"My Pronouns Are Black"
Title
"My Pronouns Are Black"
Description
Zenaida Peterson is a spoken word poet and community organizer based out of Boston. She has represented Simmons College at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) both in 2015 as a performer and in 2017 as the team’s coach. She is the founder of the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam Tournament (FEMS), which is a poetry competition and grassroots organization designed to actively work against the lack of femme-oriented spaces in Boston’s slam poetry scene. Peterson identifies as “queer, multiracial-womanist and an antiracist” – concepts that are all considered in “My Pronouns Are Black,” which on the surface reads as a poem about being nonbinary, but speaks to gender identity in a very specific context.
“My Pronouns Are Black” is a powerful spoken word poem that examines the intersection of the poet’s racial identity and gender identity, and how the two are inextricable. The poem explores what it means to grow up socialized as both black and female, when our world posits white femininity as the normative mode of womanhood and constantly attacks black femininity. To unpack this notion, Peterson speaks to the history of slavery in the United States, and ultimately asserts that gender is a principle of white hegemony, so it functions differently on people of color:
"My pronouns avoid the police/The black of me wants to survive long enough to have an identity politic/How do you go from a slave to a gendered thing, from a mule to a person, and expect gender to function the same across race?"
It is with this historicization in mind that this poem pushes back on the idea that gender exists in a void. “My Pronouns Are Black” seems to claim that for black people, this can never be the case, since black gender norms are so much more vital to livelihood and survival than they are to white people. This poem not only engages race head on, but also complicates a common understanding of nonbinary gender identities and makes clear that for black people, gender identity can never be disentangled from racial identity.
“My Pronouns Are Black” is a powerful spoken word poem that examines the intersection of the poet’s racial identity and gender identity, and how the two are inextricable. The poem explores what it means to grow up socialized as both black and female, when our world posits white femininity as the normative mode of womanhood and constantly attacks black femininity. To unpack this notion, Peterson speaks to the history of slavery in the United States, and ultimately asserts that gender is a principle of white hegemony, so it functions differently on people of color:
"My pronouns avoid the police/The black of me wants to survive long enough to have an identity politic/How do you go from a slave to a gendered thing, from a mule to a person, and expect gender to function the same across race?"
It is with this historicization in mind that this poem pushes back on the idea that gender exists in a void. “My Pronouns Are Black” seems to claim that for black people, this can never be the case, since black gender norms are so much more vital to livelihood and survival than they are to white people. This poem not only engages race head on, but also complicates a common understanding of nonbinary gender identities and makes clear that for black people, gender identity can never be disentangled from racial identity.
Creator
Peterson, Zenaida (Author/Performer)
Source
Publisher
SlamFind
Date
2017
Format
Moving image
Language
English
Type
Video
Citation
Peterson, Zenaida (Author/Performer), “"My Pronouns Are Black",” An Archive of Trans Culture, accessed October 13, 2024, https://transcultural.oberlincollegelibrary.org/items/show/18.