I Am a White Woman
I am a white woman
the sound of my speech
some distant crescendo of laughs
is written in a minor key
and I
can be heard laughing in the light
Can be heard
laughing
in the light
I saw my child leap screaming to the sea
and I / with these hands / cupped the lifebreath
from my issue in the foam break
I lost Nat’s swimming body in a rain of spray
and heard him scream all the way from the shores
for freedom he does not know… I
learned Kitty Genovese and Malala
in anguish
Now my nostrils know the gunpowder
and these straight tight fingers
seek the curves in my whore’s braid
I
am a white woman
tall as sea
bottomless
beyond all definition still
defining place
and time
and circumstance
assuaged
immense
irresistable
Look
on me and be
depraved.
I Am a Black Woman
I am a black woman
the sound of my speech
some distant crescendo of laughs
is written in a minor key
and I
can be heard laughing in the light
Can be heard
laughing
in the light
I saw my child leap screaming to the sea
and I / with these hands / cupped the lifebreath
from my issue in the foam break
I lost Nat’s swimming body in a rain of spray
and heard him scream all the way from the shores
for freedom he does not know… I
learned Kitty Genovese and Malala
in anguish
Now my nostrils know the gunpowder
and these straight tight fingers
seek the curves in my whore’s braid
I
am a black woman
tall as sea
bottomless
beyond all definition still
defining place
and time
and circumstance
assuaged
immense
irresistable
Look
on me and be
depraved.
This poem is written as an imitation and a kind of response to Mari Evan’s “I Am a Black Woman.” She explains that the writing of poetry (for her) is where she reaches “for what will nod black heads over common denominators” (42). She wants to present women as what they are, to provide the reality of her experience, of her identity. She identifies herself as “Afrikan first, then woman, then writer” (43). For this poem, I wanted to keep her form and most of her language, and only change a few words around to vary the meaning. I wrote two poems, because I’m going to ask you how the speaker’s race factors into how you read and interpret the poem. What’s different between the white and black speakers? How does their race change the poem even though all of the rest of the poem is exactly the same? I’m extremely interested in your interpretations here and to see if you experience a difference in tone or meaning or if you don’t experience one at all.
Your poem gets at the heart of something that we have been looking at closely in my African American literature class. There are similar if not the same experiences for women of ALL colors and creeds, but there is also the specific experiences of women that result from their ethnicity.
Either black or white, the woman in each of your poems calls on her fundamental experience as a woman. And black or white, each woman has a common ancestry as a woman that is also different from the other because of their “race,” although that is not necessarily displayed in full here in your poems in anything other than the titles. But perhaps that’s symbolic, that everything about the experiences of these women is the same except for a minute difference, but that difference, although subtle in the grand scheme of things, defines for a large part who they are.