“A space can bear the imprint of its inhabitants even in their absence. An object can personify an individual even more than his or her portrait.” -María Magdalena Campos-Pons
María Magdalena Campos-Pons’ Spoken Softly with Mama elucidates the entanglement of identity performance and space through a material memory bringing forth a consideration of the domestic sphere as a critical lieux de mémoire of Black women’s geographies. Home as a material space and geographical location becomes a conceptual anchor for Campos-Pons' interrogation of what she terms the "location of the self." She privileges vernacular and quotidian materials to take up concerns of Black womanhood, memory and the slippages of identity. Building upon the works of Katherine McKittrick, Jasmine Cobb, Pierre Nora and Nicole Fleetwood as well as theories of performativity, spatiality, materiality and memory, I aim to examine the domestic sphere not only as a location of sense-making and selfhood, but also a critical lieux de mémoire for Black women.
