Good To Love

Now I've got all this time on my hands, I'm reviewing the stories that I started and abandoned due to, well the nonsense that's been going on in my life. Last week's post about Black-British history going back to Roman times was partly in connection with my research for a paranormal story that is so much fun to write. I wonder why more authors don't throw it back into the past. Black history is so much more than slavery and absolutely so much more than the Western World. Black women in the Netherlands, in England, in early 20th Century Hong Kong - we've been places!
This week, I've been thinking about my intersectionality, especially after the wonder that was UK Black Pride. If you saw some of the comments beneath the twitter posts from the organisations, you'd dislocate a retina rolling your eyes so hard - the melanin-deficient tears were abundant, despite there being plenty of the paler persuasion being present at the event itself. It made me have another look at one of my stories, and the daughter of my heroine - Jacqueline.
It's hard to be a black woman in this day and age, no doubt about it. We're the "least desirable" on dating sites, but the most frequently copied in fashion, style and looks. We're more than 5 times more likely to die in child birth related complications than our white counterparts. We're paid less even though we're more educated. Throw LGBTQ into the mix and life is inevitably harder. Reading the story with a neutral mind (really not that hard, it's been a while so I can truly question who the hell wrote that!) I can see where my prejudices have come through a little too obviously.
I'm too hard on Jacqueline. Her mother's perfect - truly Carole is a dream, I love her - her brother is getting all the support for his messed up love life, her sister can do no wrong and has the decency to be straight and her father is an emotionally abusive bully, who can't stand Jacqueline for being a lesbian. And I'm more critical of her than the other siblings because a little niggle in the back of my head keeps forgetting to beat me into remembering that her life is just that much harder and she's had to be just as hard to protect herself from a world that berates her for what it considers as "choices" and not what she can't help but be.
Jacqueline is a tough cookie who needs my understanding, for me to lean into that intersectionality I brag I know so much about. She is, despite what she knows, her mother's favourite. Like I said, Carole's perfect. And if Jacqueline is her mum's favourite, then she should be mine. I'm tapping away to do right by her.
It's what she deserves.