Prometheus 6   

What if one woman told the truth about her life?

Secrets and Cries

By Farai Chideya, AlterNet
August 6, 2003

"What if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split apart." When she wrote those words, poet Muriel Rukeyser must have been envisioning Tricia Rose's new book "Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy" (Farrar Straus Giroux), in which a chorus of women rip stereotypes of black female sexuality to shreds.


There's Sarita, who begins her story, "Ever since I was born, my life has been one big drama." Her father, an American-born Muslim, had two wives. Now she struggles to balance her hard-earned feminism with her love for her family. AIDS activist Linda Rae recounts her physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her family, and the turning points that made her a symbol of hope for others. Cocoa has tried playing Miss Perfect and failed. "I don't think that society understands black women's sexuality," she says. "They go to a light-skinned woman with long hair and say this is pretty, and when they see the dark-skinned lady, they say this is the nurturing type.... Or if they show a dark-skinned woman in a sexual light, she's poor, she's loud talking, she's not intelligent... I know it has an impact on my little niece...She watches BET and MTV."

posted by Prometheus 6 at 8/13/2003 09:40:27 AM |