Mamá Osa in the Mountains: African Ascendientes’ Embodiments of Fugitivity and Freedom in the Americas

Women who are multiply marginalized find innovative ways to conjure prestige and assert their dignity within oppressive societies. In this essay, I apply a Mami-informed de/colonial approach to analyze the life of one such woman: my grandmother Rosa. In 1936, Rosa (Mamá Osa) moved to the sierras of Sánchez, Samaná, Dominican Republic to resist the anti-Black patriarchy she experienced. By sharing my grandmother’s story, I underscore the value of multiply marginalized women being in community with one another as a counterpoint to the liberal goal of integration. I draw parallels between the oral history of her decision to start a new life in the mountains and the written accounts of the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century maroon communities of the Americas. I also examine Dominican feminist writings during my grandmother’s era to contextualize her life narrative. In making explicit how past Dominican feminist and pedagogical discourse were inaccessible and marginalizing to freedom-seeking women like my grandmother, I urge scholars who trace knowledge systems around the world to continue to examine the sources of feminist thought.