This month’s Book Club read is Eloquent Rage by Brittany Cooper. It’s an incredibly thought-provoking look at Cooper’s experience growing up as a Black women in the US. The book focuses on the intersectionality of being both Black and a woman.
Cooper describes the very specific “mundane magic†it takes to be a Black mother “making a way out of no way.†She argues “the unfair part is that folks are far more concerned with policing how Black women carry the baggage than with reducing the load hoisted upon us in the first place.â€
This is a fitting quote for Mother’s Day, a day normally reserved for treating your mom nice for all the nice things mom does for her family throughout the year. But Cooper is asking for a deeper consideration and reflection into both the sacrifice and the blatant disregard for that sacrifice.
Let us acknowledge and consider the sacrifice of motherhood, and in particular, BIPOC motherhood.