What your words mean to black women are set upon holy ground. I was met by your words at eight years old. I was in an older sister figure of mine's room. She went out to go do something and I sat there wondering what a teenager's room looked like. There were some blouses that I hoped to soon wear laid across the bed where I was sitting. There was also a hair straightener that I had seen her use countless times to lay her hair down. Right next to the bed was a nightstand with books strewn across it. A collection of paperbacks most of them faded. I shifted through them when my eyes s met the cover of the bluest eye. What I read, all of three pages, were concepts I had not been introduced to before. Nothing had ever been painted with words the way this piece was. It was not until I went back to this piece years later that I was met its themes of racism, race, sexuality, feminity, and beauty. The question and exploration of beauty in the context of these themes were very revealing to the mentality we hold as black people living in the "white man's world" and to be black women on top of that is an overlooked suffocation.
In your works your articulation of such human thoughts is incredible. The groundedness upon which your stories are cemented are very real stories. The coming of age curiosities and the questions of what it means to be a woman are as dense as the bluest eye has depicted. Minds are just as lost. I am met by the abuse strewn by our community. Black people unappreciative of black features. The definition of what it means to be ugly lingering in a thickset fog clouding the beauty we do very much in fact harbor, all of which are because of our black features.
It is a feat to find our way out of the traps set along the way withholding self-esteem, black pride, and black consciousness. You were every young black girl's leader, leading us out of the maze of whiteness intruding. Your words "Black is beautiful" were whispered with the intensity of a mother in church proclaiming an "Amen!". Loving, reinforcing, and proud. You gave light to the struggle of being a black woman in America. You gave a voice to that struggle and made the load on our backs a much fiercer one to carry. You pointed me to a liberty that I do in fact have to the greatness that I possess as a black woman. That my voice is needed too.
Sincerely,
Kayla Mary Jane
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