Black no Bohemian

by Jennell Strong 1 Comment

I am always wary about ascribing certain affixes to blackness in order to attribute a trait to a nonblack source. For example, the Black Marilyn Monroe to mean Dorothy Dandridge or the Black Meryl Streep to mean Viola Davis. I recall a professor proclaiming Beyonce to be a modern Madonna. The audacity! The profanity! To me it reads just as shady as “you’re so beautiful for a black girl”. In the minds of many (incompetent)people, black will forever be stained with inferiority. Therefore, ideals and positive concepts such as beauty, talent or success is counter to what blackness represents. Blackness can’t stand alone, in itself and embody goodness. Viola Davis can’t just be her talented, groundbreaking Viola Davis self because that’s just incomprehensible in our society. She’s sooo (unbelievably) good that she is in the image of another great(er) talent.

I say all this to say, I would have never deemed Shange or any other black artist of her era as “bohemian” because bohemian is a term which I’ve always seen associated with whiteness. Black people, to me, are artists. We are innately artistic. When whites get into the arts and spirituality and wearing their hair down and “being free”, it’s considered counterculture because it’s counter to their culture. How I’ve always perceived it, black folks been spiritual and immersed in the arts and it was never a conscious decision to be deliberately transgressive. Black folks live and breathe creativity and our casual expressions are works of art. So no I don’t see Shange as bohemian if bohemian means relating to some movement. In the same way I detest the redundancy of “black hippie”. Isn’t it laughable that a black slang (hip) is appropriated by whites and then thrown onto black people to say this black is like us. Shange being free-spirited, being a traveller, being spiritual and magical and a poet-cook-mother-activist is in line with an authentic blackness that doesn’t need to be supplemented by bohemian.

I want to share this quote by another Black Arts Movement poet that I think sums up how I feel:

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Likewise, I wouldn’t read the sisters in Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo as bohemian but simply as black girls/women doing what is essentially black: creating. More specifically is the link between creation and survival that enables life for black women.

 

I remember wanting so badly to read Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo after seeing so many quotes about the magic of women with moons falling from mouths and roses from legs. But I remember being so disappointed in the cliche of living within a toxic love, where a man in his art is more important than a woman and she feels obliged to sacrifice because the man is so irresistibly talented. I am frustrated with this narrative because I am tired of black women characters’ storyline being incomplete without some man to inconvenience her greatness.

Comment ( 1 )

  1. Onyekachi Iwu
    I love your analysis of black women’s relationship to the word “bohemian”. “Bohemian” is defined as “a person who has informal and unconventional social habits, especially an artist or writer”. I’m very interested in this idea that by existing within a society where whiteness is the standard, black people are already “unconventional”. Our bodies and voices and mannerisms are already deemed “informal”. We are already outsiders. For white bohemians, however, they are rejecting the privileges of conforming to white society. Meanwhile, black women can never conform. Therefore, the word “bohemian” is like you said, redundant. I particularly love your argument as “creation” and “art” for black folks a lot of times being built out of survival. Whether that’s through art being made unintentionally just through the innovative ways we live, or how we participate within our art consciously. This unconsciousness and also the way we inherently counter white culture is likely why white artists draw from us so often. With that being said, can the concept of “bohemian” be understood and justified as an identity within the black community, rather than the general (white) American society? Although black people are artists, our community also isn’t a monolith. Within the black community, is there possibly a culture to counter? For example, you mentioned Shange’s spirituality. Within a community who largely positions itself as following a Christian faith, would Shange’s choice to practice spirituality be seen a “bohemian”? I’m also thinking of Shange criticisms of the Black Arts Movement of being too patriarcal. With that being said, I still don’t endorse the need for Shange to be called “bohemian”. But it’s something to consider!

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