Black Dolls: Healing the Heart and Rescuing Ancestral Memory

I am fortunate to have a mother, Roselle Faure, who adopted me when I was a teen mother. She has been part of my life to this day. She is a great artist but above all a wonderful person- great, creative, generous, and kind to all people. Roselle was born in Morocco, North Africa, and is a person who knows the world and loves to travel. She is a creator, an artist. She was the first person in my life who always had beautiful things to say about black people and about African culture and art. She held me and made me feel appreciated, valued, important, and special.

She helped me feel comfortable in a world that had always been hostile and violent because of structural racism in Mexico. Learned from childhood, racism in Mexico is solid, naturalized through colorism, and without a worthy representation of the Black community. In Mexico in the 50s and 60s, racism, discrimination, and classism were totally integrated into the culture. The word Racism is not included in the constitution in Mexico, and this generates countless human rights violations, but above all, it has created an idea in the collective unconscious, where Mexican people believe and affirm that they are not racist. My mother allowed me to see myself from another place, no longer from rejection but from self-love. Thanks to her, I was able to heal many of the traumas of racism in my childhood, especially in relation to my biological mother, who was white. I was not raised with my biological father, who was black.

My biological parents met at the Universidad Autonoma de México and began a relationship. When my mother’s family found out that she was pregnant by a black man, they immediately banned him. They called her former white boyfriend for her to marry, as she was three months pregnant with me.

I was thus born in the north of Mexico, Mazatlán, Pacific Coast in a family of white people. At first, being so little, I didn’t know I was black, I found out through the people around me. Which was highlighted in their comments, that my skin was too dark and my hair was too complicated.

When I was four years old, we moved to live in Mexico City. They enrolled me in kindergarten and there I had my first experience regarding the color of my skin. Some children licked my arm to know if I was chocolate or if my hair was disheveled. The only people who looked like me were on television. My mother and grandmother watched Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five Show because they didn’t know how to do my hair. They didn’t know anything about afro hair.

On birthdays and Christmases, they gave me white dolls just like my sister and cousins, but those dolls looked like them…

In my case, I had to wait years until my grandmother got a “Black Doll” in the United States.

Because in the mid and late 60s, in Mexico, it was impossible to find a black doll. A doll that would allow me to identify myself and represent me.

Over time, many things changed in my life, and I left my mother and stepfather’s house as a teenager when I was 14 years old. A couple of years later I was adopted by Roselle.

My mother, Roselle, opened a door for me to look at Africa and its heritage without stigma, without prejudice, without exoticizing, to look at a vast continent, with extraordinary diversity and unprecedented cultural, spiritual, and historical wealth. Not just looking at Africa, looking at the whole world, we Afro-descendants exist everywhere in the world. But it seems that in some places, we are invisible. She opened my eyes to look at the beauty of art in Africa and its extraordinary legacy in the world: in music, arts, gastronomy, and more.

A few years ago I had major surgery, and it took me a long time to recover. To cheer me up in the first month of my convalescence, my mother made me a beautiful black doll especially with me in mind: how I look, what my hair is like, how I like to dress and adorn myself. The day she brought it to me, I was filled with joy, tears of emotion, and deep reflection.

I hugged her, and she hugged me. She was a loving mirror in my heart, and it healed a part of the girl in my being. She had given me the Black Doll that I dreamed of in my childhood, in my adolescence, and in my adulthood. It was beautiful and deep to hug this doll. I felt like I held myself, and every time I see myself in her, I feel that way too. I like to feel this essence that takes me through loving energy, to connect with ancestral memories. By remembering, looking at, and connecting with my Ancestors during my prayers to honor them, I recognize that the Ancestors were also girls who wanted to play with Black dolls. Looking at my doll makes me smile and feel the love with which it was made especially for me. My doll also reminds me of pride, resistance, commitment, faith, conviction, spirituality, wisdom, beauty, peace, connection with the forces of nature, and the strength, greatness, and sweetness of my Ancestors.

Above all, the love and dedication of my mother, Roselle, always made me feel comfortable with who I am, with my color, and with my beautiful hair. She brought me closer to the diverse African culture. Thanks to her, I can restore an identity in connection with the African and Afro-descendant cultures of the world. She motivated me, she became close to me and educated me.

I dream of a world where more and more we find beautiful black dolls and marvel at them.

So that childhood, in every community, in every town and city, is represented, and that people realize, remember, recognize that…

BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL
BEING BLACK IS DIVINE AND POWERFUL
AND THAT OUR HAIR IS AFRO/CROWNS
AND THAT REPRESENTATION MATTERS

Representation matters at all stages of life, but in childhood it is crucial. A healthy and dignified representation from a gendered perspective matters, without prejudice, stigmas, or racism.

The project of Tanya Duarte and Roselle Faure to create dolls arose out of the love between my mother and me. We make each doll completely by hand. Each doll is unique, representing African and Afro-descendants in Mexico. Each doll has a name, accessories, and jewelry. Each one is a piece of art.

I invite you to open your mind and your heart and take your Black Ancestors out of the closet.

The greatness of Mexico and the continent is thanks to the African hands that contributed to its physical, economic, cultural, and human construction. To this day, we continue to contribute here.