Petit Marronage Residency

Launched in July 2021, the Petit Marronage Residency is a one-month funded residency in St. Croix, USVI for Black women and gender-expansive creators to rest, connect with nature, and unleash radical imagination.

In the spirit of the maroons and artist residencies, this one-of-a-kind residency is an opportunity to practice refusing the pressures and limitations of racial and gendered capitalism. This refusal is rooted in Black feminist praxis that leads to renewal and radical Black feminist world-building. This residency is for "rebellious nonconformists engaging in the practice of finding pathways to freedom in order to become whole." Our current residents are Black women, mamas, and gender-expansive people who refuse to stay in their proper place and instead exploit the limits of what's permissible. They embody the possibility of an unbounded life. At this time, residencies are only available by invitation while we mobilize resources to support the full vision of the residency.

The Residency provides an environment to replenish, reflect, create, and imagine themselves and Black people collectively outside of and beyond the imperialist white supremacist capitalist hetero-patriarchy. This practice of world-building might take the form of a painting, poem, blog post, sketch, photos or videos, collage, a song, sculpture, physical movement or dance, or something else. Residents leave their residency rested, brimming with creativity, emboldened by the new worlds they've imagined, and with works they've created to reflect a radical Black feminist future. 

Through this residency, TBMP desires to:

• support residents to prefigure Black feminist futures by rooting their leadership in the liberatory practices of Black interiority, imagination, fugitivity, marronage, rest, pleasure, and world-building

• connect residents and nurture a network of freedom dreamers, maroon spaces, and “liberated zones”

• share residents' creations illuminating Black freedom dreams and Black feminist futures

• inspire residents through cultural experiences and exchanges with local culture bearers, leaders, and community members

Marronage Still Matters

Author of Freedom as Marronage Neil Roberts reminds us that, "freedom is perpetual, unfinished and rooted in acts of flight that are at moments evanescent, durable, overlapping. Marronage as a theory of freedom materializes in the liminal and interstitial spaces between our imaginings. Marronage still matters.”

Historically, marronage refers to the act of enslaved Africans “running away” from their oppressor to form independent settlements in remote inaccessible areas. Those that successfully escaped were called Maroons. Legacy maroon communities still exist in parts of the Caribbean and in the Americas. Petit marronage refers “to a strategy of resistance in which individuals or small groups, for a variety of reasons, escaped their plantations for a short period of days or weeks and then returned.”

St. Croix, Virgin ISlands of the united states

From the moment residents arrive in St. Croix they are immersed in the island's Black culture and natural beauty. St. Croix is a U.S. territory whose population of 50,000 is 76% Black; arguably another “Black Mecca” as is much of the Caribbean. The historical and present-day context of St. Croix, including its colonized status as a US territory, makes it a “site of inquiry and theorization beyond a notion of utopia or space that is not meaningfully occupied” and a “crucial space[s] for thinking through questions of sovereignty, personhood, and belonging (Virgin Islands Studies Collective)”.

St. Croix has a powerful history of Black resistance and cultural sovereignty including the legacy of African women laborers known as the Three Queens who led a labor rebellion and the burning of the plantations, sugar mills, and businesses in 1878. St. Croix is the final home of Black feminist poet and author Audre Lorde. Lorde spent the final years of her life writing from St. Croix. In 1986, she participated in a symposium for women writers. She is also one of the founders of The Women's Coalition of St. Croix which remains active today as an anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-violence organization.