Madonnas. Feminism, religion, and politics in Italy (Northeastern University Press, 1993, iUniverse reprint 2000, was published in Italy at Bari by Palomar Editrice in 1997, winning a Premio Internazionale di Saggistica Salvatore Valitutti in 1998). Recently dark mother received Serpentina's 2002 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Woman-Centered Literature. The italian edition of dark mother will be distributed all over Europe, and elsewhere. Since U. S. publication, dark mother has been promoted by the African American International Educators Hall of Fame (into which Lucia was inducted in 1996), Chi Gallery in Oakland and the Color of Women gallery in San Francisco. Alice Walker recommended dark mother in her San Francisco spring 2002 lecture on religion. Chicana educators invited Lucia to present a conference paper on dark mother at the University of Texas. Olympia Dukakis praised the book's scholarship and commitment. The Women's Spirituality program of CIIS recommended dark mother to all women's studies classes in the United States. Global Exchange in Berkeley asked Lucia to do a Mother's Day signing. East-West book shop, reconciling eastern and western philosophies, invited her to present dark mother. In September 2002 the East Bay chapter of NOW sponsored a reading at Momma Bears. Recently a network of italian/american scholars announced the completion of Lucia's trilogy, with contents of and kudos for her three books. On Friday, October 25, the Istituto di Cultura Italiano and Museo Italo Americano have scheduled Lucia to speak at the Museo, Fort Mason, San Francisco, on black madonnas and the dark mother of Sicily. A groundbreaking work of staggering importance! Dark mother is deeply moving and provocative. Ultimately it is a book that will transform the way we think about gender, race, class, spirituality, and cultural legacy... Important contribution to the scholarship of women￭s spirituality... an equally invaluable record of mother-loss and treatise on humankind￭s cellular longing for reunion with the feminine principle of divinity. Lucia creates our nest, building with the love of the mother, the stories of the grandmother, the eternity of the great grandmother, and even the evidence of the scientists... This book brings all this together in a home that makes true all of the connections that we feel deep inside when we can￭t sleep at night and we look at the stars. . . . thought provoking. . . wisdom. . . Eurocentric history would have us accept the fact that civilization was invented by the Greeks and the Romans and before the 5th century BCE only barbarians and primitive tribes wandered through the wilderness. Well, maybe the ancient Egyptians were civilized but we￭d better believe they were white men who built those pyramids. . . . I'm painting my images of the goddess black. . . . wonderful book. . . learned so much. . . I, too, believe in feminine theology, particularly . . . equality, justice, compassion and transformation. As far as the [black] Madonna in Le Puy, France, our community was founded there in 1636. . . . Lucia has brought forth her vision of the dark mother CIIS Spiritual Journeys study tour, Dark mother in Spain, The 2003 tour to Spain will focus on basque and catalan regions of the north, and Andalucia in the south. In the basque region, the concentration of Rh negative blood type points to unvanquished continuity with prehistory. Prehistoric art will be studied in the Altamira caves and the art legacy of prehistory to us will be viewed in the works of Picasso, Dali, Miro, Gaudi, in the stunning new Guggenheim museum at Bilbao. Social and economic legacy of prehistoric and historic migrations from Africa to Spain and elsewhere will be contemplated at the showplace of democratic communalism at Mondragon. Political implications of the dark mothers values will be considered in the fierce resistance to fascism in basque and catalan regions during the 20th century Spanish Civil war. In the magical city of Barcelona, the religious and spiritual legacy of african prehistory will be contemplated in the black madonna of Montserrat, and the broken tiles of Gaudi's unfinished church, La Sagrada Familia. In Andalucia we shall explore the central suppressed belief of jews, christians, and african moors in ubiquitous aniconic signs of the dark mother color ochre red, pubic V, and the double yoni (star of David)... as well as in the many figurines of Tanit of Carthage, Africa brought by phoenician canaanite traders and the many black madonnas of Andalucia. The brilliant andalusian civilization of diverse peoples was harmonious until the limpiezza or ethnic cleansing of church and state in Spain and the reconquest, culminating in the fateful year 1492 and subsequent inquisition attempt to obliterate all heresies, including the heresy of the dark mother. The tour has been timed to coincide with carnival rituals 2003 (March 3, 4, 5) which can be viewed as enactment of suppressed beliefs. Tour participants are invited to contribute to Lucia's anthology in progress, She is Everywhere! March 1 Arrival in Barcelona. Welcome dinner. Discussion of our particular interests. Land package: presently being costed. Included: accommodations at good hotels (double occupancy; single supplement extra), two meals a day, driver and air conditioned bus, lectures and discussions on the bus and after dinner. Guided tours of the Alhambra, et al. Not included: air fare (which is inexpensive before April) and required CIIS tuition fees. Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum has a Ph.D. in European and United States History. She has traveled to Spain several times (most recently an exploratory trip in June-July 2002), understands, reads, and speaks spanish (although her spoken spanish sometimes skirmishes with italian). Interested tour participants should contact Women￭s Spirituality Desk at CIIS or Lucia at telephone and email above. Discount for early bird enrollment. ### Lucia is considering a 2004 Looking for Tanit tour to Tunis (ancient Carthage) in Africa Tanit's home, african base of phoenician/canaanites, and place of emigration of some of Lucia's sicilian relatives. Tour will include island of Ibiza offshore Spain, where there is a treasure trove of Tanit and phoenician/canaanite evidence. This tour will dovetail with Lucia￭s contemporary research on african/semitic carthaginians who founded trading stations in her ancestral Sicily (Palermo, Modica, et al) as well as in Spain, France, Sardinia, et al. |
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