This past Sunday evening, I had the privilege of being invited to the Emory Black Student Alliance's First Year Dinner to perform some of my spoken word poetry. Days before I was scheduled to perform, a sudden passing in the family prompted a trip home to Memphis, as well as my family's "country" home in rural Mississippi. I spent most of the week leading up to the dinner absent—both physically and mentally—from school and all of my responsibilities here. When I retuned to campus and still had to face my commitment, I grappled with the fact that life had gotten in the way of my original plans for preparation. It was the weekend of the dinner and I had not yet memorized or rehearsed my piece enough to truly deliver in the way that I felt my work deserved. In other words, it would not be perfect.
However, in the somewhat comforting words of family back home, the show must go on. I had to convince my perfectionist self not to quit, but to persist. I had dealt with an emotional rollercoaster of a weekend, but Sunday evening, I would honor my commitment to contribute my talents to Black Emory and beyond. The overwhelmingly positive reception of my work validated my decision. Following my performance, so many people came up to me and shared how my beautifully written words had an impact on them and resonated with experiences in their lives as well. I thank the Emory BSA as well as the students of Black Emory for being so supportive and loving in welcoming me to share such a special platform.
As a performer of social practice art, one thing I am constantly reminding myself is that my work has a much more meaningful impact being shared, albeit imperfect, rather than never being shared at all. In the spirit of this motivational mantra, my poem can be found below, alongside a video from the First-Year Dinner.
What It's Like as a Black Girl
a spoken word poem in response to Patricia Smith's "What It's Like to Be a Black Girl (for Those of You Who Aren't)"
by Kira Tucker
After nineteen years of seeing yourself through the haze of dark tinted shades,
it’s finally realizing that those technicolor days enrich your life with endless meaning,
only to later be distilled through European views of being.
Hiding behind steady doses of subliminal lies intertwined with the burn of epicranial lye
toxic images spoon-fed to the eager, naive mind of a still-blind child,
it’s makeup palettes refusing to acknowledge your shade, “Ethnic” aisles refusing your validity,
camera flashes capturing photo snapshots absent of your aesthetic reality,
dress policies of professionalism refusing respect of your heritage,
mainstream news refusing to stop the abuse of your image,
members of your own race refusing to face your worth,
your value, your meaning as a thinking, breathing being on this Earth.
This is what it’s like to look like a black girl.
But one day, nearly nineteen years too late,
it’s finally deciding to wean off the addictive self-hate.
Being forced to build up your own self-pride from the broken ground
when there are no prototypes or blueprint slides around to guide
your battered boat against lost hope’s swelling tide
into the foggy, faraway harbor of self-love.
So you become your own lighthouse
learn to emanate independence,
become a beacon of homespun courage,
teaching from within. You begin
undoing destruction of oppression’s subliminal, liminal mine fields,
allowing time until your mind heals.
This is what it’s like to fight like a black girl.
It’s finally finding patience in the words
of the ignorant bigots
who fling them about, not knowing
their power to hurt.
Learning discipline in
combing and conditioning,
resisting the whims of our hair,
yearning in the exhalation of a silent prayer:
“May we be as resilient as our strong-willed kinks,
coconut and shea-oiled coils”
this is what it’s like—a day in the life of a black girl.
It’s not wanting to write a poem
that would unlock a poisonous potion of emotion,
a brew I knew could suddenly spew forth,
like wounds torn, ribs shorn, let blood and pus gush out
from beneath burnished armor, melaninated exoskeleton,
pain strained through the colander of concentrated color.
Like detergent, we are ultra-concentrated, ten times more powerful
than the leading brand:
the brand engineered, manufactured, profiteered
by none other than “the man.”
And you get tired sometimes.
It winds up feeling like lies we feed on,
not really strong enough to feel tough like we always ought
to be “queen” or “diva” or “bad bitch,”
crafted with oversaturated confidence
saccharine, like gritty, particulate Kool-Aid
that slips through thick lips,
turned red with quick sips.
These images are the ones over-written
into scripts we know we won’t fit.
This is what it’s like to see like a black girl.
We wear not hearts but heavy-laden history,
conspicuous ancestry atop eternal sleeves.
We are the crayons crammed in multicultural coloring boxes.
We are always placed in boxes,
forced to check off boxes
(ethnicity and/or race boxes),
a caste, forever categorized class of citizens
forced to bear the highs and the lows
successes and failures of those whose names we’ll never know.
It’s accepting your less than
privileged position, beneath the Baracks and Beyoncés
who savor the bittersweet birthright of colorism’s woes,
vestiges of a fragile, paper-bag past.
It’s dashikis and fashion tees, branded “black is beautiful,”
enlisting centuries-old truths as remedies for soothing
diasporic wounds of cultural transplant surgery.
It’s being forced into a legacy
and never afforded the fortune to choose
whether to be fed or to refuse the milky, white-washed ooze
seeping deep into each of the chain-linked shackles
from centuries of an overshadowed history.
It’s understanding you’ll always be considered different,
in a perpetual state of “unique” and “eccentric,”
a misunderstood face that you will still take as your own.
It’s stumbling home in a haze of grating self-doubt and uncertainty
yet finding a certain comfort
in unapologetically relishing your reality,
a lived authenticity no soul may take away from me.
Because I am me in all of my beauty, creativity, talent, individuality,
Uncovering much needed love for my people,
I now don double doses of confidence
for all the years we’ve lacked it.
I’m crafting the courage to embrace my blackness.
I laugh at ignorance with the audacity to practice
radical self-love.
This is what it’s like when you finally decide
to truly begin to live as black girl.
As I continue to reflect on the healing process that comes with the passing of a loved one, I will also share a piece I performed at Emory Arts Underground's Revival this spring, entitled "Grief and a New Me."
Grief and a New Me
by Kira Tucker
