Reasons To Love The Dark Skin You're Born With
Inspired by a post from the Isolation Journals newsletter.
Last Sunday, I read a beautiful piece from the Isolation Journals newsletter. Nikita Gill, a contributor to the newsletter, wrote, “Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse”. After reading this lovely piece, I was inspired to write lists about why I love my dark skin.
I hope you’re inspired to write your reasons to love the dark skin you’re born with. I hope you write your lists in a poem form or a long, gorgeous list.
Here’s mine:
Dark skin. Unique. Wonderful. Magical. Beautiful. Your ancestors’ skin. The black woman staring back at you in the mirror reflection. The way your dark skin becomes even darker in a candlelight room. Braid. Meeting a black person you’ve never met before and knowing what it’s like to fight in a predominantly white society and you don’t have to explain that. Dark eyes. Thick, Afro hair. Reading about a black woman named Alice H Parker, who invented the gas heating using natural gas. Woman. Shea butter lathering your scalp. Curvaceous figure. The solidarity of black women’s friends. Your mother’s dark eyes. Wearing dangly earrings, hot red lip gloss, sheer scarf, and oversized tortoiseshell glasses. Dark beauty. Black woman. Your father’s toes. Reading books that have a black woman as a protagonist. Running your fingers through the strands of your coils or curls. African culture. Walking in the park with your shoulders straight and pride in your walk despite the struggle you face. Resilience. Your grandfather’s skin. Water running down your dark body. The tone of your voice. Cornrow. Delicious skin. The reflections of yourself in other black women. Listening to James Brown’s lyrics: I’m black and I’m proud.
And now to my black stories recommendations for this week:
A few days ago, when I was sending a personal essay to The Sun Magazine, I came across a beautiful essay. Some Thoughts On Mercy will put tears in your eyes. I read this essay for the story. It’s about a black man who is pulled over by a policeman. Just because he looks to be guilty of something. I read the essay for the writing as well. If you’ve read my essays, you know how I love iterations. Sentences that bring into focus an image or a feeling or a writer’s or a character’s world for the reader layer by layer.
Here’s an example of iterations from the essay:
“When the police suspect a black man or boy of having a gun, he becomes murderable: Murderable despite having earned advanced degrees or bought a cute house or written a couple of books of poetry. Murderable whether he’s an unarmed adult or a child riding a bike in the opposite direction. Murderable in the doorways of our houses. Murderable as we come home from the store. Murderable as we lie facedown on the ground in a subway station. Murderable the day before our weddings. Murderable, probably, in our gardens.” Ross Gay in Some Thoughts On Mercy
Don’t you just love this lovely paragraph?
The word ‘murderable’ is repeated eight times in that paragraph.
The Guardian ran a detailed story on Viola Davis’s tough path to the top of Hollywood. Viola Davis on Hollywood_ ‘You either have to be a Black version of a white ideal, or you have to be white’
A writer community I’m part of recommended Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson. I devoured this book in a few hours. If you’re a black woman, you will relate with August, the black girl narrator in the book.
A recent report reveals that 1 in 3 women don’t think they’re paid what they’re worth.
Do You See Me? A poem by Rebecca Enonchong
P.S.
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