Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives

This book charts the journey of Black feminist researcher and artist Nydia Swaby in piecing together a biography of Amy Ashwood Garvey from her scattered archive and, in the process, offers a reflection on the future of Black feminist archival practice.

Amy Ashwood Garvey was a committed Pan-Africanist and feminist who moved to the UK from Harlem in the 1930s. Most famous for being the first wife of Marcus Garvey, her contributions to movements for social justice, race equality and in particular Black women’s rights, have been largely forgotten - not least since the scant records of her life and work are spread between the various places she lived: Harlem, New York, London, UK, and Accra, Ghana. Swaby recovers Amy's life and work as an important political activist, cultural producer and Pan-Africanist in her own right, retracing her steps with trips to Harlem, London and West Africa. In addition to conducting traditional archival research, Swaby curates a series of ‘curatorial fabulations’, imagining into the gaps in the archive with autoethnographic practice. Taking Amy’s fragmented archive as her starting point, Swaby asks what the conditions of Amy's archive can tell us about the future of Black feminist research.