Mommy’s Was a Strong Women (2025)

Film

1080 x 1080 Inches

Mommy Was a Strong Woman is an intimate exploration of Caribbean immigrant narratives and the multigenerational legacy of Black women’s resilience. Using film as a medium, I curate a visual archive that elevates overlooked stories of strength, sacrifice, and survival within my family and the broader Caribbean diaspora. The work situates personal history alongside cultural memory, creating a dialogue between lived experience and inherited legacy. By foregrounding my mother and grandmother’s narratives, the piece emphasizes the centrality of Black women in sustaining communities, preserving culture, and navigating systemic inequities. Research into Southern Black memory, womanist cartographies, and literary sources such as AJ Verdelle and Lauret Savoy informs the work, offering historical and cultural depth to the visual storytelling. Themes of memory, identity, and intersectionality are embedded in each frame, capturing the nuances of power, labor, and love that shape family and community life. Mommy Was a Strong Woman functions both as homage and archival intervention, preserving these stories while situating them within broader conversations about race, gender, migration, and resilience. Through film, the work foregrounds the visual and emotional registers of memory, asserting that Black women’s histories are foundational, complex, and indispensable to understanding cultural continuity and survival.