Analysis Of What It's Like To Be A Black Girl

Throughout the poem What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl (for Those of You Who Aren’t) by Patricia Smith, the theme is oppression. By the speaker changing her appearance, and learning to do things to appease society, the speaker is giving in to her own oppression, while telling the audience what it is rarely spoken about. The poet used tone and imagery to help get the theme of oppression across to the audience. In today’s society, and the society of the early 1990’s, when this poem was written, the image of beauty has stayed relatively the same. Nothing much has changed in the fact that society’s ideal image of beauty continues to be someone white with long hair and blue eyes. From what the speaker says in lines four through 6, she tried changing …show more content…
it’s growing tall and wearing a lot of white, it’s smelling blood in your breakfast, it’s learning to say fuck with grace but learning to fuck without it, it’s flame and fists and life according to motown,” (lines 13-17) These lines tell the audience a lot of what the speaker went through in order to fit into society. She wore a lot of white in order to offset the color of her skin and make her look lighter, and learned how to say and do what society had always shaped black women into. The speaker mentions “smelling blood in your breakfast,” which could mean several things to the audience. One could be how she spent so much time working on her appearance, like her nose, to the point where she had a minor nose bleed. Another reading that could have been inferred is that the speaker had a nose job to further fit in with society’s standards. The last thing the speaker said was about fists, and fire, and motown. Motown could have been referring to the society that African Americans have created to for themselves and the culture they created, which white society forced them to do. By learning to fit into what society has forced upon her, the speaker reinforces the theme of …show more content…
The tone of most of this poem can be seen as resentful and almost angry towards society, and what the speaker went through while trying to conform to society. This tone of resentfulness goes away though in lines 18 through 20. “it’s finally having a man reach for you then caving in around his fingers.” the tone here feels more relieved. The speaker might have felt relief over the fact that she finally has one safe spot where she doesn’t have to face the oppressive views of the world, and she doesn’t have to do everything that society has taught her. The tone also affects the audience as well. The angry, resentful tone is heavily felt by the audience, although, that could just be the guilt felt by caucasian readers, for unknowingly enforcing those same beauty standards that society holds. The images used by the speaker also have a huge effect on the audience in terms of picturing what it must have been like being a little girl hating your body because it didn’t fit in with society’s