Known in the US South as “topsy turvy” dolls because of their two-in-one design, dolls like these from Cuba differ fundamentally from ones I have seen at local Florida antique stores. Popular after the Civil War when the rise of Jim Crow segregation sparked a cultural revitalization of white supremacist beliefs, US versions of this kind of doll typically featured the head and fashions of a young, rosy-cheeked, white, blond, and blue-eyed girl on one end and the upper torso of a Black “mammy” whose exaggerated features reflected racist contempt and mockery of Black equality. They were meant to teach the white kids who played with them that Black people existed to serve the needs and pleasure of whites. By contrast, Cuba’s topsy-turvy dolls reflect an equally sinister but distinct set of values: in a society in which the rape and exploitation of Black women were common both before and after slavery, female children have long been taught that they need to “improve the race” [mejorar la raza] by marrying and/or reproducing with whiter male partners. Thus, Cuban topsy-turvy dolls’ Black grandmother torsos always “beget” a lighter-skinned mother’s torso.
I first encountered such toys in Cuba in 2004 while walking by a six-year-old girl at play: her mom had made her doll, she explained. Shocked when I offered to meet her mother in order to buy the doll, the little girl gave it to me. Later, her mom told me that these dolls were once very common. People stopped making them after the Revolution, she said, because most women no longer had any rags, thread or needles to sew with. When I asked if maybe Cubans didn’t make them anymore because more Cubans proudly identified with being Black, she literally burst out laughing. ¡Tu estás loca, mujer! [You are crazy, lady!], she said. Two years later, I found dozens of the same kind of dolls manufactured by women whom the government commissioned to make them for sale in state tourist shops. Incredibly, while “grandma” was still made from black cloth, the mommy side of the doll was not even brown-colored to symbolize being of African descent or mulata. Instead, “mommy” was not just whiter in terms of skin tone, but she had blond braids and green eyes! In ways words alone do not, Cuban toys like these document the rising acceptability of overt anti-Black racism in recent years as well as the cultural contempt for Black pride and identity in place since colonial times. Collection of Lillian Guerra.
