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4/2/2018 WINNIE MANDELA WE LOVE YOU | Alice Walker | The Official Website for the American Novelist & Poet

The name “Lucy,” which appears in the following poem, was given by paleoanthropologists to the fossilized
skeleton of the most ancient, recognizably human ancestral figure ever found. A female being who lived on
the African continent some three million years ago.

WINNIE MANDELA

WE LOVE YOU

by Alice Walker

Winnie Mandela
We love you.

If we had known you

In a time of peace
We would have loved
Your peacefulness
Your quiet so deep
It did not hear
The call
To fight.

We missed our chance.

Winnie Mandela
We love you.

In a time of war
We love your ferocity.

We love your vigilance.

We love your impatience
With killers
And charlatans.
We love your hatred
Of the deaths of our people.
We love your hatred
Of despair.

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4/2/2018 WINNIE MANDELA WE LOVE YOU | Alice Walker | The Official Website for the American Novelist & Poet

Winnie Mandela
We love you.

We love your beauty.

We love your style.
We love your hats,
Scarves
And various lengths
Of hair.
We love the passion
In your body.
The fury in your eyes.
When you smile
We are amazed.

We love your loyalty

To Nelson
The beautiful.
Your attention to
The children
And the voluptuousness
Of the countryside
Which will be ours
Again.
We love your memory
Of details.
We love that you do not intend
To forget.

Winnie Mandela, “Lucy,”

We love you

For helping us recognize

The eternity you’ve been with us before.

Winnie Mandela, Sister,

We love you.

Yours is the contemporary face

Of the mother
Of the human race.
###

From Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990 Complete, Harcourt Brace
publishers; by Alice Walker

Happy Birthday, Beloved! 26th September.

This poem was published in the Eighties, while Nelson Mandela was still imprisoned. Winnie Mandela was
raising their children alone while also being recognized by black people as “the mother of the Nation.” Life
would take a terrible turn in her personal journey, which is well worth studying, for the light it sheds on how
and why people sometimes change course, or break. But having endured her personal Calvary Winnie
Mandela rose again to lead, teach, and protect her people.

When her daughters – who I sometimes felt were also my daughters while they were growing up without
their father, and, because of her many arrests and bannings, frequently without their mother – asked if i

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4/2/2018 WINNIE MANDELA WE LOVE YOU | Alice Walker | The Official Website for the American Novelist & Poet

would read this poem for their mother at her 80th birthday celebration in Johannesburg I was happy to do so.
(This was accomplished via video shot by filmmaker Pratibha Parmar). Ironically Nelson Mandela was
released from prison on Parmar’s birthday, Feb. 11, 1990.

Winnie Mandela’s life is precious to all people who understand what a trial it is simply to exist, standing
your ground against forces that despise and abuse you, over decades and centuries. Whoever is perfect in
their response to the murder of a people’s soul, may judge whatever is impossible to understand.

WINNIE MANDELA
TE AMAMOS
Por Alice Walker

Winnie Mandela
te amamos.

Si te hubiéramos conocido
en un tiempo de paz
hubiéramos amado tu
carácter pacífico
tu sosiego tan profundo
que no oía
el llamado
a pelear.

Perdimos nuestra ocasión.

Winnie Mandela
te amamos.

En tiempos de guerra
amamos tu ferocidad.
Amamos tu vigilancia.
Amamos tu impaciencia
hacia los asesinos
y los charlatanes.
Amamos tu odio
por los muertos de nuestra gente.
Amamos tu odio
a la desesperanza.

Winnie Mandela
te amamos.

Amamos tu belleza.
Amamos tu estilo.
Amamos tus sombreros,
tus bufandas
y los varios largos
de tus cabellos.
Amamos la pasión
en tu cuerpo.
La furia en tus ojos.
Cuando sonríes
nos asombramos.

Amamos tu lealtad
a Nelson
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4/2/2018 WINNIE MANDELA WE LOVE YOU | Alice Walker | The Official Website for the American Novelist & Poet

el hermoso.
Tu atención a
los niños
y a la voluptuosidad
del campo
que será nuestro
de nuevo.
Amamos tu memoria
de los detalles.
Amamos que no intentaras
olvidar.
Winnie Mandela, “Lucy”,
te amamos.

Por ayudarnos a reconocer

la eternidad en que estuviste con nosotros desde antes.
Winnie Mandela, hermana,
te amamos.

Tuyo es el rostro actual

de la madre
de la raza humana.

###

Tomado de Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990 Complete, de Alice Walker,
Harcourt Brace Publishers.

¡Feliz cumpleaños, querida! 26 de septiembre

Este poema se publicó en los ochenta, mientras Nelson Mandela estaba en prisión. Winnie Mandela estaba
criando a sus hijos sola a la vez que era reconocida por la gente negra como “la madre de la Nación”. La vida
daría un giro dramático en su vida personal, lo cual debe estudiarse debidamente, por la luz que arrojaría
sobre cómo y por qué la gente a veces cambia de rumbo o se quiebra. Sin embargo, habiendo resistido su
calvario personal, Winnie Mandela se levantó de nuevo para dirigir, enseñar y proteger a su pueblo.

Cuando sus hijas (a quienes a veces sentí que eran mis propias hijas mientras crecían sin padre y muchas
veces sin la madre debido a sus frecuentes arrestos y prohibiciones) me preguntaron si podría leer este poema
para su madre en ocasión de la celebración de su cumpleaños 80 en Johannesburgo, me sentí feliz de hacerlo.
Esto se pudo hacer a través de un video filmado por la realizadora Pratibha Parmar. Irónicamente, Nelson
Mandela fue liberado de la prisión el día del cumpleaños de Parmar, el 11 de febrero de 1990.

La vida de Winnie Mandela es valiosa para todas las personas que entienden la tremenda prueba que es
sencillamente existir, manteniendo tus principios contra todas las fuerzas que te desprecian y maltratan,
durante décadas y siglos. Cualquiera que se impecable en su respuesta al asesinato del alma de un pueblo,
puede juzgar cualquier cosa que sea imposible de comprender.

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