Credit: Carla Van Wagoner | Dreamstime.com

It is fair to say that Black women are the mothers of the world.

At the same time, the empires that rule and govern this world have never had the well-being of Black women and children in mind. Black motherhood and the experience of birthing others into the specifically dangerous American context are revolutionary acts. 

Those revolutionary acts are dominating the conversation around the Academy Awards nominations for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. Teyana Taylor and Wunmi Mosaku received their first Oscar nominations for their contrasting portrayals of Black mothers in “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners.” Each of their respective roles addresses the complexities of Black motherhood, such as the loss of self after the birth of a child, the change in partner dynamics post-birth, and the unfortunate reality of being separated from your child — but in wildly different ways.

The idea of motherhood as revolution is the guiding light that informs Taylor’s portrayal of Perfidia Beverly Hills in Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic “One Battle After Another.” The character is a beacon whose commitment to her cause is brighter than the white lights of the Hollywood sign, but even as she lives up to her revolutionary ideals, she stands in contrast to other Black radical mothers. 

Take the Black Liberation Army leader Assata Shakur, for example. Shakur was a source of inspiration for Taylor as she prepared for her role. The night before the release of “One Battle After Another,” Shakur died in Cuba.

From Taylor’s perspective, Shakur was an unapologetic Black woman who was adamant and steadfast in her politics. Yet through the eyes of those who have studied Shakur’s work, particularly her autobiography, the lines about Shakur’s relationship with motherhood are in direct opposition to Perfidia’s decision to abandon Willa, her one and only daughter. 

“And I’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born,” she said. “I’m going to live and I’m going to love Kamau, and, if a child comes from that union, I’m going to rejoice. Because our children are our futures and I believe in the future and in the strength and rightness of our struggle.” – Assata Shakur

Perfidia’s story of motherhood, in which she abandons both her family and a revolutionary group in favor of a life of exile in Mexico, is one characterized as selfish. These are not the expected character traits of Black women, let alone Black mothers, who our society tells us preserve and support their communities.

“But if you think about her spirit and mentally and emotionally as a woman, it felt good to see a woman actually be selfish and put her[self] first, which we never really get to do because we have to be super this, super this, super this. Super mom, super wife, super woman, super chef; everything is always with a super in front of it,” said Taylor in an interview for The Los Angeles Times. 

Later in the interview, Taylor makes mention of the “strong Black woman” trope, and Perfidia as a foil to the countless and numerous Black women in real life, but in film and TV as well, who give up their lives for their family and children. 

But Taylor’s portrayal is not the only vision of Black motherhood under the spotlight at this year’s Oscars. 

Wunmi Mosaku’s performance as Annie in Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” has exposed viewers to another depiction of Black motherhood. 

Annie possesses the same passion and will to fight as Perfidia, but she is rooted in ancestral notions and practices of compassion, wisdom, and protection. While Perfidia views her fight as something to be done in isolation, Annie acknowledges her place in the lineage of healers that has existed and thrived, in spite of the American empire that has imprisoned them both. 

The women have more similarities. Perfidia’s mother told Bob (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) that her daughter comes from a long line of revolutionaries. Despite the fact that there is no additional information presented about the other Black female revolutionaries in her life, there is an undertone that the revolution that dictates Perfidia’s life was not of her own creation, but one that was passed down from mother to daughter. Annie was taught Hoodoo, the Black ethnoreligion that can be used for harm and violence or restoration and healing, by her grandmother. 

Annie’s decision to sit at the intersection of both, to educate the attendees at the juke joint, and to save the father of her child, before the last moments of her life, is reflective of her character sitting squarely in the role of the Black Madonna. Although she is not in the Hoodoo lexicon of saints, the Black Madonna is associated with ancient feminine wisdom, compassion, and fertility, qualities that are intrinsic to the religion’s foundational principles of healing and a loving relationship between the living and the dead. 

As a first-time working mom, Mosaku and her husband called upon Annie for guidance after the actress injured herself in her early months of postpartum. “I went from breastfeeding every meal to my baby to pumping. It was a huge shock. I didn’t realize I was getting a hit of oxytocin every time I fed my baby. I had a comedown that was so sharp and visceral. I was moving so fast, and a knife slipped,” she told W Magazine. “I cut my thumb open and wasted an entire morning in urgent care. My husband said, ‘What would Annie do?’ and I thought, She’d have been more intentional about the time with her daughter. And that was the lesson I learned in week one from Annie: Slow down.”

For Perfidia, revolution is religion. In her doctrine, which the disciples of French 75, the activist group in “One Battle After Another,” must follow, she is their rightful matriarch. She is the star. Bob, her romantic partner, idolizes her to the point of worship. She single-handedly disarms another character during a raid at an immigration center. 

Even when she becomes pregnant, Perfidia refuses to disarm. Instead, she fires off a machine gun, next to her enlarged belly. There is no separation between religion and revolution and motherhood in Perfidia’s mind, and she is at the epicenter of the three, without any regard for the lives that are dependent on her, like her newborn daughter. 

Despite Taylor’s intentions, a clear break exists between Shakur and Perfidia, with a gap that is widened by the character’s choice to disclose the name of her comrades to the federal government, a selfish act that is counterrevolutionary, but according to Taylor, is evidence of postpartum depression. 

Somewhere between the real-life revolutionary Shakur and the fictional Perfidia lies Annie, the woman whose motherhood literally exists in a realm between life and death. It is notable that like Perfidia, Annie has a romantic partner, Smoke, who admires her and believes in her intellect and instincts.

Annie lives with the belief that death is just another pathway to a life that is free from the torments of actual oppression in the form of Jim Crow and the horror of the film’s vampires. 

She believes in a life where Black mothers and their children can be one, freely and without pain. 

It is not to say that Black mothers and their children will only be free and liberated from the shackles of oppression in the afterlife. 

It is to say that Black motherhood is not a monolith, nor is the experience in which every Black mother approaches their journey of parenthood. 

What Taylor and Mosaku have given us in Perfidia and Annie are two sides of the same coin, both born from struggle and reaching for liberation through different hands. One of them burns the village to survive, but the other one tends the flame so others can live.

Black motherhood has never been just one story. The Oscars, for once, seem to be listening. 

MORE FROM URL MEDIA