Sunday Stew: Unsolicited Advice For A Black Girl Too Light To Be Heavy But Too Heavy To Be White

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2015-04-15 03:24Z by Steven

Sunday Stew: Unsolicited Advice For A Black Girl Too Light To Be Heavy But Too Heavy To Be White

South Seattle Emerald
2015-04-12

Nikkita Oliver


Painting by Tarra Louis-Charles

In the Style of Jeanann Verlee

Unsolicited Advice for a Black Mixed Girl

Too Light to be Heavy, but too Heavy to be White:

When the girl in your class fixes her lips

to call your mother a “nigger lover”

Fix her face

So next time she thinks twice

Before fixin’ her lips around anyone’s mama

 

When the kids on the playground start to sing

“Jungle Fever”

Join them

You must live

to fight another day…

Read the entire poem here.

Tags: ,