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do you think
calling me ‘angry’ is an insult. every time you call me ‘angry’ i hear your voice salt with guilt and i laugh. look how easy it is to reveal you. —anger is a healthy and natural response to oppression, nayirrah waheed Nayyirah Waheed is an angry black woman. She’s angry and she wants you to know. The insult of being another “angry black woman” is obsolete– Waheed adopts the term, reclaiming it as a just description of her just aptitude for anger. She takes an insulting disavowal of her people’s fight for justice, which discredits their reaction to being oppressed, and transforms it in her favor through her work. Waheed has every right to be angry. After being oppressed for centuries, anger is “a healthy and natural response” to the injustices faced. She wants the reader to not only read, or acknowledge, or understand, or feel her anger, but to transcend beyond sympathy, and into empathy—reciprocate her anger. She does this through the justification of it, without blatantly stating why her anger is reasonable. By doing so, it’s almost as if Waheed is ‘tricking’ the reader into agreeing with her: “It’s so reasonable and obvious why I am angry, and ‘i laugh’ at you for thinking otherwise.” Being identified as justifiably angry by society furthers the movement through rationalizing black cries and shouts, allowing for room for progress for the cause (with the cause being racial and gender oppression). She writes, ‘do you think / calling me ‘angry’ / is an insult.”, giving new meaning to the rhetorical question; already punctuating lines with periods to draw emphasis and create deeper meaning throughout the entirety of her work, the period at the end of these three lines multiplies the meaning of the preceding lines. The rhetorical question does not expect a response, but Waheed intensifies her callous regard for answers to statements regarding her own well-being. who could know her needs better than herself. Shame on the accusing finger, pointing to the oppressed black woman for inciting discontent. Disregarding a displeased reaction to oppression as being silly or uncalled for is no more beneficial to the expulsion of systematic racism than the blatant acts of racism; both are erasure of an enormous group of people's oppressions, hardships, fights, and accomplishments. Waheed recognizes this in the lines, “every time you call me ‘angry’ / i hear your voice salt with guilt / and / i laugh.” She laughs at the blatant attempt of an individual—or specifically a man, because let's face it: this is garden-variety commentary from a man—to conceal their guilt for what African Americans have been through, as caused by white people. The way the lines are written, I find the placement of the line, “i laugh.” interesting. Abrupt and outright, not trying to hide her ridicule of the subject. Waheed meets a disregard for oppression with a laugh– comical, strongly laughing back what she thinks of the ‘insult.’ Similarly, the parallel between her being called angry and then laughing at it shows good-spiritedness and perseverance. The rebuttal of an argument against her is in her laugh, as if she is blatantly calling out the obvious ignorance. ‘look how easy it is to reveal you.’ Look how easy it is to see through your pale skin when held up to the light. In an attempt to absolve themselves from guilt, they will disregard and erase slavery and harassment in the workplace and on the streets and in your home when you are murdered by police and racial profiling and stereotypes and injustices and obstacles, telling angry black women to ‘get over it- slavery was like 200 years ago.’ Waheed understands the manipulation. Through punctuation (lack of periods or abruptly ending a sentence to emphasize ideas), word choice, the usage of rhetorical questions, the title, and the appeal to pathos, Waheed carries her message loud and proud. The connection between her use of “salt” in this poem and it being the title of the book which this poem is from, salt., is intriguing. I don't fully understand the context of the word used in “i hear your voice salt with guilt,” but the imagery I receive from the line is of lips shriveling up, shy and knowing of the wrongness of saying what will be said next: “angry black woman.” Although, as for the word “salt” in regards to it being the title of the book, I hypothesize that it might be a reference to a popular product of Africa during the time of slave trade there (her work is largely centered around Africa). Waheed’s word choice seems like commonplace language, but that in itself intensifies the meanings she associates with everyday occurrences. In addition, the pathos created in the emotional appeal to the reader intensifies her message. Projecting people who use the term “angry black woman” (as an insult) as feeling guilty tugs at their intentions, accusing them of wrongdoing. She laughs at them, being all-knowing of the manipulation that both the subject’s mind has undergone to be revealed as this, and the manipulative methods being used against the angry black woman. Nayyirah Waheed understands them all too well. She has the superiority and innocent affection all figured out—and she is angry about it.
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AuthorJosie Kremer Archives
January 2017
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