“I’m just ready to let go of the Strong Black Woman narrative. The assumption that we’re thick skinned invites mistreatment. I’m not a “strong black woman”; I’m a woman who would really prefer to be treated kindly and softly. But I’m black, so what choice do I have? Black women aren’t born strong, or angry, or whatever stereotype [is] imprinted on us. It develops as a result of how we’re treated.” -@lauwiley
The year is 2011 — junior year of college. And I have just changed my major from biochemistry to neuroscience to psychology, a move my father derides as my attempt to ‘find myself’. As it happens, I’m doing just that. I have found myself fully entrenched in Black Twitter, as the website as a whole is just picking up steam, and a whole new world has opened up to me. Never before have I experienced so many multi-dimensional, fiery, blasphemous, expressive, humorous, and warm black women in one (virtual) space before. These women are exactly who I want to be when I grow up, if only I weren’t so damn afraid of life. And I follow one after another, soaking in their Black Girl Magic to conjure up my own. They drop jargon I hadn’t yet heard in my psych courses: “generational curse”, “toxic masculinity”, “misogynoir”, “intersectionality”, and “black mule trope”. And one, @lauwiley, consistently mixes these nuggets in with her own daily experiences on the timeline. Today, she is just tired. Tired of being tired. Tired of being strong. As I read, ignoring my statistics assignment, my heart beats fast as I see myself — and what I hide from myself — in her words.
The thread, written with unflinching candor, reminds me of the stories my mother told me about growing up in her strict African household. When her family moved from the States back to Zimbabwe, she learned how colonialism had affected her family who’d remained on The Continent. Her grandfather, a taciturn old man with a soft spot for his American grandchild, worked hard on the land that brought his family their livelihood. He told my mother of his youth. He told her of the struggles Bantu people faced to receive education and of the time he had been nearly been beaten to death by white Rhodesians, his horse, cart, and body damaged and left for dead on a dirt road for no apparent reason other than the ability of the whites to do so. But her grandfather healed and was soon back to work on his land, much to the consternation of those who detested him. And so my great-grandfather encouraged the rest of the family to adopt that same ethos: work twice as hard, baffle your opponents, and own your success.
My mother, who had just been plucked from her comfortable New Jersey life to the newly freed homeland of Zimbabwe in 1980, was suffering from culture shock. The expectations and demands for the life of a young girl in the African culture were many, and living away from her parents and the comforts of American life were taxing. But when my mother’s grandfather saw her valiant effort to assimilate and called her strong — a workhorse — she took pride in those words. She was proud to be singled out from the other children. She was proud to have the patriarch of the family find something in her of value, something he saw in himself, something good. And so she worked harder, cooking, cleaning, taking care of her siblings, and being obedient. Silent.
When my mother told us of her time in the Zimbabwean countryside, she seemed to paint a picture of hardship and loneliness, but her connection to her grandfather was something I could tell decades later meant a great deal to her. She took the lessons she learned from him with her and let his words play out in her life and that of her own family; she married a strong African man and worked on raising their three girls. My father, the consistent provider though he was, never treated my mother tenderly or delicately, not even during her delivery of our last sister that nearly brought on her death. If I ever heard my mother ask for anything from my father, it was for a brief foot rub after a long day, and more often than not, her request was good-naturedly denied. “You don’t need that!,” he’d chuckle, half confused, half embarrassed. Whenever we had “financial hardships”, as we called them, and my mother was forced to take up yet another job–cleaning houses, working at a daycare, or office secretary at the private school we attended to lower tuition costs–she referred to herself as a workhorse. Strong. Resilient. And I realize that that was probably her way of giving herself a pep-talk. I imagine the frozen half-grin she’d smile lasting only so long as we were in sight, because when you’re given a label, especially a positive one, you work quite hard to live up to it. I know, because I was told, like my mother, that I was strong.
When my two sisters and I scraped our knees playing rough outside, my mother wouldn’t coo and give us a band-aid. She’d say, “Well, did I make you fall? What do you want me to do? You’ll be fine!”. When I had a fever at school and was told to go to the nurse’s office and call my mother to inform her of my state, I told my teacher, “She already knows. She told me to come and learn.” We were taught to be workhorses, too. And I didn’t mind, because being strong meant you had character. Only later would I begin to resent that title.
Moving to St. Louis for me was a life shift; it was the first time I realized that perhaps we weren’t middle class. My parents often talked late at night to a disembodied white man; I later learned he was their immigration lawyer. I grew tired of the endless dinners of rice, greens, and beans. And after a few years hearing that being together was more important than Christmas presents, I stopped praying for my E-Z Bake Oven. During those nightly prayers, we were always encouraged to ask for “financial blessings”. When the hot water at our fixer-upper house stopped working one particularly cold winter, we would heat water on the stove and bathe ourselves outside by night, lit only by the stars. Later, grown and city-living, when thunderstorms blew out electricity in my apartment, I always had flashlights, and an endless supply of candles on the ready, schooled after years of random utility disconnections for unpaid bills.
During those times, my sisters and I were obsessed with fast food, particularly McDonalds. For us, that place was a treat, a chance to experience American life like everyone else. My little sister actually requested that we hold her seventh birthday at the playplace there. I remember looking longingly out the car window on the drives home from school or when we were house hunting for a place to live where the hot water ran consistently, hoping my mother or father would stop and get us McDonalds just for a change from the monotony of sadza, greens, and beans. And when my father noticed we were particularly hungry or our gazes lingered longer than normal at the passing fast food restaurants, he would smile kindly in our direction and say, “You all are so strong. These girls are strong; they haven’t complained once!”
There was no way one could be so childish to whine for food when the money wasn’t there, especially not after such praise. So I would swallow the lump in my throat, blink quickly, and immerse myself in whatever book I managed to have carried with me. Historical fiction was my favorite genre; the lives of women years ago, with rich inner lives and limited power, felt familiar. I won the Servant’s Heart award that year in elementary school, and my parents were proud. My mother especially. And just like that, selflessness and silence had claimed another generation.
Years later, I’d become adept at doing the heavy lifting for the people in my life — literally. I was an expert mover, lifting hundreds of pounds of furniture easily, with the efficiency of a seasoned trucker. If given a few dollars, I could create a meal to feed folks, like Jesus with the fish and loaves. I make it through a busy day without stopping to eat, ignoring the gnawing in my stomach, not nearly as strong as they were during those childhood car rides. I anticipated people’s needs, often before they could — particularly men’s. Articulating the unspoken emotions of someone who came to vent was my particular strength. And naturally I had to be an over-achiever. I was known for doing, and being, everything. I was better than a jack of all trades; I was a veritable renaissance woman, picking up languages and instruments, racing from class to class, volunteer work to internship, mentoring to resume-building clubs on campus. I’d just shrug and smile when someone asked how I juggled it all, guzzling coffee as I desperately wished to be able to run away just to sleep. When you’re “strong”, you learn not to complain for the things you want. You learn not to cry when you’re hurting. You won’t ask for the things you need most. And what’s more, you think you’re better for it; to do otherwise is to be weak. To be vulnerable. To be lazy. To be white.
Soon enough, people forget that you could ever want or need anything. You’ll get busy worrying about and working for everyone else. You become implicitly responsible for the dismissal of your own femininity and humanity. Because you’re “strong”. And you’ll grow into a Strong Black Woman™, wearing that badge with honor, only to blink quickly and swallow hard if you wish for a moment to be otherwise…