The Strong Black Daughter
To be an African first-born daughter. The heiress of centuries-long history of women supporting, enduring, fighting and triumphing. The next-in-line to take the strength baton from my mother and the first responder to the demonstration of the cultural and social resilience of my immigrant family. As Black women, strength is embedded in our definition: our own and the one that the world chooses for us. In my case, because African womanhood is an archetype of Black women’s strength, as a Black African woman, I was born strong and born to be strong.
As I interrogate myself on what does being a strong Black woman mean to me, I realize that it is inherently linked to being a Black daughter. Like “Alice in StrongBlackwomanland” I want to fall into the rabbit hole of my childhood and follow the trail of the colliding expectations that first called for me to be strong. And coming out, looking at the “Strong Black woman” in me, I want to explore the other aspects of my life where I can use my strength without having to “be strong”. I want to reclaim joy, creativity, softness and beauty. I want to do it strongly.
I’ve got “Strength” inside my DNA
Paraphrasing the chorus of Kendrick Lamar’s song DNA, from the album DAMN, I am the descendant of a lineage of strong women. My Congolese great-grandmother, Ngamounkebe, meaning the one to reckon with, was a woman of such immense physical strength that my father recalls that a mere little pinch from her would send you into a fever. I was named after her. Ngamounkebe fought with a colonial agent (in pre-independence Congo Brazzaville) and was put in jail while pregnant with my grandfather. She lamented “Ndzulumbi” (what is that trouble in me?) which was later given as a name to my grandfather. My last name (Nouroumby) is a direct transcription of that strength.
My mother is an Ivorian woman from the Bété tribe, a subgroup of the Kru/Krumen tribe (who originated from the coast of Liberia) traditionally found in the western part of Ivory Coast, West Africa. A tribe of fierce warriors still known and feared today as the hottest-blooded Ivorians. To this day, I cannot casually tell an Ivorian person that my mother is Bété without getting some sort of a flinch-laugh-oh-really-now-I-am-scared-of-you reaction. As they should *insert side-eye with a smirk*.
Why do little Black girls have to be strong?
“[…] I’d have to fight for something that wasn’t a battle nor a problem: being a little Black girl. I’d have to be strong just so I can be.”
“The white people that live in Africa, do they live in trees too? Go and ask them that!” would my mother instruct me while raising one eyebrow like a weapon whenever I’d complain about plain and overt racism growing up in Normandie, a rural part of the north-west France, as a Black girl in the 90s’. My dad would turn to historically-loaded dissertation about the “the blood of our forefathers, the African army troops broadly called tirailleurs Sénégalais (Senegalese riflemen) but they were also Congolese and from all over Africa, that was shed in World War 2 that gives us the right to live in this land”. That was way too much of a mouthful for 12-years old me, the only Black girl in a private catholic school. “Hit them, don’t let them talk to you that way, push back! Don’t let them believe that they are better than you!”
And she wouldn’t. At school, when the teacher had two separate class photos taken, one with my sister (only Black kid in the class) and another one without her. When our neighbors called us “trash”. When the receptionist would be surprised my mother spoke “such good French”. When the lady on the bus pinched her nose as we got on. My mother would always hit back, talk back, push back, and fight back. I spent my childhood witnessing this woman confronting racism and discrimination whenever she was faced with it. I understood that I’d have to fight for something that wasn’t a battle nor a problem: being a little Black girl. I’d have to be strong just so I can be.
The strong African daughter
“So being a good African daughter also meant silently enduring the grappling of my own parents with the world.”
In an African context, the notions of a woman “being strong” and “being good” overlap: a woman’s strength is even more valued when she endures pain in silence. So being a good African daughter also meant silently enduring the grappling of my own parents with the world. There was this ongoing competition with other African families and the comparison of the daughters was constant: “Look at so and so’s daughter, excellent in class and always in church”. You’d have to stand out, both academically and morally, especially morally. The “community” would make a morbid imaginary list of the girls suspected not to be virgins anymore (those wearing make-up and with white boyfriends) and host the unnecessary forecasts on who would make a good wife, or who would be a single teenage mother if “her parents were not more careful”.
This pressure was specifically applied to girls, let alone to the first-born daughters. It was an impossible equation to try to exist at the merging of the expectations from my community and from “this country”. Being the manifestation of your parents’ cultural resilience while serving as the laboratory of their early parenting strategies, including their mistakes and their shortcomings, was daunting. I realized that strength was also silence in the face of being wronged or sometimes hurt, while catering to everyone else’s expectations before my own.
The Strong Black Woman
“There is recognition and validation for strong Black women. You start reveling in the idea that you are all strength, which gives the impression that you can do anything. And that is powerful.”
No one told “Alice in StrongBlackwomanland” that the workplace was a battlefield and that it will make her a strong Black woman by default. I entered the job market in London, UK in the later part of 2008 and at the very beginning of the financial crisis. Strong or not, everybody was being swamped by the furious waves of the credit crunch, leaving beaches of unemployment, and bringing this new economic animal that would become our unwanted pet: the recession. While the city was “recessioning”, I remained consistently employed and managed to move upward in salary and responsibilities. But I had to don on a new type of strength. I had to learn to stay still when you see colleagues that you trained getting promoted over you. Learn to be strategic and proactive when you hear “the market doesn’t really give us room to promote you”. I had to learn to have a voice and more importantly, to raise my voice.
And I did. Being a “Strong Black Woman” became my identity: I became her. I embraced her like a warm blanket on a grey Sunday afternoon. I was thriving professionally and doing well. I was battling and winning in the corporate world while sitting pretty in my beautiful Black beauty. Strong Black skin, strong natural hair, and strong Black body, what could be possibly wrong about being a strong Black woman? Because it is a compliment, right? I felt validating by my parents and community back in France. I was valued by my peers who admired the strength of my professional endeavors in times of crisis. It was so enjoyable. There is recognition and validation for strong Black women. You start reveling in the idea that you are all strength, which gives the impression that you can do anything. And that is powerful. I started to hold the blanket closer around me and rub my chin in its warmth: I was me. Strongly.
What doesn’t kill you hurts you… and you have to heal.
I wasn’t a strong child. I was an oversensitive, chatty, and curious little girl. My curiosity got me to climbing trees and going on adventures that would leave those indelible scars on my legs. Every time I’d get hurt, fall, or trip over something, I would cry. It wasn’t until I reach about nine or ten years old that I understood that not everything little bruises warranted me to meltdown. My first-hand experience of exercising my own strength came with the notion of delaying pain, of pushing back the moment of reckoning, of ignoring my wounds and swallowing my tears. What doesn’t kill you make you stronger, they say. But what doesn’t kill you can kill parts of you: the innocence, the naivety, and a certain level of sensitivity dies. Some women lose their childhood, their youth, their best years to being strong. This is where another facet of strength will present itself: the strength to heal.
As I sit comfortably on the sofa setup on the balcony of my beautiful apartment, raised on the 8th floor of a luxury residential tower, I am overlooking the spectacular view of the city and soaking up the sunset over Nairobi, Kenya, while smiling at a glass of wine: I don’t need to be strong anymore. My career is peaking, my family is at peace, my friends are admiring my latest wins. I want to take off the blanket which by now, has turned into an armor. Only for me to discover some scars, bruises, and swollen part of myself that I never seen before. I am hurting. I am in pain. Where does this pain come from? Did I carry my own pain along with the pain of my mother and foremother? Did I carry the pain of my immigrant family? Or was it the pain of my people in Africa and everywhere in the world, from the office to our homes, for who violence is a daily burden? Is my strength only a response to surviving in the face of pain?
My strong Black self
“I want to commit to find and enjoy beauty, just like my parents sought a better place to raise their kids, like a destination. I want to devote myself to hope, with discipline and pride. I want to win at softness and tenderness so I can pass it down to my daughters as part of their heritage.”
I look at my wounds and feel my pain. I want to be able to be strong enough to invite them in so they can tell me their story and inform me on the state of my soul. I have started that conversation with my anger and my limitations, only to rediscover my own softness and understand who I am now. I have cried and let go of the Strong Black woman. She is a part of me, not the whole of me. I want to be assertive, creative, determined, passionate, adventurous, devoted, and sensitive, in a manner that doesn’t necessarily imply responding or resisting to violence.
Today, I believe that being strong is being able to preserve the most tender parts of yourself, to protect and fight for your remaining innocence and naivety, to unearth your dreams and your expectations for yourself. I want to dedicate my strength to relentlessly seeking joy, with the same strength and devotion that I was seeking money and recognition. I want to commit to find and enjoy beauty, just like my parents sought a better place to raise their kids, like a destination. I want to devote myself to hope, with discipline and pride. I want to win at softness and tenderness so I can pass it down as part of my heritage.
I believe that to be a “Strong Black Woman” is to continue to be what makes us this unique and loving individual as we navigate life. It is to give as much attention and energy to the parts of our life that doesn’t require our strength. It is to find the little Black girl inside us and be able to tell her: I haven’t forgotten who you are meant to be. So she can get out of the rabbit hole and have the strength to be free.
