Black Girlhood in the Black Sexism Debate

Shange’s piece in The Black Sexism Debate “is not so gd to be born a girl,” makes me think of how black girlhood is described in slave narratives, particularly in Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”. Jacobs writes:

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own. (119)

Jacobs writes that slavery is worse for black girls because of their added gender and sexual oppression. Notably, her messages about the sexual violence that enslaved black women and girls experience are written to appeal to white women abolitionist audiences. This is evident in the following passage, as she appeals to the sympathy of the white woman reader:

Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another…Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others. (86)

Jacobs is hesitant to reveal her lived experiences, so that even the introduction to her narrative is written to convince Northern white women to accept her story, despite its “indecorum.”

As we consider Shange’s unapologetic expression of the lived experiences of black women and girls in “The Black Sexism Debate,” it is important to consider the historical context of her appeal. Shange is writing  in 1978 to a different audience, but she is still in the position of highlighting the sexual violence black girls constantly face. Shange uses new language to describe this violence, language that Jacobs did not possess while writing her own narrative. However, their sentiments are fundamentally the same. Shange writes:

right now being born a girl is to be born threatened/ i dont respond well to threats/ i want being born a girl to be a cause for celebration/ cause for protection & nourishment of our birth-right/ to live freely with passion, knowing no fear/ that our species waz somehow incorrect.

& we are now plagued with rapists & clitorectomies. we pay for being born girls/ but we owe no one anything/ not our labia, not our clitoris, not our lives. we are born girls & live to be women who live our own lives/ to live our lives/

to have/

our lives/

to live.

In this passage, and throughout Shange’s work, she is responding to the historical legacy and trauma of black girl’s experiences with sexual violence, while naming her desires for black girlhood and black girl possibilities.