Anna Malaika Tubbs

Interview & Photography by Amina Touray

Anna Malaika Tubbs holds many impressive titles, such as NYT Best Selling author of The Three Mothers, educator, scholar, motivational speaker, advocate for women and children’s rights, mother, wife, and the list continues to grow. With an international upbringing in places like Sweden, Dubai, and Mexico, she learned early that there is value and room for growth in uncomfortable situations, and also to celebrate differences. We had the honor to chat and learn more in depth about the influences and life lessons that’s been part of Tubbs’s inner journey and development.

Amina Touray: You have a very international upbringing. Can you share a little about yourself, where you’re from, and where you grew up?

Anna Malaika Tubbs: I always like to start with my parents and their story. My mom was born in Clarkston, Washington and she wanted to be a lawyer because her dad was a judge. But at the time he told her that women don’t become lawyers, that’s not what they’re supposed to do, and that she should be focused on becoming a wife and a mother. But my mom couldn’t accept that. So she put herself through law school and then had this dream of traveling the world, so she started this journey. My dad was born in Ghana. He left Ghana in the midst of some dangerous politics. He wanted to see what the world could offer him as well. So he went to Sweden, and my parents met there. They fell in love in Sweden, they had my brother in Sweden, and they wanted to continue this dream of traveling the world with their kids. Allowing us to see the world first hand. We lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico where I was born. Then we left the U.S and went to Dubai for several years. We were in Estonia, Sweden, Azerbaijan, and Mexico, and came back to The States when I was a teenager. We lived in Laramie, Wyoming, then I went to boarding school in Indiana when my parents went abroad again, and I went back and forth visiting them in places like Kuwait and Ghana. Then I went to undergrad in California, and I did my graduate degree in England at the University of Cambridge.

AT: Wow that’s amazing! All these places must have shaped you into the woman you are today. What have been some of the most impactful moments in your life that have shaped your views and values?

AMT: There’s a lot (laughs)! Here’s one very specific story; My parents wanted my brother, and I to attend local schools as much as possible where we lived. So when we moved to Mexico they put us in an all Spanish speaking school, but we didn’t speak a word of Spanish. So I was scared and was like -” mom why’d you do that?”, and she responded ”...you’re going to eventually learn to speak the language. This is just a situation that

““It’s important for my kids and partner to recognize my leadership”

may seem scary, but you have everything you need to do well.” And as annoying as it was, my mom, did this all the time to remind us of what we were capable of. And it’s true - within a couple of months we were speaking Spanish fluently, we picked up all these incredible life skills, and learned to feel confident that even when things feel really scary, I have what I need inside of me to do well and be okay, and I will learn something from it, and to be okay with that discomfort and believe in myself and be brave and creative. I was only eight years old when we moved to Mexico.

AT: I love how she pushed you! They say you should do one thing every day that scares you, that’s how you really grow. I originally found you through your Ted Talk speech when you talked about the importance of mothers. I remember you said during your talk that you had visited Martin Luther King’s birthplace in Atlanta, and you left feeling frustrated after that. Can you explain why you were left feeling that way?

AMT: Yes, absolutely! I was in the middle of doing research for my Ph.D. dissertation that was also to become the book that I wrote. Part of the research was visiting places where the women who I was writing about lived, and of course, Alberta King - being Martin Luther King’s mother, I went to Atlanta. He was born in this house that everybody else had talked about, how amazing it was. And the tour guide was talking about it only from the perspective of MLK Jr, and if he added anybody else into the story, he added MLK Sr - MLK Jr’s father. But from my research, I knew that this was actually Alberta’s house first. This is where her parents had raised her, this is her childhood home, this is where when she got married, her husband moved in with her. This was the house where she had given birth to her children! So I was really angered that no one seemed to know this important truth. And I really expected at the very least in Atlanta at the house, that they would have told the story that I knew from my own research. So I was even more shocked. It wasn’t like it was a distance away from Atlanta, it was at her very home where she was still being erased.

AT: That’s crazy that it wasn’t even mentioned!

AMT: And that happens all the time to women, and women of color, and mothers very specifically, we just don’t get mentioned.

AT: Why do you think that is, what is the reason behind that?

AMT: This is actually what my next book is all about because I’ve been asked this many times “Why” and how this has happened. My Ph.D. is in sociology, and my Master’s is in gender studies, so I’m going to get a little academic here: but it’s really the system of patriarchy, and the way it intersects with other things like racism, for instance, which make it so that the further you are from being a white cis-gender male, the less we value your contribution, the less we value your life, and certainly, once you’re no longer on this earth, the less we take care of your story, the less we keep your narrative alive. And these women being erased, Alberta being erased, is just one symptom of a larger system operating the way it was built to operate and it comes in law, it comes in policies, it comes in so many different ways. That is what really causes it. And mothering is really in a lot of ways kind of the ultimate symbol of womanhood, even if not all women choose to become mothers, and it should be our choice whether or not we’re going to become mothers. But when we’re thinking about things such as feminine qualities or historically what people associate with being feminine, motherhood comes up. So it’s the symbol of the woman and what we reject or what we try to suppress, and what

the system tries to control and so it plays out even more with moms, and that erasure becomes even more of a problem.

AT: How do you think this can be changed?

AMT: I think there are a lot of levels of change. 1. We have to acknowledge that change is necessary. It’s not only frustrating when a mother is erased, but it actually is quite problematic and also potentially dangerous. For instance, the fact that we don’t know, and we haven’t said in history, up until my book, that Alberta Williams King is the reason that MLK Jr was able to inherit this church, that she’s the most educated in her family, and this is how her children become more educated, this is how her husband becomes more educated. It not only does a dis-

service to her, but it actually perpetuates this notion that men are self-made, they don’t need to support women and they certainly don’t need to thank women. And it also is a national issue where we are not supporting these goals with policy, so we still don’t have universal childcare or parental leave in The U.S, because we don’t really care that much about people that are in charge of children, we don’t have universal health care like a lot of other countries do. So all of that really stems from this lack of appreciation and the lack of attention being paid to mothering roles and mothers’ work.

AT: What inspired you to write the book, and why specifically the mothers of these in particular three men? (MLK Jr, Malcolm X & James Baldwin )

AMT: I loved the book Hidden Figures written by Margot Lee Shetterly, which went on to become the famous movie about the black women who were the scientists and the mathematicians behind NASA. And I said that I’m going to be somebody that finds other “hidden figures”. I knew it was going to be something around black women that we should have known all along and I was taking inspiration from my mom, as she always told me to focus on women, focus on their role, focus on how different societies treat women, what you’ve seen in your life and what I’ve shown you through my own work, she would say. So I said something around motherhood would be really fascinating and then I de-

cided that I wanted this to be my first book. I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer, write my books, and get paid to speak about them (laughs). I needed this to also be something that audiences everywhere can connect to, and that the most people possible would know these women’s names. So I said MLK Jr, Malcolm X - people are never tired of talking about these huge figures in history, but there’s a perspective that we haven’t heard before which is who are the women, not behind them, but the women before them. So I started to do a little bit of research on those two first and I was really blown away by what I could find about Alberta - MLK Jr’s mother, Louise - Malcolm X’s mother, and then I thought I don’t want them to be placed on opposite sides of each other, so I want to bring in a third to complicate that narrative, so I brought in James Baldwin, and the final thing is I discovered all three of them - the moms, were

“There’s a perspective that we haven’t heard before which is who are the women, not behind them, but the women before them.”

born within six years of each other, and their famous sons were born within five years of each other. So I could bring them together in time and tell this really cool inner-woven story without reducing the complexity of each of their individual narratives.

AT: What has being a mother taught you?

AMT: It’s really interesting because I was writing this book before I became a mom. While I was writing it, you’ll see it in the introduction chapter, I was expecting my first born, so my relationship with motherhood is inextricable from my writing of this book, and all the research I was doing not only for this book but for my dissertation on black motherhood. So I can’t even separate one from the other. The book and my becoming a mother have taught me the power and the influence of motherhood. I’m a very confident mother - as a result, mothering has taught me that it’s not only about me being there for everybody else and being behind everybody else. There’s this narrative type of mom that is supposed to be in the background, moms are supposed to be selfless. And through my research through the book, and from what I’ve seen in my own mothering is actually that I’m doing so much more with the influence that I have, and my passion and talents are translating into my motherhood. It’s important for my kids and partner to recognize my leadership. I shouldn’t be in the background, I should share my strategies, especially for having black children - they need to know what I have done to make a difference in this world, and I hope that they can do it as well. So it’s kind of this overlap that my motherhood has taught me so much that went into my work around motherhood, but my research also taught me how to be a mother. A lot of people thought I was already a mom before I wrote this and I always have to tell people that is not the case. I thought it was important to highlight moms before I was considering being one, and I think more people need to care, whether they are mothers or not because what happens to mothers affects all of us.

AT: What are you currently working on, any new books or

““We have to acknowledge that change is necessary.”

projects?

AMT: I just finished the draft of my first novel. There’s kind of two storylines - one is a young woman who’s losing her life in the development of an abusive relationship, and the other is a young boy whose world is dictated by misinformation. And the reader is trying to figure out how the two stories intersect with each other because I’m telling them simultaneously. And it doesn’t become clear until the end how they relate to each other. So that’s my novel, and then I’m working on the next non-fiction which is all about the system of patriarchy and dismantling that, and then I have a deal for another non-fiction but I don’t know what it’s going to be yet, and two children’s books as well that I’m pitching right now, and then finally translating all of those things into projects for screen. I have a wonderful team at WME that represents me for talent. So it’s really exciting, it’s like very much the beginning, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next few years!

AT: I’m super excited for you! Is there anything else that you want to share with the world?

AMT: Because I travel so much and because of what I’ve studied, I realize that so many people feel very uncomfortable with differences and that I think is quite dangerous. So I don’t only want people to accept difference, I want us to celebrate it as much as possible, not only in our own personal life but on our teams at work, and in society at large. Celebrating differences is the way forward and understanding that we are stronger the more different we are. So my final thought is that I hope that people become more comfortable and excited about celebrating differences.

Find more information about Anna Malaika Tubbs at www.annamalaikatubbs.com