I was afraid my inability to breastfeed her or engage in skin-to-skin contact would harm her, but I was also burdened by another history
Welcome to the Guardian’s Power of Touch series
I had to wait three days after my daughter Seneca was born to hold her. She arrived punctually just before sunrise on her due date, a fact I have interpreted as her over-accommodating me, because it enabled me to drive to UPS and mail off my tenure dossier on time.
Nine hours later, as my partner, Solomon, my sister, Scheherazade, and I drove to the hospital with a maternity bag filled with a lavender-scented eye mask, breastfeeding pyjamas and a white-noise machine, I noticed only a handful of cars on the highway, the glare of their headlights guiding us to the hospital, four suburbs and 30 minutes away from our New Jersey townhouse.
Enslaved black women knew that to touch and hold their babies, who could be sold off at any minute, was a huge risk and a revolutionary act
Salamishah Tillet is the Henry Rutgers professor of African American studies and creative writing at Rutgers University, Newark.
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