ZORA

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I Need a Break From Being a Woman of Color

Kristal Brent Zook
ZORA
Published in
5 min readJun 10, 2019

Illustration: Samantha Slinn

OfOf course, I don’t really want to give up who I am: a black, biracial, African American, and white woman. But I sometimes crave a break from having to trudge this descriptor with me into every thought and memory, every writing assignment, or vacation — every single new encounter with a stranger.

I write about race, gender, and social justice. This is my work. My calling. My vocation. The chemical components of the oxygen I breathe.

But sometimes I wish it weren’t.

It would be so refreshing, I think sometimes, as I curl up on the couch to re-watch the Dowager Countess fire off one-liners on Downton Abbey. There isn’t a black or brown face for miles around that Yorkshire landscape — with the exception of Jack Ross, whose forbidden affair with Cousin Rose was quickly extinguished. But I don’t care. I could watch all six seasons again and again — and have done, three times — simply because the show has the power to transport me far away from the place where I’m required to be, day in and day out: a woman of color.

Zora Neale Hurston also tired of the suffering protest narratives. “Can the black poet sing a song to the morning?” she asked in a 1938 essay. No. We can’t, she answered. Because “the one subject for a Negro is the Race and its…

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Kristal Brent Zook
Kristal Brent Zook

Written by Kristal Brent Zook

Award-winning journalist/professor; race, women, justice. My latest book is #1 in New Releases for Mixed Race/Multiracial! Order @ thegirlintheyellowponcho.com

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“That day is coming. That freedom. That oxygen.”
Honestly, I don’t think that day is actually going to come. Not because I don’t want to see it but because such an unfettered process and way of being requires much of society and too much of women of…

5

They remove themselves so that “they’re not on the front lines anymore.”

This is 100% fact! I withdrew myself last year and now that I’m poised to make a comeback so to speak, I’m dealing with feelings of anxiety about what life was like in that time.

Zora Neale Hurston also tired of the suffering protest narratives. “Can the black poet sing a song to the morning?” she asked in a 1938 essay. No. We can’t, she answered. Because “the o...

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