Joy James spent a year in which she addressed the legacy of Erica
Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner. From this she offers us a new
framework for inspired abolitionist organizing and risk-taking today,
one that situates the everyday and ordinary acts of revolutionary love
and caretaking at the radical root of resistance to anti-Blackness. New
Bones addresses "those of us broken enough to grow new bones" about the
new traditions we inherit and renew in the struggle for freedom. James
introduces us to a powerful figure in these struggles, the "captive
maternal," who emerge from communities devastated by or disappeared
within the legacy of colonialism and chattel slavery, and who sustain
resistance and rebellion toward the horizon of collective liberation.
She recognizes a long line of such freedom fighters, women and men
alike, who transform from coerced or conflicted caretakers within a
racial order to builders of movements and maroon spaces, and ultimately
into war resisters mobilized against genocide and state violence. From
Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmit Till, to the incarcerated at
Attica prison in 1971, to Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, the
captive maternal is rarely celebrated in the annals of abolition but are
essential to its work.
