An Analysis Of 'Black Is A Woman's Color'

The title of the essay, “Black Is a Woman’s Color” hints at the intersections of identity, specifically as it pertains to the life of Black women, occupying two “subordinate” states simultaneously, rendering them to be the most overlooked and ignored people in America. By way of this essay, Bell Hooks turns that idea on its head by transporting the experiences of Black women to center stage. But as the essay unfolds, hooks shows that the experiences that her narrator recounts have been influenced by the ideas and actions of her parents, equipping the narrator with knowledge about the power of artistic performance as it pertains to the Black literary and musical tradition and a unique understanding of gender roles that all impact the way in

The father complains and criticizes the work of his wife: her parenting, cooking, and cleaning. The wife takes it. The wife also bears the “pushing, hitting, telling her to shut up,”, and all the while, the children hear everything. They take the father's words and “store them in a jar to sort them out later.” The parents argue, but the children see a different side of the mother. “They cannot believe that this pleading, crying woman, this woman who does not fight back, is the same person they know. The person they know is strong, gets things done, is a woman of way and means, a woman of action.” The children have never seen her pleading, afraid, and even when the father turns to the child, threatening them to leave, “in her role as mother, she tells her daughter to go upstairs and go to sleep, that everything will be alright.” When the father tells her to leave, she does. The daughter “cannot bear the silent agreement that the man is right, that he has done what men are able to do.” Yet as time moves on, the mother is the one left broken as the man is allowed to move on. Despite all, they do for others and all they endure, the narrator learns that the woman must always sacrifice for the man and his needs, even if that brings her pain. This is a reality that does not satisfy the narrator, instead, it repulses her. Yet, it has impacted the way in which she will forever see the world around her, the same way art gave her a way in which to cope and keep going and the way in which ritual in the kitchen showed that everything is not what it seems. And although parental figures are flawed, the lessons they teach will never be