This story about Aganju and Yemaja shows how Yoruba mythology depicts creation as something born out of both unnatural circumstances and transformation. The story makes it clear that Yemaja’s historical significance to the Yoruba people comes from her suffering and struggles. When she resists Orungan, “she fled from the place” and her aggressor who was also her son, and it is precisely this act of oppression and violence that becomes the source of divine creation. The moment her body breaks open, the story describes how “her body immediately began to swell in a fearful manner,” a phrase that depicts her transformation not as peaceful or beautiful, but as painful and violent. This specific description supports the idea that Yoruba mythology acknowledges the reality that creation and life can emerge from hardship and rupture. Her suffering is not erased, but instead, it becomes sacred and allowed for further gods and goddesses to exist. This is an example of Yoruba representation of women and creation as well. Women go through suffering and pain to bring life into the world, just like Yamaja. The details of how the lagoons started flowing from her breasts also promote the idea of female reproduction.
The passage also reveals how the Yoruba view water as significant in their culture. Yemaja is introduced as someone who “presides over ordeals by water” and is the “mother of fish.” This suggests how water has a deeper significance than merely being a physical feature, as there are indeed “ordeals” that need to be watched over. This makes it even more meaningful how the stream that birthed so many other gods and goddesses flowed from her body. Creation is definitely an ordeal. This also portrays emotional pain as not weakness, but a creative force bringing forth something greater.
Ti Jeanne was a super interesting read, especially because Maman Dlo is woman who cares so much about the environment and about women. For instance she enchanted Ti Jeanne into living with her and serving her forever after with the benefit of “…a fishtail…was to become one of the most beautiful of the fairy maids, playing with the other river spirits and protecting the forest, its waters and pools for a long time to come.”(276) Very much like Maman Dlo, her purpose in life will be to protect the environment. That was the ultimate gift that she could receive, her grace towards the natural world was expressed in her newfound beauty as well. As Ti Jeanne’s “…chemise fell from her, her hair grew long, covering her round shoulders and her bare breasts…” She was left in her natural state, naked, only to be covered with her now long hair. Hair holds a lot of power on its own, especially long hair as it is can be seen as a form of dedication and divinity in spirituality. Maman Dlo has not only brought a new purpose of life for Ti Jeanne but she replicated it in her physical attributes as well. This shows the level of trust she has in Ti Jeanne to take her under her wing, truly an empowering moment.
In the end, we learn that being with her for the rest of her life is not always a gift. Considering, “Mortal men who commit crimes against the forest, like burning down trees or indiscriminately putting animals to death or fouling the rivers, could find themselves married to her for life, both this one and the one to follow.”(277) There is a mention of the after like as it states “both this one and the one to follow.” If I’m understanding correctly, that would mean that Maman Dlo will be apart of the after life with the human being. Very different from other mermaid stories that we have read where mermaids are not part of the after life and become one with the water. This is an example of the strength that comes from an angry woman, not in a “women’s emotions are hard to control” kind of way but a form of power. Especially coming from a non-human being that is surpassing the after life just to continue punishing the human being for their lack of compassion to anyone or anything else but their kind.
The 1842 article “The Mermaid” included in the Penguin Book of mermaids, responds to the sensation of P.T Barnum’s Feejee mermaid, along with accounts throughout history that have proven mermaids to be real through sightings and observations of mermaids. The descriptions of these sightings varied greatly, from 1187 to the present publication in 1842, specifically on descriptions of race and beauty. The article detailing the human treatment of mermaids, as well as perceptions of beauty inform how this era of imperialist expansion, colonization, and enslavement of Africans in the U.S viewed female and ethnic bodies, and justified their subjugation.
Two of the mermaids described are living freakshows, unlike Barnum’s Feejee mermaid mummy. In 1758 a black mermaid was “exhibited at the fair of ST. Germain” and is described as such: “It was female, with ugly negro features. The skin was harsh, the ears very large, and the back parts and the tail were covered with scales(p.243).” Besides this physical description, the mermaid was kept and fed in a tank where it swam with “seeming delight(p.243)” despite its being caged
The second live exhibition described took place in London 1775: “It was therefore an Asiastic mermaid. The description is as follows: –Its face is like that of a young female– its eyes a fine light blue– its nose small and handsome– its mouth small– its lips thin, and the edges of them round like that of the codfish–its teeth are small, regular and white–its chin well shaped, and its neck full (p.243)
The Mermaid editorial, points to a cultural shift in the mermaid’s symbolism in popular culture. This cultural shift occurs in the West as the United States becomes an imperialistic force in the global south, and conversations of slavery and the subjugation of Black people in the southern states come into focus in the years prior to the Civil War.
The sheer difference in these two descriptions makes a stark comparison between the races of these two creatures. The attempt to comment on this growing fascination with the link between animals and humans, “also comments on the prevalence of racial pseudoscience, such as phrenology, being used to perpetuate racism as a norm in the scientific community. The 19th-century mermaid becomes a vehicle to explore and support the supposed logic in scientific racism and the growing eugenicist movement that will define the century to come.
Regarding the short story of Aganju and Yemaja from The Penguin Book of Mermaids and how Yamaja death/life is a sacrifice for birthing life and multiple dieties, due to her spreading water on earth. This only occurred from being pushed to the extreme because her son raped her and was chasing her. Yemaja was overcome with fear for her life having to potentially face her son again ,“Then her body immediately began to swell in a fearful manner, two streams of water gushed from her breasts and her abdomen burst open”(169). It plays into a patriarchal role that Yemaja’s death had to occur for life to jumpstart and for the environment to thrive, given that she is “the goddess of brooks and streams, and presides over ordeals by water”(168), she seems to have had all-mighty powers that weren’t used to defend herself. Another factor that embraces a patriarchal side is that Orungan, a male, noticed a clear amount of power imbalance between the two, when alone he felt he had “liberty” of Yemaja’s body without her consent. Takeaway from this story is that when men see a far more powerful woman in their presence, their need to control and tame their uninhibited nature is strong, and make them their subject, which leads to women getting abused and reinforcing gender roles and harmful patriarchal ideas.
The machine is a transgression against nature in that humans have actively taken from nature to fulfill their self-interests. They have built houses, cities, sculptures, and modes of transportation that make use of what is available, but by doing so they have razed down trees and moved rocks around to make way for their creations. They chip away at rocks and minerals to replace the parts that are worn down. However, these transgressions are also what helps them study the environment (e.g. sea levels arising from climate change): Scientists use machines to study and predict events in the natural world; oceanographers use machines to study the ocean and its inhabitants; civilians use machines as a medium of communication; and yet all of the machines we use are worn down by nature over time, and maintenance requires taking from nature again to increase our machines’ lifespans.
But in a post-human world, without humans to maintain their creations, they will fall into disrepair, and nature will eventually reclaim these transgressions for herself. In her 6-minute short film Sirenomelia, Emilija Škarnulytė uses the post-human environment in and around a decommissioned NATO base to explore this paradox of maintenance. Humans are ultimately responsible for maintaining their creations—these transgressions against nature—that they use to study nature.
The Radio Dish
A radio dish rotates slowly (0:15-1:00)
At the beginning of the film (0:15-1:00), the viewer is presented with a view of a snowy landscape through the perspective of a rotating radio dish with no humans in sight, accompanied with sounds of machinery. Despite the lack of humans, this machine remains functional, and it continues to rotate and gather data from its surroundings even when there is no one around to maintain it. Compared to the other manmade creations around the NATO base, this is the most intact piece of science equipment in the film, and it demonstrates the machines longevity in the absence of humans. And yet, it is designed to only perform the one task it was designed to perform: to gather data which is to be analyzed by the now-absent humans.
Although the radio dish is relatively maintained (it is still operational in case scientists wish to analyze the data it gathered), it is still subject to the forces of nature, and it probably will not be around for the next hundreds of years.
The Interior
A view of an unlit tunnel as a mermaid swims through the interior of the base (2:51)
At 2:15, Škarnulytė offers a glimpse into the interior of the long-abandoned base. The scene is in black and white, set underground in what looks like an unlit submarine pathway; a tunnel dug into the underside of a mountain, perhaps. As the main shot explores the deeper part of the tunnel, there is another scene overlayed on the top-left corner. This other shot is set in what is presumably an indoor pool, with a ceiling light shining through the watery surface and some stone walls to the left and right. Before the scene switches (2:47), a mermaid–the posthuman being–splashes into the water, distorting the room above beyond recognition.
The distortion of the room caused by the mermaid splashing can be seen as nature reclaiming abandoned creations by force, deteriorating their structural integrity to the point of unrecognizability. Voices can be heard, but they are not discernible; what once was a foundation used to house submarines and torpedo ships is now an echo of the past.
The Exterior
View of the exterior from under water
At 3:28-3:48, Škarnulytė presents a view of the base’s exterior. Set outside, it is much brighter than the view of the interior, but it is viewed from under the water’s surface, distorting it much like the overlayed shot inside the tunnel.
In this underwater shot, Škarnulytė juxtaposes the manmade with the natural. The manmade (the tunnel) takes up more of the screen than the natural (the mountain and trees), symbolizing how industrialization has taken precedence over the environment, building more while destroying more. The wall on the right is discolored, likely due to erosion from rainfall, and it is a display of nature chipping away at the exterior before moving onto the interior. To keep their creations standing, humans will have to maintain not just the interior, but the exteriors as well.
In the end, Sirenomelia is a film about maintenance, and how humans are responsible for maintaining the creations that were made from the resources they took from nature. Without the people to look after their creations, nature will be allowed to reclaim these transgressions for herself.
Discovery 2: Omambala: The Water will Carry Us Home
What I see
Gabrielle Tesfaye’s film “The Water Will Carry Us Home” (2018) is an afrofuturistic work featuring the ocean—as The Water Spirit Omambala—as a world and entity with agency. It first appears as an active entity at 2:13, bares the discarded enslaved women around 4:14, and transforms them and their children into mermaids and merfolk around 4:30 before featuring the water in a supportive capacity for the remainder of its screentime. Centering the water in such an explicit way conveys a sense of significance, respect, and connection for those involved. The water is so much more than a place.
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How it is Depicted:
Water is portrayed in the film in several forms: ocean water in a two-dimensional static or stop motion format that carries people and vessels, a divine mermaid, or waves/surf in live action.
The static form of the 2D depiction of the water is used to introduce the particular story at the heart of the film. The stop motion form of the water carries the ships and supports the historical images and sources—news paper articles—to help identify the time period. Functionally, the choice to use 2 dimensional images allows the audience to compare the film’s events both in the past and future adding to the film’s credibility in light of its religious and mythological elements.
The inclusion of the water as the divine mermaid—Omambala—functions to honor the cultural and spiritual belief systems of West African peoples—the Igbo in particular—and allows for the film to operate as more-than-a-tragedy. The water uses its agency to save the discarded captives and restore their dignity by providing belonging. The mothers become divine mermaids themselves—with increased size to represent their increased significance—while their children school around them. Their dignity and value are weaved into the mythological, allowing them to continue differently to the terrestrially bound as actual beings of the water or as living stories in their mother culture’s long memories.
The water in its comparatively mundane live action form rolls endlessly against both the shore and structures. The young woman in the closing scenes featuring said surf utilizes the water as medium for which to give her respects while also seeking connection. The headphones of shell and metal are plugged into the sand, presumably connecting the woman of the future to the great spirit Omamabala who ideally connects to the aforementioned living stories and merfolk across time and space.
What Does it Add?
“The Water Will Carry Us Home” challenges the audience to consider the ocean as a historical record, a home, and as an active part of the world. The film interacts with what SIRIUS UGO ART suggests as the traditional Igbo belief in Omambala—the mother of the Igbo people while also referencing the Igbo Landing of 1803 where the captive Igbo escaped the Atlantic Slave Trade via mass suicide while praying to their Omiriri Omambala, a prayer which roughly translates to the title of the film “The Water has brought us here, the water will carry us home”. While the film ends with a cliff hanger, it reintroduces mythology and spiritual belief as a valid conduit for which to interact with the world. The water is respected and centered rather than written off as a beautiful second fiddle to the typical human drama and Christian metaphysics of Undine or The Little Mermaid. It marries history, mythology, and hope into the imagination without painting the physical world as rest stop on the cosmological escalator.
Works Cited
“Igbo African Goddess: OMAmbala by Sirius Ugo Art.” YouTube, uploaded by SIRIUS UGO
The story of Yemaja in “Aganju and Yemaja” explains the origin of the world through the female body. Her body functions not only as a physical form but also as a channel that creates the world and gives birth to gods. In other words, her body becomes a medium that connects the boundary between humans and nature. The physical violence toward Yemaja is described as, “The streams from Yemaja’s breasts joined and formed a lagoon, and from her gaping body came the following…” (p.169). Her body, though wounded, becomes another passage through which the natural order is born.
The phrase “streams from her breast” contains both maternal and natural images. The breast is not simply a part of the body but a means through which life is sustained. However, in this passage, the breast goes beyond its human function of nurturing to become the source of the natural ecosystem itself. The streams flowing from Yemaja’s breast represent the life force of nature, and water becomes a central image of creation. Water is essential not only for the survival of human beings but also for maintaining the balance and circulation of the natural world. Therefore, the water flowing from her body shows that human life and the ecosystem share the same origin. Through this, Yemaja’s body can be read as a medium that connects the worlds of humans and nature.
Moreover, the gods born from her body, such as “Dada (god of vegetables), Shango (god of lightning), Ogun (god of iron and war), and Olokun (god of the sea)”(p.169) symbolize the fundamental principles of nature. In this sense, her body is not merely a site of birth but functions as nature itself, organizing the order and life of the world. Especially as the ‘Mother of Fish’(p.168), Yemaja represents the circulation of water and the source of life. The water that flows from her body symbolizes the ongoing movement of nature and the continuous renewal of life.
Ultimately, Yemaja’s body bears traces of violence yet simultaneously embodies natural vitality and order. Her body becomes a sacred space where destruction and creation coexist that shows a symbol of origin in which the worlds of humans, nature, and the divine are united.
Within the Section of “African Mermaids and Other Water Spirits” we are told that the Water spirits of Africa are “far from being relics of the distant past…” and rather continue to be “strikingly relevant to those who believe in them.” Through this, the author dismantles the belief that myths and legends are not just history to be repeated, but that history is a concept that is continuing to be created.
The stories regarding African Gods and Goddesses bear striking resemblance to the tale associated with the Greeks or Romans. The mythical beings responsible for overseeing different domains, the balance of everything that is and ever will be on Earth. In observance, as we see how the centuries have gone on and people have moved from plain to plain, the legends have become lost, unused, and lacking in relevance in modern times. And yet – the same can not be said for these spirits and Gods of African culture. The connection between “real life” and fantasy is a thin veil crossed in these regions. Natives report sightings of aquatic monsters, visions we have only dreamed or read about, appearing in the wild. They halt research and construction. They are responsible for the ill-doings of man.
This relationship between the marine spirits of the domain and human kind continues to be explored by African communities. While we in the Western hemisphere have moved away from the unknown of myths and fantasy, the peoples of these nations have stable and strong connections with the Gods and Goddesses from the worlds of their long – ago ancestors. Their presence is not a sign of a new age, a revelation – but rather a sign of a faith remaining stable in a developing world away from legends. A fight to recognize what has always been in front of us, even if we choose to ignore what we do not wish to see. These communities do not run from these encounters, yet speak of them as if they were true. These spirits are integrated into their everyday lives and language, connected to an aquatic world many of us have forgotten.
In this week’s reading, there is an exploration of the history of water spirits along with modern day African culture and their beliefs in mermaids. In Caribbean culture Maman Dlo or “Mother of Water” is described as terrifying in her anaconda form, but equally bedazzling and enchanting in her human form. She also beholds the power to transform humans into water spirits, often times beautiful maidens to assist her in protecting the water. Maman Dlo’s existence is a personification of nature, her role as a guardian of nature is one that commands respect. She elicits fear in many with her serpent form, towering seven feet long and punishing men who damage and pollute the water with marriage instead of death. Through marriage I could imagine that the men must learn to respect nature and learn its way. Marriage is a way of combining two souls together, through this unity the men who have initially disrespected the environment must develop a deeper connection with it through their forceful marriage to the Mother of Water.
It’s interesting how Maman Dlo is portrayed as a figure that contains multitudes, she is fierce but kind to those who honor her. Beautiful and powerful. It is unlike the western mermaids that we have learned of so far that appears to be one dimensional in character (Christianity and their monsterification of mermaids and sirens being symbols of evil and temptation). Western mermaids inherently paint human connection to our environment to be dangerous. Maman Dlo is neither of those things, instead she serves as a protector of the waters, a reminder that it is to be respected.
In Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History”, the ocean becomes more than just a geographic feature, rather it is a massive archive that resists the convention of western historiography. Walcott’s argument is not to deny the existence of our history, but instead to challenge where we look for it and how we expect it to appear. Walcott uses the sea’s fluid obscuring nature to expose how colonial violence resists traditional documentation, forcing readers to confront a version of history that has not been written in records, but one that has been met with erasure, silence, and the physical environment itself. Through his imagery and shifts in tone throughout the poem, Walcott reframes the sea as both a repository of trauma and a corrective to imperial narratives, demonstrating that absence itself can act as a pillar of historical evidence.
A central passage that demonstrates this idea appears early within the poem in the first stanza “the sea has locked them up. The sea is History.” What is most striking about this line here is Walcott’s use of the word “locked.” The use of this verb conveys protection, imprisonment, and inaccessibility. Something locked is safe but unreachable, present but withheld. Walcott suggests that the stores of the enslaved Africans, those whose lives were consumed by the passage of the Atlantic, have not been lost but rather “locked” within the sea. This resists the idea that these stories are completely lost and irretrievable, instead, they are held somewhere that modern western historical methods often overlooks.
The passage operates through a layered metaphor that positions the sea as both a literal grave and as a symbolic trove. Walcott’s declaration that “the sea is History” is not saying that the sea contains history, reflects history, or even hides history. Rather, he asserts equivalence that the sea is history. This differing identification helps collapse the distance between event and environment, suggesting that the violent past is not behind us but always embedded in the natural world. The sea’s movements and its capacity to swallow ships and bodies without a trace become formal qualities of the history that it holds. In a sense, the poem compels readers to adopt a new method of “reading” history: one that interprets the environment and its silences as part of the historical record.
This reframing becomes even more pronounced later in the poem when Walcott turns to the literal physical remains of empire, “the rusting cannons, and the broken statues.” These images serve as a counterpoint to the sea’s fluid archive. Cannons and statues are exactly the kind of objects that museums and textbooks rely on to tell stories of nations, conquest, and civilization in our western historical methods. Yet here, Walcott depicts them as submerged in the depth of the ocean, decaying. The transformation of imperial symbols into ruins, the very objects meant to symbolize power are now disintegrating out of sight. Instead of stable markers of historical authority, they have become “rusting” and “broken”, adjective that underscore the fragility of colonial narratives.
These lines function by destabilizing the reader’s expectation of what historical evidence looks like. Cannons and statues, objects that are traditionally treated as facts of history, don’t mean anything when they are hidden out of sight. Their meanings slowly corroding away along with their materials. Walcott’s choice to place them beneath the sea creates a visual and conceptual hierarchy. The ocean, with its unrecorded memories, becomes an archive while the empire’s monuments sink into irrelevance. The sea refuses the empire’s attempts to preserve its own greatness through objects and instead reduces them into debris. By contrast, the ocean preserves what the empire tried to erase.
Together, these passages illustrate the poem’s larger argument that suene and erasure are not failures of history, but a part of its structure. Walcott asks the reader to consider what it means that the sea is the site where so many enslaved Africans died, unnamed and undocumented, on their journey to the Americas. Their absence from archives does indicate a lack of history, instead, it reveals the limits of the western archive itself. What emerges from this recognition is the idea that history must be read through what is missing as much as through what is preserved. Walcott’s sea holds history precisely because it obscures rather than displays.
Walcott’s reimagining of the sea matters because it shifts the responsibility of interpretation onto the reader. The poem argues that to understand colonial history, one must be willing to look beyond official records and confront the silences they produce. The sea becomes a metaphor for the work required to acknowledge histories that resist documentation, histories told through trauma, loss, and environmental memory. By asserting that the sea is history, Walcott compels us to consider how absence, erasure, and submerged narratives shape our understanding of the past and history. The poem ultimately insists that the mot truthful archives are not always the most visible ones.
