Lemonade: A Woman’s Narrative, Not a Man’s Confession

Editor's note: Beyoncé has become the voice of women everywhere. Her activism, music, and actions in which she breaks through social boundaries have shown us what it means to be free. Two nights ago, Beyoncé performed "Freedom" from her new album Lemonade at the BET Awards and once again demonstrated what freedom looked like. Below, spoken word poet Tayllor Johnson reflects on Beyoncé's new album and what it means for women everywhere.



When I first heard about Beyoncé’s Lemonade, social media was abuzz with gossip. All I saw were posts speculating if Jay Z cheated, or whether this was all a ruse to get more people using Tidal, a music streaming site founded by Beyoncé and Jay Z. I knew then I was in no rush to see Lemonade. Beyoncé is a brand, I thought; it’s her job to keep us curious and engaged in her content. The public knows nothing about Beyoncé’s life besides what she wants us to know and even then, the public can only guess. What was going to be different about this album? All of a sudden she was going to share herself with all of us, revelations about her marriage, of all things? HA! Not a chance! I’ll pass on that publicity stunt. When a good friend of mine invited me to a Lemonade listening party to watch and discuss the film among other women, I must admit that I finally conceded to seeing what the hype was really about.

Michelle Cliff (1946-2016): Writer, Critic, and Fighter of Racism and Homophobia

Michelle Cliff was born in Kingston, Jamaica on November 2, 1946. She graduated from Wagner College in New York City in 1969 and then from Warburg Institute in London in 1974 with a PhD in the Italian Renaissance. A novelist, poet, short story writer, and literary critic, Cliff's works seek to retell history, addressing political and cultural issues. Cliff spent much of her childhood in New York, as her parents immigrated to the United States to look for better economic opportunities. She would return to Jamaica frequently to visit relatives before anchoring herself in the United States. This movement and exposure prompted her to adopt a multicultural identity, for she felt she could not limit her writing to just one place.

ICYMI: The Last Week in Black Writing and Culture (6/17-6/23)

"Seshat: A Digital Humanities Initiative in Literature, Language, and Criticism" sponsored by Howard University took place this week. Search hashtag #DHatHU on Twitter to keep up with the workshop presentations.

Dr. Tamara Cash wrote a piece on Juneteenth, highlighting an exhibit at the Watkins Museum of History commemorating the historic event. The exhibit is free to the public and will remain open through July.

See these amazing color photos of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during his Chicago Freedom Movement campaign.

The Guardian published the piece, "Four Times African Writers Rewrote a Western Classic and Nailed it."

On NPRs Fresh Air segment, host Terry Gross spoke to Wendy Warren about her new book, New England Bound. Warren's book recounts how the New England colonists embraced the slave trade.

Khalid Rahmaan of The Nation spoke about Muhammad Ali and what it means to transcend race.

Requiem for Human Dreams

"Today there can be no doubt that Americans know the facts; and yet they remain for the most part indifferent and unmoved." This sentence from W. E. B. DuBois's article "A Negro Nation Within the Nation," Current History 42 (1935 ): 265-270 has been quoted by Ibram X. Kendi in Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016). Du Bois's assertion sounds in 2016 like a lament from a person in ideological pain, and there can be no doubt that Kendi quoted Du Bois to remind us of the implacable and always changing conditions of human existence. There are indigenous nations still within the United States of America, but we who have no membership in those nations remain ignorant of them by choice. Perhaps, the ignorance is more a reflex action than a rational choice, an unconscious motion of marking the authenticity of being an American. Such ignorance and indifference, or selectivity in our commerce with facts, is not innately necessary or sufficient, a part of unadulterated biological functioning. It is a part of social and cultural engineering. No doubt we remain unmoved by knowing this fact, because the excruciating pain of being an American paralyzes common sense as well as the qualities of charity, hope, and faith which manifest themselves in most of the religions of this world.

Stamped from the Beginning, like any book, may only awaken a few dozen Americans and disturb the bliss of ignorance. Nevertheless, Kendi's book may awaken a handful of Americans to recognize what such widely discussed books as Kevin Powell's The Education of Kevin Powell, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, and Ta'Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me and such infrequently discussed books as Dennis de Rougemont's The Devil's Share, Sam Greenlee's Baghdad Blues, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd work toward by indirection: the abject cognitive poverty of sentences in which the word "race" is the subject. There can be no doubt that Americans remain indifferent and unmoved by arguments in Charles W. Mills's The Racial Contract, arguments that are as crucial as the fictions about terrorism which circulate internationally.

As an irreversible new ordering of the world descends upon us , cognitive poverty ascends. In 2016, Americans and other human beings know only two facts: (1) Nothing is neither true nor false, because it is nothing and (2) Everything is either true or false, because it is everything. Know that these magic propositions ordain a requiem for human dreams.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr. 

June 18, 2016