The Golden Seeds of Reproductive Justice

I honor the published work, and heart and soul, of Dána-Ain Davis with an interpretation of reproductive visual art.

Seeding Reproductive Justice with Art

In June 2018, when I was on a research trip in Salvador, Brazil, I met up for lunch with my dear friend Ani Ganzala, an amazing Black Brazilian queer artist. Ani brought to the restaurant two of her new artworks for me to peruse. One portrayed two Yoruba deities, Oshun and Iansã / Oyá holding hands. The second (Figure 1) portrayed a Black birthing body with legs wide open, streaming tears of joy and pain.¹ I was drawn to both, but the artwork depicted in the second hit me at the pit of my stomach in a strange way. My gaze upon it felt uneasy. I was uncomfortable with the explicitness of the painting, but I refused to walk away from its breathtaking beauty. I embraced the discomfort and bought it. To me, the beauty and rawness in the art piece loudly communicated Black life beyond the limits of reproductive matters. Its roar was loud. I loved it dearly.

And yet, when I brought it into my home in the United States, I continued to resist absorbing the visual story and its complicated nuances. I kept it rolled and hidden in my closet for nearly two years. I don’t often rush to frame newly purchased art, but this was different. This painting was tucked away with my discomfort in its story. An art piece telling a powerful story of reproductive justice with deep relevance to my work, I denied my spirit any time to ponder its purpose in the world though my spirit was steeping in its offering.  

Earlier that year, in February, Dána-Ain Davis and I both participated in a Wenner-Green Foundation workshop preparing papers on race and reproduction for the special issue of Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, in which her article was published, led by anthropology colleagues and editors Daisy Deomampo and Natali Valdez.² For some time after the workshop, Davis and I exchanged feedback about our work and articles and her book drafts of Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (NYU Press, 2019). From then on, I was teaching her work in my courses nearly every semester and this deep engagement transformed me. I began thinking in new ways about the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and reproduction through obstetric racism, a term she coined. Obstetric racism, Davis writes, “lies at the intersection of obstetric violence and medical racism… [It] is an extension of racial stratification and is registered both from historically constituted stigmatization of Black women and from their recollections of interactions with physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals during and after pregnancy… Obstetric racism is a threat to material life and neonatal outcomes.”³

Ani’s art abolishes at every turn what obstetric racism brings to Black women’s lives. The art emphasizes birthing practices among a beloved community of Black women resisting violence through every stage of birth. The piece signals Black feminist love, care, trust, and collective shared knowledge gained in part through bodily experiences that do not make room for the “historically constituted stigmatization” discussed in Davis’s work. The art urges us to move away from the intersection of obstetric violence and medical racism and to embrace what we already know about collective care and birthing from ancestral practices. Ani’s art helps me and us bring these possibilities of reproductive justice to fruition.

As much as I could see this as I fell deeper into Davis’s work, the artwork remained in my closet. At times, I would pull it out and stare at it to allow myself to feel it. I mean in the sense of feelin. As Bettina Judd reminds us, feelin is rooted in diasporic Black speech. “It encompasses cognitive understanding as well as affective, bodily response to an object. It is different from ‘understanding’ an object, in that feelin brings the subject into active, identity-shaping response… it denotes a moment of self-knowing and experience.”⁴ Judd brilliantly and boldly acknowledges how I now understand the feelin that I sought and struggled with at the sight of Ani’s work. It is not enough to harbor anger and resentment about the injustices of obstetric racism. It was the feelin of reimaging a holistic experience of what Lyndon K. Gill calls the “political-sensual-spiritual” that liberated me slowly while I was writing my own book about Black queer women’s experiences with intersecting prejudices during their gynecological examinations in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.⁵ After all it has given me, I invite you to sit with the feelin generated by Ani’s art and the ways it communicates the work to be done to abolish obstetric racism.

In Figure 1, we see a Black woman crying while pushing her baby into the world. We see the top of the baby’s head with hair at the opening of her vaginal canal. The mother’s face is in agony with flooding tears while on either side of her the others are smiling at the sight of the baby and the mother. The artwork feels to me like a Black feminist collective: Black women nurturing and comforting the mother through her labor pain. Their collective energies of calm, comfort, and assurance and their desire to ensure a safe delivery permeate the image. The Black older woman behind the mother, holding and securing her, caressing her with consolation, evokes power and care. I imagine her whispering, “I got you. Breathe.” All the Black women are reassuring her with trust and love that she is safe. The Black woman behind the birthing person may be her biological mother, doula, or lover; we don’t know. Whether the art was intended to be queer or not, it is liberatory in many nuanced ways.

This aspect of the artistic imagination applies to the ways we value Davis as an advocate and mentor for many midwives and doulas. In Listening to Images (Duke University Press, 2017), Tina M. Campt encourages us to appreciate images for how they move us “toward a deeper understanding of the sonic frequencies of the quotidian practices of black communities,” to literally listen to images.⁶ I listen to this art piece with deep observation and hear Black feminist care on many registers. I connect the art to the radical care—medical, emotional, communal—that Davis conveys in her published work: care apart from and against how the mainstream medical establishment undermines and marginalizes Black women’s nurture as doulas of Black birthing people. I hear the sort of care that Black women collectively manifest for and with each other in tending to Black women’s birthing. I hear care that creates safer reproductive spaces to free Black women’s minds and spirits during their birthing process. I hear care that resists institutional violence and medical racism. I hear a Black women’s cry that screams, “I am safe to cry and feel joy and pain.”

Campt also helps us think about the relationship between the quiet and the quotidian. In Ani’s art, the quiet or silent frequencies are dense with colorful gestures of welcoming care. These gestures manifest the knowledge that Black birthing people’s lives are not safe within the biomedical framework of obstetrical care. I feel the hands of those Black women ready to grab, catch, embrace, and welcome a Black bundle of love without stereotypes and judgment. Listening to the art moves us closer to practicing our freedom with justice.

Three years after purchasing the piece, Ani told me that the painting was inspired by an existing birthing community led by Black women in a different region in Brazil. Ani said she was deeply inspired by the tears of birthing Black women alongside the care and nurture of Black women. In this birthing community, Ani witnessed simultaneous births: multiple Black women giving birth at the same time in community. It was beautiful and powerful. As I listened to Ani’s story, I heard the power of care that Davis charges us to impart into the world. In my mind and heart, the birthing experience must be tightly wrapped by a care of the soul to undo the grip and fear, if only in memory, of reproductive injustice. As Davis writes, “Rarely, if ever, have Black women’s reproductive lives been respected.”⁷ Black feminist scholars have long argued that Black women’s reproductive lives are dehumanized, capitalized, and disposed.⁸ There are not enough of us in the academy to document our claims to these injustices, but Davis offers one valuable model by centering Black women’s stories as evidence of obstetric racism.⁹ In a similar way, even in its stillness, Ani’s art speaks to Black birthing people’s “experiences as sources of knowledge production.”¹⁰ As a Black feminist and cultural anthropologist, Davis reckons with the lack of attention to racism in the scholarly literature in anthropology and beyond, and while I heard the message, I felt its vibrations even more deeply through Ani’s artwork demonstrating that Black women deserve gentle, honorable care and nurture during their experience of childbirth.

Underscoring respect toward Black women’s reproductive lives, Ani’s art invites us to conceptualize Black feminist reproductive justice focused on care and nurture, imagining the process by which Black newborn babies enter the world as the seeds of justice. They should not have to carry such a burden entering the world. But, as Davis reminds us, the burden they carry from the history of obstetric racism has included a history of Black premature birth. Scientific racism during the nineteenth century worked to “manipulate into a racial category the fetus and the prematurely born neonate.”¹¹ Davis examines the reality of Black infant prematurity and links this history to Black babies’ survival entering a world that reduces their existence to stereotypes. The stereotype of Black babies as “super babies” with presumed capacity to overcome biological challenges arising from prematurity in turn enables and justifies medical neglect. Davis raises questions about what birthing spaces and conditions are conducive for healthy birthing outcomes. Ani’s painting depicts one such possibility. For these reasons, the artistic choice to show the baby’s crowning head signaling its arrival is not a minor one. Perhaps some who view the art might be startled by the nakedness of a Black woman’s body for public consumption. Perhaps that was part of my struggle with riding the feelin of the art. But even then, and certainly now, I see a radical, beautiful expression of vulnerability and historical reckoning: changing the story of reproductive violence against Black birthing people. Davis cares deeply about the context that welcomes Black newborns. The art welcomes Black life into the world.

Ani intentionally illustrates the warmth and joy that Black women midwives and doulas feel at the sight of a Black baby being born. The dramatic illustration of the top of the baby’s head with hair bursting through the mother’s vaginal opening elicits a smile from me as a viewer, despite the screaming and crying from the person giving birth. The art abounds with positive gestures and emotions to evoke a feeling of celebration. I hear the other women—“Sis, we got you.”—affirming that Black women’s reproductive lives are worthy of respect and honor. The warmth and joy of the community surrounding the delivery of the baby assure us of calm, experience, and wisdom from our foremothers. As Davis argues, Black babies, not just Black birthing parents, are subject to anti-Black racism. Therefore the healthier, happier deliveries achieved, the stronger is our reproductive justice. Black babies can be seeds of reproductive justice.

Seed. noun. a flowering plant’s unit of reproduction, capable of developing into another such plant (one of a few definitions). verb. sow (land) with seeds; produce or drop seeds as in seed itself; remove the seeds from; give (a competitor) the status of seed in a tournament.¹²

Davis’s work is rooting in the world. A seed produces growth, whether as a plant or flower or tree. A unit of reproduction, it has capacity to upspring new life if nurtured, watered, and harvested under good conditions. Davis’s work is a seed for renewed reproductive justice.

I recall the skyrocketing attention that her 2018 article, “Obstetric Racism,” received. I was in awe to witness how the online views grew exponentially from hundreds to thousands. Periodically, I would take screenshots of the numbers and text them to her, teasing her about the front and center staging of her work. To date, this article has garnered 19,474 views. Not only is this readership high impact but it is no small feat to be the tenth article most widely read in any journal.¹³ Davis, a Black feminist anthropologist and doula, is scattering the seeds of her academic labor and justice praxis like the green seeds that scatter on the floor beneath the birthing parent in Ani’s painting.

The symbolism of green seeds in Ani’s art is noteworthy. We see joyous life scattered from a tree of Black women’s ethical care in reproduction. The seeds in the painting are green and fresh unlike the dried seeds preserved for planting or seeds that have fallen to the ground in fall and perhaps remained dormant or died in winter. Much like the promise of Black life being delivered, the green seeds give hope for vitality. The green foliage can also be appreciated for cleansing and protection. In my religion, Candomblé, an African diasporic religion in Brazil, particular green plants like bailey or basil leaves are used to cleanse the body of negative energy with a green bath.¹⁴ How many ways can the painting cleanse us? How many ways can Davis’s work cleanse us?

As the women beside the birthing parent celebrate her and her baby, we celebrate the sharp impact that Davis’s writing has upon the lives of academics, students, health care providers, doulas, and community organizers who stand at the forefront of caring for and delivering care to Black pregnant women. Celebration is key to Black feminist praxis. And there is no room for failure of care.

Let’s move toward change and dance with Oshun.

Why is the Seed of Reproductive Justice Golden?

Oshun is an African goddess of fertility and reproduction. She is associated with sweet waters, such as rivers and streams, and for giving and taking life. Oshun is a powerful deity concerned more for the lives of birthing people than the offspring. She roams at the bottom of rivers awaiting a chance for birthing people to give birth. A highly revered deity or orisha across Africa and the African diaspora, from Cuba to Brazil to Haiti, Oshun is a symbol of reproductive life. Let’s contemplate with imagination how Oshun bestows upon us an African diasporic pathway toward a reproductive justice that sows golden seeds. What would Oshun need for her golden seeding to work toward reproductive justice? What are her instruments to abolish obstetric racism? Why is the seed of reproductive justice golden? Her golden mirror.

Figure 2 was created and given to me by Ibraim Nascimento, another dear friend and amazing Brazilian visual artist. The yellow and gold in this painting are the central colors associated with Oshun. They represent her life source. If we look at Figure 1 again, the Black birthing person is gripping yellow curtains. There is a yellow candle on the right edge of the painting. This may represent the candles lit for Oshun by the ashe (good energy) religious community. I personally burn a yellow candle for Oshun at my alter. Oshun e presente (Oshun is present) in Ani’s art. She is sowing her golden seeds for reproductive justice.

When Oshun manifests herself in the world, she dances with the mirror. Oshun is known for using her mirror to express her femininity and vanity. She loves to wear gold jewelry and ornaments. She always dances with a golden mirror. And yet a mirror may not be a true reflection of what is there or what is seen. Mirrors may reflect the best in us, they may show the worst in us, or they may distort. So Oshun always dances with her mirror. Her dance with the mirror is not intended to entertain but to spark light within us to reveal the hidden energies in ourselves. Oshun’s metaphysical intentions are not to walk away from us without appreciation. She yearns to be celebrated without judgement. Oshun presents her golden mirror to inspire us to become who we are and be in our purpose. Yes, Oshun needs the mirror to affirm her vanity.

From my Yoruba perspective, Oshun wants to see what is being birthed into the world over and over: our inner selves. She dances with our deeper archetypes for this justice work. Oshun always looks at her reflection in the mirror. The mirror returns a deep reflection that pours out into our justice work. What is that reflection? More than feminine beauty, it is justice and care. Oshun is justice and care. That is her beauty.

Ibraim depicts Oshun in traditional ways with strength. When the orishas dance for the public in a religious space, most wear a head crown with a partial facial covering. The head crown symbolizes, among other things, protection of their heads. The partial facial covering allows them to rest their closed eyes and keep hidden from the public. In Ibraim’s art, Oshun is wearing her conventional head crown and facial covering. Oshun’s golden crown, like her mirror, represents her power as a female warrior of reproductive justice and queen of women’s sexuality and sensuality. The wide, graceful dress in Ibraim’s art signifies the traditional clothing that Oshun would wear during a public celebration within religious spaces, particularly for the Candomblé religion in Brazil. In Candomblé, a female orisha dances for the public wearing a large skirt with an undergarment that keeps the outer skirt elevated. It is said that the large and roomy clothing allowed for Brazilian Black women in Candomblé to hide their orishas under their skirts while visiting the Catholic church. The dramatic elegance in the art evokes these traditional practices and moves us beyond them. Ibraim brushes the canvas with wide hues of gold and yellow. It makes a dramatic take-over of space as it should. Gold is a dominant symbol for Oshun that transcends all ways of knowing and being in the world.

Golden: adj. 1. colored or shining like gold; made or consisting of gold; 3. (of a period) very happy and prosperous.¹⁵

Golden brings to mind the richness of life, its deepest shade. Oshun’s love for gold is not just about her vanity and attraction to material adornments. Oshun’s love for gold is a love for life itself. Gold symbolizes the best qualities of life: longevity, joy, and bliss. For me, this is the essence of Davis’s work. Davis’s work holds sacred the rebirth of Black women’s lives when giving birth to new life in the “afterlife of slavery.”¹⁶ Amidst the socio-historical situatedness of obstetric racism lies the sacredness of birthing Black life.¹⁷ Oshun’s golden mirror is also a weapon. African deities protect and defend during war and conflict. Oshun’s mirrors hold power to strike down injustice. It is not one of the master’s tools, which I imagine would bring a smile to Audre Lorde. The golden mirrors that aim to abolish anti-Black racism hold sacred the birthing of Black life. Oshun is the gold in the seed that Davis sows for reproductive justice.

Ani Ganzala and Ibraim Nascimento are Brazilian artists from the African diaspora. The paintings featured in this essay dedicated to Davis’s work and practice communicate the power of leaning into ancestral knowledge and practices. Ibraim’s art features Oshun in her glorious essence and aesthetic while Ani’s art hits at Oshun’s presence to protect our reproductive lives with the yellow candle, yellow curtains, and the practice of birthing. The collective labor of love is guided by Oshun. I honor Dána-Ain Davis and her work on obstetric racism by giving tribute to Oshun and the ways she symbolizes reproductive life in all its sentiments and practices. Oshun’s love for fertility, reproductive organs, pregnancy, and birthing produces golden seeds for reproductive justice work. Davis’s work radiates with Oshun’s golden hues to awaken within the world the value and beauty of birthing Black life. Her work is golden for this new day across the world.

If Oshun was a Doula: A Poem

Oshun loves Dána-Ain Davis.
Dána-Ain Davis must be a daughter of Oshun.
It is said that Oshun’s strength lies in her relentless care during birthing.
Instead of raising her own birthed children, she raises a community.
Her maternal nature is justice work.
She sees motherhood as giving life into the community.
If Oshun was a doula, then doula work is our ancestral duty.
Oshun’s power over our reproductive female anatomy is the light of destiny.
A destiny that celebrates Black women’s reproductive bodies.
And Black queer bodies and their reproductive lives.
Obstetric racism exists. Do not deny its existence.
Black women tell us that it they feel it. They see it. They experience it.
Let’s listen and respond.  Black women must be heard.
We must no longer allow for anti-Black racism to be carried by and reside within the womb.
African Diasporic knowledge abolishes obstetric racism.
Oshun loves Black women and female reproductive bodies, unconditionally.
A myth tells the story that a King once asked Oshun for help to try to cross a turbulent river.
In exchange, Oshun demanded him to leave his pregnant wife with her to give birth.
He crossed the river leaving his wife behind to give birth at the bottom of the river.
But when he returned looking for his wife and child and to cross the river again,
Oshun only gave him the baby and not the mother.
Why did Oshun keep the mother under the river to herself?
She did not trust him with her care,
Like the mistrust of obstetric racism as a systemic problem.
If Oshun was a doula, she would tell us to care for the womb that inspires the world.
If Oshun was a doula, she would demand radical birthing care.
If Oshun was a doula, obstetric racism would not exist.
Oshun is a doula.
We know this because Dána-Ain Davis is a doula.
None of this is possible without community practice.
Come together and hold hands.
This is anti-obstetric racist work.
Plant the golden seed of reproductive justice.
Spread the golden seeds that eradicate obstetric racism.
Dána-Ain Davis’s works on obstetric racism are the golden mirrors reflecting this justice work.
For these reasons, Oshun loves Dána-Ain.
Dance with Oshun.

Works Cited

Campt, Tina M. Listening to Images. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

Cooper Owens, Deirdre. Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017.

Davis, Dána-Ain. Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth. New York: New York University Press, 2019.

___. “Obstetric Racism: The Racial Politics of Pregnancy, Labor, and Birthing.” Medical Anthropology:Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Ilness. 38, no.7 (2018): 560-573.

Falu, Nessette. Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth Making in Brazil. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023.

Gill, Lyndon K. Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

Goes, Emanuelle Freitas. “Um Giro Epistemológico, Contribuição da Teoria Interseccional nos Estudos sobre Direitos Reprodutivos.” In Saúde-Doença-Cuidado de Pessoas Negras: Expressões do Racismo e de Resistência, edited by Leny A. Bomfim Trad, Hilton P. Silva, Edna Maria de Araujo, Joilda Silva Nery, and Alder M. De Sousa, 127–48. Salvador, Brasil: EDUFBA, 2021.

Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007.

Judd, Bettina. Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2023.

Morgan, Jennifer. Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Pagnocca, Tiago Santos, Sofia Zank, and Natalia Hanazaki. “’The plants have axé’: Investigating the Use of Plants in Afro-Brazilian Religions of Santa Catarina Island.” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 16, no. 20 (April 25, 2020). https://ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13002-020-00372-6.

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[8] Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Deirdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017); Nessette Falu, Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth Making in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023); Emanuelle Freitas Goes, “Um Giro Epistemológico, Contribuição da Teoria Interseccional nos Estudos sobre Direitos Reprodutivos,” in Saúde-Doença-Cuidado de Pessoas Negras: Expressões do Racismo e de Resistência, eds. Leny A. Bomfim Trad, Hilton P. Silva, Edna Maria de Araujo, Joilda Silva Nery, and Alder M. De Sousa, 127–48 (Salvador, Brasil: EDUFBA, 2021).

1. I sway between using language of Black women and Black birthing people to acknowledge that Black queer and nonbinary people give birth and to honor the identity of Black women in general and central to Dána-Ain Davis’s research. [↩]
2. Dána-Ain Davis, “Obstetric Racism: The Racial Politics of Pregnancy, Labor, and Birthing.” Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 38, no. 7 (December 12, 2019). [↩]
3. Ibid., 2-3. [↩]
4. Bettina Judd, Feelin: Creative Practice, Pleasure, and Black Feminist Thought (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2023), 9. [↩]
5. Lyndon K. Gill reinterprets Audre Lorde’s notion of the erotic as a “trinity of political-sensual-spiritual desire.” I understand Ani’s art to imbue political, sensual, and spiritual desire for reproductive justice. See Lyndon K. Gill, Erotic Islands: Art and Activism in the Queer Caribbean (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018), 11; and Nessette Falu, Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth Making in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023). [↩]
6. Tina M. Campt, Listening to Images (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 4. [↩]
7. Dána-Ain Davis, Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (New York: NYU Press, 2019), 9. [↩]
8. Jennifer Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Deirdre Cooper Owens, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017); Nessette Falu, Unseen Flesh: Gynecology and Black Queer Worth Making in Brazil (Durham: Duke University Press, 2023); Emanuelle Freitas Goes, “Um Giro Epistemológico, Contribuição da Teoria Interseccional nos Estudos sobre Direitos Reprodutivos,” in Saúde-Doença-Cuidado de Pessoas Negras: Expressões do Racismo e de Resistência, eds. Leny A. Bomfim Trad, Hilton P. Silva, Edna Maria de Araujo, Joilda Silva Nery, and Alder M. De Sousa, 127–48 (Salvador, Brasil: EDUFBA, 2021). [↩]
9. Davis, Reproductive Injustice, 10. Anthropologist Leith Mullings deeply influenced Dána-Ain Davis’s intellectual formation. Leith was her mentor. May you rest in peace, Leith (1945-2020). [↩]
10. Ibid., 10. [↩]
11. Ibid., 37. [↩]
12. Oxford Languages, s.v. “seed,” accessed June 15, 2021, https://www.google.com/search?q=seed+definition. [↩]
13. Davis, “Obstetric Racism.” [↩]
14. Tiago Santos Pagnocca, Sofia Zank & Natalia Hanazaki, “’The plants have axé’: investigating the use of plants in Afro-Brazilian religions of Santa Catarina Island,” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 16, no. 20 (April 25, 2020). https://ethnobiomed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13002-020-00372-6. [↩]
15. Oxford Languages, s.v. “golden,” accessed June 17, 2021, https://www.google.com/search?q=golden+definition. [↩]
16. Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007), 6. [↩]
17. Davis, Reproductive Injustice, 9. [↩]