Exhibit J: Remembering mother’s laundry with Dr. Monifa Love…

At the table with me today is Dr. Monifa Love Asante who shares memories of the basement of her childhood home, which was divided between her father’s dental office and her mother’s laundry room. The house was located near Howard University in Washington, DC.  Dr. Love Asante reflects on the ways that African American women have traditionally used laundry and dress as a means of imposing a sense of order and design on an often chaotic world. She remembers the ways that her mother used laundry to pass down cultural values learned from her own childhood in Danville, Virginia. 

In the home that Dr. Love Asante grew up in, one had to preserve a sense of order and keep things in their proper places.  She also reflects on the ways that integration transformed the aspirations of younger generations. Despite having studied under a master, Dr. Love Asante, like so many of us born to these latter generations, has not brought the high art of fine laundering forward.  

This episode available for download on April 13, 2020 via http://womenandwriters.libsyn.com/. 

This week’s Opening Paragraph pick, E. Ethelbert Miller’s How we Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love.