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118
Reading Black Woman Again
<p>I checked this poem again today, and somehow, I felt something I didn’t feel the first time I read it.</p><p><br/></p><p>Maybe it’s because I’m older now, or maybe I just paid more attention to what Senghor was actually saying.</p><p><br/></p><p>Naked woman, black woman.</p><p><br/></p><p>At first, it sounds like he is simply describing a woman. Her body. Her colour. Her beauty. But the more I read, the more I felt like he wasn’t just talking about a woman. He was talking about Blackness too.</p><p><br/></p><p>And I loved the way he did it.</p><p><br/></p><p>He didn’t describe being Black as something that needed to be defended. He didn’t make it sound like an apology. He simply looked at it and found beauty in it.</p><p><br/></p><p>There is something about the way he connects the woman to nature that stayed with me. She becomes more than just a person. There is the earth, the sun, warmth, life. Her blackness is not something that takes away from her beauty; it becomes part of what makes her beautiful.</p><p><br/></p><p>And maybe that is what struck me today.</p><p><br/></p><p>Because sometimes, we grow up seeing beauty through a very narrow lens. Lighter skin. Certain body types. Certain features. Certain kinds of hair. We learn, sometimes without anyone directly telling us, what we are supposed to consider beautiful.</p><p><br/></p><p>So reading Senghor describe a Black woman with so much admiration felt different.</p><p><br/></p><p>He was not asking anyone to approve of her beauty.</p><p><br/></p><p>He was simply seeing her.</p><p><br/></p><p>And I think there is something powerful about being seen without having to change first.</p><p><br/></p><p>I also noticed how sensual the poem is. Senghor doesn't shy away from the woman's body. He celebrates it openly. And I kept wondering where the line is between appreciating a woman's body and reducing her to it.</p><p><br/></p><p>But perhaps that is another reason I kept reading.</p><p><br/></p><p>Because the poem makes you look at the woman beyond her physical appearance. Her body seems to become a doorway into something larger Africa, identity, history, pride, and the complicated relationship Black people have had with the way the world sees them.</p><p><br/></p><p>Maybe that is what I felt today.</p><p><br/></p><p>Not just that the woman was beautiful.</p><p><br/></p><p>But that she was never meant to be ashamed of the things that made her Black in the first place.</p><p><br/></p><p>And honestly, I think that is what stayed with me.</p>
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