Author Archives: Christie Sylvester

Natalie and Princess: A Gap Yet to Be Bridged, If Ever. (Extra Credit)

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My takeaway from my experience watching Black Mother, Lost Daughter is that at its core, it is an expression of grief. It is a method the playwright uses to express to the best of her ability, what cannot be explained in her own words alone. It is an expression of the collective tiredness experienced by the Black community, whenever justice continues to elude us consecutively, time after time again. It raises the question of whether justice can even exist for us. Alongside that, with the show’s name, it is also a story of motherhood, specifically Black motherhood.

I think that while it is typical for the older generation to butt heads with the younger, what is so heartbreaking about the relationship between Princess and her mother Natalie is the lack of understanding and communication. Throughout the show, we constantly see Princess’s willingness to spill out her emotions in front of other people, completely negating the “strong Black woman” archetype that is more apparent in her mother’s actions. Natalie is incredibly silent, we only ever see how she truly feels in the wake of Queen’s death when is alone, and nursing a bottle of “tea”, the alcohol pulling out all the thoughts and feelings she cannot bear to speak aloud to Princess.

But towards the end of the play, what truly breaks my heart is when Natalie completely misremembers a core memory of Queen running away from home, and how she failed to properly reconcile that emotional wound. What we find out is that Natalie completely misremembered in her grief, and the child that actually ran away was Princess. And rather than apologizing and reaffirming her love for her daughter, Natalie wills it away, asking her daughter if she’d like something to eat. To me, it seems as though some Black mothers would rather almost die than admit that they were wrong. It creates a cycle of trauma that may have existed since time immemorial There’s so much more that I could say about this show and the messages it imparted, but what I can say is that it was a simultaneously enlightening and sobering experience.

Image sourced from hellogiggles.com

Mary Church Terrell: Misogynoir at Work

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America is afflicted with a grave illness.

In her speeches, Mary Church Terrell makes it abundantly clear that America is afflicted with a grave illness that runs rampant alongside the sickness of racism and slavery. In fact, one could conclude that it is a direct result of both. Misogynoir is defined as the “dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against Black women.” While Marcy Church Terrell is a part of the Talented Tenth, she is nonetheless still limited by her gender as well as her race. Amongst the Black community, there is a great disconnect between herself and the greater community at large due to her class privilege. As a Black clubwoman who subscribes to the “lifting as we climb” ideology, while her intentions are meant to have the best interests of the Black community in mind, they fail to take into account the lived experiences of poor and working-class Black people who will not have had access to privilege in the same way as her, nor is rebuilding a community in this idealized image of gentility as easy to make a reality as is said. The idea that the Talented Tenth subscribes to fails to recognize that rather than allowing formerly enslaved communities to come into themselves by its own means, they instead want to assimilate in a way that is as approximate to whiteness as possible. What I seek to communicate here is that despite these misguided attempts, Terrell still stands as a pillar of progress toward a brighter future for Black America at the time. However, due to misogynoir, women like Terrell and Ida B. Wells are excluded from the greater conversation of what direction should be taken to ensure the success and survival of the Black community. It is unfortunate that Terrell is not placed up on the shelf with the likes of “race men” like Booker T. Washington or W.E.B. Du Bois. Terrell herself remarks in “The Progress of Colored Women” (1898) that “Not only are colored women with ambition and aspiration handicapped on account of their sex, but they are almost everywhere baffled and mocked because of their race.” This inherent hatred and distaste for Black women of color is necessary for the racial hierarchy of America that places white men at its peak, and everything outside of that category beneath them. It prevents Black women from being a part of the “cult of true womanhood” despite being just as qualified to meet the requirements. One could conclude that the cult has a tendency to move the goalpost, depending on whom is deemed desirable enough to enter or not for the sake of racial purity. From within the Black community, misogynoir seeks to subjugate or mold Black women into the “angel of the hearth” role, but it is not conducive to Black womanhood when you take into account what the intersectionality between being Black and a woman entails.