the bowl keeps moving: sou sou as a Black practice of collective care
when SUSU commUNITY farm chose our name, we chose to honor sou sou in our lineage.
when money gets tighter, we are often taught to pull back, hold onto what we have and figure out how to make it on our own. but our ancestors practiced another way.
Black communities have carried the practice of sou sou across generations and across the diaspora for times when what one person has may not be enough, but what we have together can move differently. sou sou teaches us to trust each other in material ways by gathering what we can, putting it into motion, and keeping the circle going even after our own needs have been met.
how sou sou worked for generations
sou sou belongs to a much larger family of rotating savings practices with deep histories in West Africa and across the Black diaspora. forms of the practice are often connected to the West African esusu tradition. through migration, enslavement, trade, and the movement of African peoples across the Atlantic, related practices took on different names and particular forms in different places. in Jamaica, there is partner. in Guyana, box hand. elsewhere across the Caribbean and its diasporas, susu, sou sou, and other names are still used too.
imagine ten people each putting $20 into a bowl every week. together, they have $200.
the first week, one person receives the $200.
the next week, everyone puts in $20 again. another person receives the $200.
the person who already received their share keeps contributing.
week after week, the bowl travels around the circle until everyone has held it.
what one person could only save slowly on their own becomes useful to someone now because everyone agrees to keep the money moving.
scarcity can pressure us to hold more tightly to whatever we have, yet Black communities have repeatedly developed ways to make limited resources travel farther through relationship: pooling money, sharing food, tending children, helping someone make rent, buying land together, giving rides, paying bail, passing seeds and knowledge, or making sure a neighbor has what they need.
while sou sou was practiced differently from place to place, the heart of sou sou is present whenever no one carries the whole burden alone. each person contributes, each person receives, and the circle continues.
sou sou teaches that abundance is most powerful when it moves in community.
for generations, our communities have used sou sou to purchase homes, start up businesses, support families, pay school fees, recover after hardship, and invest in dreams that might otherwise remain out of reach.
in Caroline Shenaz Hossein's research with hundreds of people across jamaica, guyana, trinidad and tobago, haiti, and toronto, she found women called “banker ladies” running peer-to-peer financial systems alongside their use of formal banks. even as modern banks arrived, women continued to use them to support households and relatives, finance businesses, and mobilize money through people they knew.
in Caribbean communities shaped by migration, this role was called a keeper. Jamaican British writer Deanne Heron writes about pardner as crucial for Caribbean migrants who had difficulty accessing ordinary banking services. she also remembers the pardner organizer as a carrier of community information. people came to her with their money, but news traveled through those encounters too. she knew people across households and social networks, and the financial network doubled as a communication network.
care is central to these stories, but sou sou also contains administration, judgment, accountability, and sometimes pressure. research on rotating savings groups shows that once someone has received an early payout, the rest of the circle depends on that person continuing to continue to contribute. if a person disappears after receiving their turn, everyone scheduled after them can lose. these systems rely upon social enforcement as well as trust. being known can make flexibility possible when someone's circumstances change. being known can also mean having to answer to people when you fail to meet an obligation.
this is how, in her words, we move from exclusionary systems towards love.
the poem as gardening, the story as su-su
jamaican poet and writer Olive Senior carries sou sou into the work of storytelling. her 2005 Philip Sherlock Lecture is titled “The Poem as Gardening, the Story as Su-Su.” she draws from Jamaican oral traditions to think about a story as something made through many tellings: received from others, carried for a time, shaped by the person holding it, and passed on again. the writer is part of that process, but never its only source.
she tells us more of the story behind the word, which is social and not monetary in nature:
“In Jamaica, the word “su-su” or “sus” conveys the sound of a whisper passing from ear to ear, the vehicle of gossip. While gossip in our time has come to mean idle chatter, the word’s original meaning is much weightier. It derives from “God” and “sib” and referred to the god-parents of a child. Gossip in that sense denoted a spiritual affinity between the baptised person and its sponsors. Thus a gossip was not only a close acquaintance but one who had a vested interest in the event and its outcome. Even today, we know that god-parents are duty bound to have a hand in the shaping of their god-child’s character. Gossip, then, presupposes a loop that connects teller to listener, binding both to the subject of the story.”
Senior describes the storyteller as taking what has been heard and adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, so that each telling draws from what came before while making something new available to the next person. in her use of su-su, cultural memory works through contribution and circulation much like the savings practice itself. a story gathers value through many hands.
sou sou is central in how we talk about a living Black archive at SUSU. we can’t afford to leave our cultural practices untouched as a form of “preservation” because our knowledge survives when people keep using it,remembering it, passing it on, and even changing it to make it their own in the current times. it puts sharing resources alongside our storytelling the most beautiful way.
caring for another person's future also strengthens our own
sou sou is a way of practicing relationship and it asks us to trust each other in material ways. sou sou teaches us to recognize that abundance grows when it moves and that caring for another person's future also strengthens our own.
gather a small, manageable amount that everyone can easily commit to. let someone hold it. keep contributing after your own turn. keep the circle available for the person who comes next.
today, we arrive to a bowl that is never empty for long because each person always contributes what they can. it moves forward. perhaps this week, that someone is you giving and perhaps next week you will receive blessings and gifts of a different nature, in kind from this community.
consider the ways wealth has reached you, through money, land, knowledge, opportunity, care, relationship, or something else, and what it asks of you to keep care moving toward others.
802 Gives Black is one expression of sou sou as a living tradition, part of the living Black archive. we invite team leaders to gather their people into circles where each gift layers onto the next and every conversation opens another possibility. each gift reminds someone they are part of something larger than themselves.
SUSU commUNITY farm exists as a living Black archive so that we can re-member practices like these and keep them alive. as our communities are living through an economy in decline, let’s get inspired to find community-centered solutions through the practice that gave us our name. let’s talk about where sou sou comes from, how it works, and what it might teach us about making a way together right now.
be a part of #802givesBlack
we're inviting one hundred people to join us in celebrating Black August by gathering circles and making gifts of reciprocity to sou sou. the fundraiser began on august 1st as we look to honor the freedom fighters, Black political prisoners, and revolutionaries of the movement for collective liberation. Black August holds profound significance in our lineages. it commemorates Black political prisoners, revolutionaries, and visionaries who continue to pave the way for justice and freedom. by ending our campaign on october 6th, Fannie Lou Hamer’s birthday, we honor her legacy as a loving mother and visionary for food and land sovereignty. through this practice of commUNITY resource sharing, together we will continue the legacies of our ancestors as we build liberated worlds.
please consider selecting “show my support by making this a recurring donation.”