I remember wrote this while the #BlackoutTuesday was a thing. A strong message from Yene to every women: be brave and bold! This is my Post-colonial Critics Post-test Assignment created wholeheartedly, simply because I love this poem and the strong message inside this poem.
Abstract Daughter is a poem of black women fighting for their rights to be equal, even though there are a lot of boundaries because of their race’s stigma. This paper will uncover the life and the struggle of African-American people against Western people and the connection of the Black Power Movement with this poem. Blackness theory by Franz Fanon and the superficial knowledge about the Black Power Movement will help to conduct the discussion, and contextual and close-reading method will be used to find the materials. It is found that this poem supports the positive movement of the Black community in the United States. The poet encourages Black communities, especially Black women, to fight for their rights and equality by writing this poem. Keywords: African-American, movement, power, race, struggle.
1. Introduction
Racism has occurred since a long time ago. Nowadays, people are against racism and discrimination by standing up and struggling for equality for all humans. This also influences the mindset of people around the world.
Yene notices that there are different treatments and stigmas to the Black, so she writes this poem to encourage Black to fight for their rights. Unfortunately, there is no previous discussion mooting about this poem found yet. For this is probably the first paper that will be discussing Yene’s poem, the writer is interested to analyze and critique racism portrayed in this poem and find the connection between this poem with Black Power Movement.
2. Theory and Methods
2.1 Theory
2.1.1 Fanon’s Blackness Theory
Since hundred years ago, racism has existed and applied in the world. Racism is a mindset of distinction in reacting to different races or ethnicity as a representation of one specific race’s superiority that leads to oppression and discrimination (Ghani, 2008: 1113-1115). Racism has a great impact to the Black community’s social life, and it also influences the system to distinguish treatment and behavior towards the minorities. Racism is assumed as the product of the post-colonial era which disintegrates ego and society. There are several characteristics of racism which are superiority, internalization, and dominant oppression. This resulting in stigma adhesion to Black people which tells that they are different, negro, inferior, and identical with slavery.
There is one critical theory about racism especially about black people, as stated by Franz Fanon in his famous book Black Skin, White Mask (1952). Fanon criticizes the discrimination towards the Black people and he demands an equal system for every people including the Black community. His idea of equality of the Black race in the society is due to his personal experiences of being Black people between the White people.
2.1.2 Black Power Movement
Black Power Movement is focusing on the socio-economic empowerment of African-American people living in the United States. It emerges from 1960 until nowadays because of the civil rights movement fiasco.
This movement is based on the African-American lacking of safety and behavior distinction to the Black community in the United States (Davis, 2017). It also has a connection with the Black Panther movement in the 1970s. This movement emphasizes the racial pride, self-sufficiency, and equality to the Black community.
This movement has a great impact and it aims to escalate the Black community confidence and pride in the society. It also influences some colleges and universities to study about Black culture and arts.
2.2 Methods
This paper uses a descriptive qualitative study that requires constructed analysis and discussion to identify the acquired data (Creswell, 1994: 21). To get a reflective discussion result, the writer uses contextual method which as stated by Behrendt (2008), this method helps to analyze the data according to the current background.
The data will be collected using close-reading method or a comprehensive data-fetching after deeply reading the whole poem and also, the writer will find several secondary sources and supporting theories from such books, journals, and articles.
3. Findings and Discussion
3.1 The Life of African-American as Depicted in this Poem
Yene’s poem mostly describes the life of African-American people in the United States. She depicts the discrimination towards the Black as colonised or enslaved by the White. This denotes that the condition of Black people is being oppressed mentally and physically by the superiors. She also uses man foreigners as an appellation to the White. She writes foreigners because according to the Black, the White is also foreign and extraneous to them. Therefore, it can be seen that Yene is trying to criticize White based on the Black viewpoint.
Yene also tries portraying the life of Black people who have 5”3 height that would be unusual and odd compared to the White life. Black people might not experience cute love just like what White people have. Instead, they will have a sharp and complicated love story involving guns and ammunition. This also implies that Black will find boundaries and adversities during their lifetime. Probably, the condition Yene tries to portray is related to the real life condition which Black people often get abandoned and forgotten. Some of White people might not want to have a romantic relationship with Black, or they might think that Black is only a valueless thing, not a human. In the real world, Black also find bewilderment while trying to communicate with White because of their appearance. The implication of guns is might be what the White thinks of the Black. White in general create a stigma of Black people that they are rude and harsh, has a link to abusive relationship, and also they think that Black has no common sense so that they will kill people easily.
In this poem, the poet tries to advised the Black community to struggle against every arising current which implies that they should fight for their rights and not subjected to White. Also, the phrase jobless means that Black will always have to struggle for their equality rights. Moreover, they should show their capability to the world so that they would not be devalued by other superior races and ethnicity. This phrase is also the presentment of Black people’s endless effort to prove those stigma made by White are wrong.
3.2 Black Power Movement Correlation to this Poem
The writer found an interesting fact about this poem which is the poet interjects the value of Black Power Movement inside this poem. She encourages the readers, especially the Black readers to be proud of their race and ethnicity. Yene uses the term strong blackness to define the idea of their solid and firm personality. This contains Yene’s hope to the Black community to be tough as those endless inequity will be perceived by them.
This poem takes Makena and Queen of Sheeba as role model. Both of them are good examples of the Black people who can influence and inspire lot of people by their expertise, including Yene. Queen of Sheeba is a famous woman leader from Egypt who has a lot of abilities and she is also beautiful in the inside and the outside. She attributes these figure to the Black community as examples of undefeatable Black people. This also contains hope and benediction towards Black people to be known as great people and that their name will be remembered by every people in the world.
Also, the poet boasts about their skin color and calls it as Abyssinian gold which has exotic color and used for valuable jewelry. This implies that the Black should be valueable and unlimited. The way the poet links the jewelry to the Black’s skin color also denotes that she positively encourages Black people to be precious by their own way. The positivity tone in this poem is also found in the reference of Angelou’s poem Black Ocean which mostly tells about self-esteem and self-respect. The poet embed Yene’s way of thinking in this poem.
This poem also contains motivational words, for instance, Black women should embrace their personality and not their beauty—so people will look up to them because of their inner and outer beauty. The Black women is also told to give and give so in return, they will be loved and recognized as shining figure not the sillhouette.
The poet also encourages the Black women to be hard to catch by other man, so they will have higher standard for their upcoming lovers. In the end, Yene advised the Black community to love themselves first because their life would be hard so they should have a strong meaning of life. They should “dedicate yourself. To try. To move on” which gives them motivation to be themselves and be proud of themselves.
To conclude, this poem has a strong message to the Black community. This poem can be classified as the representation of Black Power Movement emerged in the America. Lots of poets and novelists write about Black’s beauty in a positive tone to encourage them to shine so that they can achieve equality in all system.
4. Conclusion
Daughter has strong messages to the Black community to embrace their deficiency and insecurity into positivity. Yene interpolates ideology of Black Power Movement in this poem marked by the positive and passionate tone. This poem plays an important role to the Black community so that they can enhance their persona to the society. Yene’s biography and background can be linked to this poem as a further discussion of this essay.
References
Carmichael, Stockely. Hamilton, Charles V. (1967). Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. New York: Vintage Books.
Cross, Theorore. (1984). The Black Power Imperative. New York: Faulkner.
Davis, Joshua Clark. (2017). Black-Owned Bookstores: Anchors of the Black Power Movement – AAIHS. Aaihs.org. (Retrieved June 18th 2020).
Ghani, Navid. (2008). Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society. SAGE Publication. ISBN 978-1-4129-2694-2.
Yene, Yene. (2017). Daughter. All Poetry. (Retrieved June 18th 2020).