We Can Create Something Else: A Conversation with Anna Malaika Tubbs
On how the patriarchy is changeable because it's all made up, the power of intuition as resistance, how being hopeful can make good things happen, and the importance of history.
Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.
Anna Malaika Tubbs has written two of the most beautiful, potent, brilliant, lyrical, thoughtful, piercing, deeply researched, mind-heart-and-spirit-expanding, soul-nourishing books on what it’s like to live in the American patriarchy that I have ever read. I encourage every person reading this to dash out now and pick up copies!
Her first book, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, delves deeply into the extraordinary lives of Alberta King, Louise Little and Berdis Baldwin. Heavy with racism, classism, misogyny, and outrageous abuse, it is also a story of tremendous celebration and hope. It quickly became a New York Times Bestseller.
Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us, Anna’s most recent book, explores the patriarchy with rigor, curiosity—and tenderness for all those who have been harmed by it. Examining what the Founding Fathers really had in mind when they crafted the Constitution, Anna is less about blame, more about presenting the facts clearly so we can get ourselves into a true democracy. She interweaves stories of her own life with extensive academic research. The writing is exquisite. The breadth and depth of insight into the makings of our country right through to our current circumstances is staggering. Once again, amidst the sorrow, horror, and injustice, there is tremendous celebration and hope. And this time, her book became an instant New York Times Bestseller.
Anna grew up around the world: Dubai, Mexico, Sweden, Estonia, Azerbaijan, and the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and a Masters in Multidisciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge in addition to a Bachelors in Medical Anthropology from Stanford University. Her work has appeared in TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, and The Guardian, amongst others.
She lives in California with her husband and three young children.
I think you will enjoy this conversation. Let me know what you think in the comments!
xJane
⭐️ Anna is generously gifting three readers an autographed copy of Erased! If you’d like to be one of the recipients, please add “ERASED” after your comment. The winners will be chosen at random on Monday, August 25th and notified by Substack Direct Chat. I’m excited for all of you! (Shipping is limited to the United States) ⭐️
For readers who aren’t yet familiar with your work can you define American Patriarchy?
Of course! I wanted to specify American patriarchy, because I know patriarchy exists across the world. But I do think that it shows up differently depending on who the founders of that nation were, the documents that rule our lives, and how we socialize with each other.
American patriarchy is all about what our Founding Fathers envisioned when they won the Revolutionary War: they wanted to maintain power in their own hands. So they define men in the Constitution as those who can vote, those who can own land, those who can represent themselves without anyone having to speak for them, as well as those who pass on their legacy and their status to their children. They define women as the ones whose role is to reproduce the power of men through children.
Based off that definition, we see in American patriarchy that there is this binary set up where men are given access to power, resources, control, and that women are simply supposed to listen to what they say and follow them; they don't get to have their own identity, and they don't get to participate politically in their nation.
The Founding Fathers clearly were not considering all the different people in our nation in these two groups they identified. They were ignoring men who were enslaved. They were ignoring their indigenous counterparts. They were ignoring anybody who was not binary. They were ignoring even poor white people. When we realize that most of us were not recognized as human beings by our initial social order that is gendered, but is also tied to whiteness and capitalism, then we arrive at what our patriarchy consists of.
You've said that the opposite of patriarchy isn't matriarchy. It's that we all have power. What does that look like?
When we define patriarchy in the way that I'm defining it, we're saying that one group of people has power over another group of people, or all other groups of people. In order to reverse that, you wouldn't say, “Oh, let's just put a different group of people in power.” We would instead say, “Each of us should have access to power in the sense of our voices should be heard, in the sense of we should each be treated as human beings in our nation, and especially a nation that represents itself as a democracy.” The definition of democracy is that power is vested in the people of that nation, and thus far the way our nation has operated has been less democracy, and more patriarchy.
The opposite of American patriarchy is the authentic version of American democracy. Where every person, regardless of demographic information, does have power. They can make decisions for their own bodies and their families. The way in which we see that show up on a national level—because I'm not advocating for complete disarray, and all of us just doing our own thing. Of course, there have to still be rules in place—is that every person's vote would count. You would see the removal of any barriers for people to be able to practice that part of being a citizen in our nation. And we would be thinking of what needs need to be met for people to be treated as human beings in our nation. Would they have access to healthy foods? Would they have access to diapers when babies are born? Would they have access to education? We don't have those things built in to our national system in ways that other nations do. We don't have a baseline that allows people to be treated with dignity. Instead, from the moment they're born, they're thrust into this social hierarchy where they're told, “you're less than” here.
That's sounds like an overhaul of everything. Let's say this really does happen. How long does it take?
I'm a very hopeful person. When I look at American history, we've actually had many moments that feel so unlikely, where everybody's saying, “We're not ready for that. There's no way that could happen.” And then it does. I want to advocate for more of us to approach this with that mentality of “It can just happen!”
We have to make some small shifts. When we recognize American patriarchy being something that is fabricated—It's not the natural order. It's not divine—then we all feel this sense of “Oh, we can create something else.”
In fact, there are many people throughout American history, and our contemporaries, who are choosing to live differently. We don't need it to happen on a national level before each of us can try to create those environments around us, whether that's within our own families, our neighborhoods, our communities, our cities. When we start to see our work, our calling, all of whatever makes us who we are, as part of this mission to create the antithesis of American patriarchy, it feels like you can start right away.
On a national level, how long do I think it would take something like this to happen? The thing is, the United States is so humongous that you do see it in certain cities, you see it in certain communities. When would it be for all of us? It depends on how many of us can be convinced that we have the power to change it. If more people saw our nation the way that I do, which is that it is changeable and we can build a new system just like the Founding Fathers built a system, then I think it could be done within five years. It could just be the policies that shift.
One perfect example is Stacey Abrams saying, “I will turn Georgia into a swing State, at the very least. I'm going to turn it blue.” Now we're at a point where we’re all waiting to see what Georgia does. That was one of those moments that seemed absolutely unreachable.
We're seeing moments like that in Texas right now where our President is aware that all of this could shift that easily. So he's going in and implementing rules so that it cannot shift. We have to have more people in office who feel like the Democrats in Texas do; they're very aware that it's all made up.
I agree! I have a novel out on submission about the unpopular peace movement in London during WWII and one of the characters is focused on just that: so much of our social order, from money to celebrity to who we allow power is completely made up.
It really is. I always talk about the example of Black women in the United States in times of slavery, where by law it was stated that they would not be able to keep their children, that their children were somebody else's property. If you're the person who's being told by law that you're not a human being, and your children—the most precious beings—are not human beings, you're immediately going to have a reaction. That it’s unfair. That it’s not true. That it’s made up. And I need to make up something else. I need to shift this nation to see things through my eyes. I need to make sure that my rights are being respected, and my children's rights are being respected. So you're constantly working towards that.
Had you told someone then, there's going to be a President who is a descendant of a slave, or our First Lady is going to be Black—people would have said, “That's not possible.” So we have to always operate with: This is possible. It is achievable. We've done it before. We can do it again.
Do you ever flag in your beliefs?
Not really. Mainly because of the women that I studied in my first book. I'm a student of history. I am a student of the present, but always rooted in those who came before us. The three mothers that I talk about in that book—Alberta King, Berdis Baldwin, and Louise Little—were all born in the late 1890s or early 1900s, and two of them lived up until the late 1990s. What they witnessed throughout their lives were Jim Crow laws, two World Wars, the Great Depression, and many other things. It's hard for me to then say now, “We haven't made progress. We haven't built on what they were able to achieve and what their sons were able to achieve.” You have to always be placed within the history of it, because there's been many times where we could have given up.
You write quite a bit about intuition in both your books. It’s one of the many things patriarchy has done its best to diminish. Can you talk about the role it plays in your life? And how it can be used to dismantle patriarchy?
Absolutely. I am very in touch with my intuition. I do hear myself really well, and I always feel connected to a higher power, to God, to whatever form we believe that this creator shows up as. I feel like I’m being called to do the ideas that are put on my heart and on my mind. I always have felt that if I have something on my heart, it's for a reason, and there's something I'm supposed to do about that.
One of the worst feelings is if you knew in your heart something didn't feel right, you went against that, and then something happened. I have learned from that. I can say to myself, “I knew that wasn't going to be the right decision.” The more you can practice that and trust yourself, the stronger that voice becomes. I'm always trying to protect that as much as possible.
Do you hear a literal voice?
No, it's those moments where I feel the most alive. I have a really good idea and my heart is like, “Oh, you have to do that!” Then I physically can't rest until I do the thing. It's almost haunting me. The idea keeps showing up everywhere.
In your acknowledgments, you thank your ancestors and God. Do you feel comfortable sharing your belief system? If so, does it relate to your intuition?
That's such a good question, Jane, and it's one that I'm working through. I was raised to see all different kinds of religions. My parents, when we lived in different places, took us to mosques and to churches. They wanted us to choose for ourselves; to have the lay of the land and realize that a lot of people lived differently, believed differently.
When I was in high school, I started going to Catholic Mass with a friend of mine, and I was baptized and confirmed. Then I felt like maybe it’s Christianity more largely I’m drawn to. When my mom passed away two and a half years ago, I started to have so many more questions: “Where do I actually think she is?” When people would say to me, “She’s watching you,” I’d be like, “Is she? Or is she reincarnated somewhere? Is her energy always with me?” Because I am her; she birthed me.
I do believe in God, and I believe in the people who came before me. Do I think that they're always watching me? I'm not sure. But I do think that their energy is a part of me. On an almost daily basis, I say thank you to my Creator—I don’t think it’s a gendered being, I don’t think it’s a “him,” by any means—thank you to my ancestors, thank you to my mother, and thank you to my own body, mind, soul. Thank you to the lives that have traveled through me, my three children. Those feel like the divine feminine energies that make me who I am. So I feel connected to something larger, but I don’t think it fits into any particular religion per se. And it’s not passive; there's energy, there's some destiny to it.
That’s so beautiful. I could talk to you for an hour about this!
You're the only person who's ever asked me that. So, thank you.
Going back to the patriarchy, you write about how intuition is one of the things that the patriarchy has hidden. Why would they go after intution?
In order for patriarchy to survive, it relies on all of us to trust it more than we trust ourselves; to trust that the options that it’s offering us are the only options, even if something inside of us is saying something different.
We can think of that from the perspective of somebody who is trans, who knows “these categories don't fit who I am, maybe my being is larger than these two options that I'm being given.” The patriarchy can't have that. Because if we start to listen to ourselves more than what they're offering us, then we start to see it for what it is—which is a fabricated system; which is, maybe we wouldn't have all chosen to set up the nation this way. There were other things we could have decided.
The Founding Fathers were aware that there were other ways to live. A lot of people will say, “Oh, but that was just the time. This is what they did, because that was what they knew.” I disagree completely. They were well aware that other places and other people did things differently. They strategically killed those people and erased those belief systems. By putting children in boarding schools and telling them “you can no longer believe the thing that your ancestors have believed,” that's intentional. That's saying, “I recognize that is a possibility but it's not the one that we're going to choose.”
It's the same as Thomas Jefferson knowing that French women were emancipated, and saying directly, “we're not going to be like the French.” Clear acknowledgment that they could have chosen something differently.
Intuition is the thing that often tells us what is natural, what is divine, and if you listen to it, you're more often than not going to look at a patriarchal system and think it doesn't feel right. It’s going to show up in everything that we do, because from the moment we're born, we need to be trained to be people who don't listen to their intuition, especially in the US. You see it on a level that I did not see in a lot of the other places that I lived, and I think particularly about children.
In the US, we will say things like, “Get them on a schedule. Make sure that they're in their bassinet away from you. Independence is key.” These are the things we prioritize. If you're thinking of prioritizing intuition, which is how I mother, if my child cries, I hold them. I'm not looking at the clock, it doesn't matter what time it is. If my child's hungry, I nurse them. I'm not going say, “Well, my little app tells me that it's fifteen more minutes.” This child only knows intuition. We have been trained in the US—because of capitalism and capitalism is a tool of patriarchy—to prioritize the system. And we're telling our children to do that, too, even newborn babies.
I never thought of a schedule as being part of the patriarchy but when you present like that, it’s clear that it is.
We prioritize the thing that gives us worth. In the United States, it's productivity, it's work. Other nations look at us like, “why do you all care so much about your job?”
Truth. You write that patriarchy has also hidden creativity. What do you see as the role of writers and artists, and creativity in general in helping to dismantle the patriarchy?
Creativity is the beginning of so much else, because it’s our ability to see something that doesn't exist yet. We as writers, as storytellers, can help other people see that thing that we're able to envision and bring them into the work to make that reality. We are allowing people to analyze the world around them differently. Activists are incredibly creative. Parents are incredibly creative.
Of course it’s such an enemy of patriarchy, because patriarchy is a system that relies on us following a structure. When we are creative, we’re going to question, we're going to poke back, and we're going to say, “let's dream differently.”
Like so many, I’m in a near constant state of fury and grief about our country. Through your work, you’re deeply immersed in all this injustice and horror and sorrow. How do you care for yourself?
Such a good question. I think part of it is, the more you study the patriarchy, the more aware you are of how vulnerable it is, how little power it has. A lot of people ask me, “Are you afraid when you talk about these things that somebody will try to silence you?” And no, I don't feel afraid at all. I think maybe because I really am so deeply aware that it’s so made up.
I'm not trying to minimize the pain that American patriarchy causes. I'm not trying to minimize the damage that our current administration is causing. I just believe the path forward lies in this mentality of: we have to do something different. Then, every day, you have to show up differently than it wants you to. You have to be aware of why it so badly wants you to replicate it in all your interactions and all of your relationships, and how you see the world around you—to feel hopeless, to feel defeated, to feel we can't do anything, to feel like we just have to follow.
This is why I filled a book with examples of people who always lived differently, despite what was in their way. If I think about the three mothers in my first book, they still said, “My children are going to live, and they're going to thrive, and they're going to love. I'm going to teach them to be creative and to find joy in their lives,” despite all these sources saying that they don't get to do that.
And grief does teach you: How are you supposed to live life every day? Am I supposed to spend each of my days hopeless and sad and angry? No, I don't believe that.
I believe I'm supposed to find as much love and joy and creativity as possible. That doesn't mean avoiding the pain. It means confronting it straight on and saying, “Can I shift this for my kids? Can I shift this for people I don't even know? Is there some levity that me putting my words out there can bring to somebody else to see the patriarchy as manufactured and breakable and changeable? And that we all are so incredibly filled with power that this system is so afraid of us that it wants to make us feel defeated?”
In terms of actual practices: I go to yoga a lot. I do a lot of journaling, checking in, making sure that I’m processing everything that's happening, because there are also so many great things that happen.
Being with my kids as much as possible; their joy and the way that they see the world is so refreshing. More people need to spend time with children who are completely unaware of all of this ugliness in the world. That is such a blessing.
So much is hard right now. Where are you finding joy?
Definitely my kids. I find all my joy in them.
And I find joy in being aware. Whenever things feel really heavy, you're always going to see examples of people who are changing the way we're doing things. For instance, right now on a national level, our leadership feels horrible. But as a result of that, you're going to see incredible leaders popping up all over the nation. That's something really exciting to pay attention to and to get to know their stories and how they're translating these moments of desperation into, “I'm not going to stay here and let this happen.” We’re going to see some real cool history-makers. Resistance brings me a lot of hope and joy.
For instance, when President Donald Trump was sending the National Guard to Los Angeles, and you saw so many Los Angeles community members say, “We're going to stand together.” That's really hopeful. That's really beautiful. Obviously the whole thing is also horrible and so much pain came from him being here with the National Guard. At the same time, you have that evidence of people saying, “We're going to choose differently.” That makes me feel like I can keep going.
Intertwined hope and joy. I love that.
Yes. I feel like one can't really live without the other.
If you enjoyed this interview with Anna, you might also enjoy this one with Naomi Manaweera:
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What an incredibly insightful perspective and analysis of American culture. I look forward to reading her book!
Erased
Incredible interview. ERASED. I am inspired by Anna, particularly liked her views on how the patriarchy tries to take away our intuition and creativity and yet these are our most potent tools to resist these systems. And this—yes!! “ Each of us should have access to power in the sense of our voices should be heard, in the sense of we should each be treated as human beings in our nation, and especially a nation that represents itself as a democracy.”