Last night I finally witnessed Beyonce’s Lemonade. I use the word witness in full knowledge of its religious meaning: I was given a powerful narrative of the desperate erasure of black women in America that has nonetheless birthed a Queen. When she quoted Malcom X:

“The most disrespected person in America is the black woman
“The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.
“The most neglected person in America is the black woman.”

The group listening cheers loudly at first, but by the last line, is largely silent. So when she later includes the mothers of three young men slain by the police — Treyvon Martin (Sybrina Fulton), Michael Brown (Lesley Mcspadden), and Eric Garner (Gwen Carr) I felt she was reminding us of the unbearable pain the mothers (and, by extension, black women) endure. I find the protest of her appearing on a New Orleans police car which eventually sinks from under her ironic, and darkly amusing. She could have gone much further with visual protest against the systemic racism, but even that gentle reminder of the failure of our government to respond appropriately to the devastation of Katrina — one in a long line of failures the Black community has had to endure — was too much for the racists.

The spoken words (from poet Warsan Shire) are breathtaking in their imagery. Here is one piece:

I tried to change. Closed my mouth more, tried to be softer,
prettier, less awake. Fasted for 60 days, wore white, abstained
from mirrors, abstained from sex, slowly did not speak another
word. In that time, my hair, I grew past my ankles. I slept on a
mat on the floor. I swallowed a sword. I levitated. Went to the
basement, confessed my sins, and was baptized in a river. I got
on my knees and said ‘amen’ and said ‘I mean.’

I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet. I
threw myself into a volcano. I drank the blood and drank the
wine. I sat alone and begged and bent at the waist for God. I
crossed myself and thought I saw the devil. I grew thickened
skin on my feet, I bathed in bleach, and plugged my menses
with pages from the holy book, but still inside me, coiled deep,
was the need to know … Are you cheating on me?

Cheating? Are you cheating on me?

and:

If it’s what you truly want … I can wear her skin over mine.
Her hair over mine. Her hands as gloves. Her teeth as confetti.
Her scalp, a cap. Her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can
pose for a photograph, all three of us. Immortalized … you and
your perfect girl.

I don’t know when love became elusive. What I know is, no one
I know has it. My father’s arms around my mother’s neck, fruit
too ripe to eat. I think of lovers as trees … growing to and from
one another. Searching for the same light.

Why can’t you see me? Why can’t you see me? Why can’t you see
me? Everyone else can.

I was struck at how well she used her beauty to thrust her anger at the disillusions, the pains, the terror, of being a strong, powerful, black woman in the world today. You are sucked in to admiring her abs, her ass (OMG, that ASS!), her cheekbones, and sensuous mouth and all the while the songs are breaking you open to her reality. In her wisdom there are no men in her cast (even her husband — nominally the ‘point’ of the narrative — appears only briefly in brief segments in one song), only women, creating a delightful subversion of sexuality even as she celebrates their strength and power.

tl:dr — I was blown away, shocked wide open. Oh, and the music was great, too. (Especially: Six Inch Heels, Daddy Lessons, Formation, and Freedom)