From Hurston to Beyoncé: Examining 'The Politics Of Black Joy'

An academic book explores the Black American experience via historical essays and Beyoncé.

September 20, 2022 at 5:34 pm

Author and educator Lindsey Stewart had one very central idea when working on her book, The Politics of Black Joy. She wanted to speak out as a Black southerner to let the world know that there, too, is happiness in the Black community and much more on the minds of Black folks than turmoil.

Using Zora Neale Hurston‘s concept of Black southern joy as the vehicle, Stewart analyzes Black American life via Hurston’s essays, Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Black history makers like Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, Saidiya Hartman, Imani Perry, Eddie Glaude and Audra Simpson.

Since the book’s release, Stewart said it’s been hard to gauge the reception, but she has gotten some nice emails from people who can relate to the subject matter.

“I think it’ll take some time for me to get a sense of how this book can shift conversations,” Stewart told Blavity. “I’m really hoping that we’ll start to think more critically about how Black life is represented, especially in the South, what kind of stories we’re telling about Black people in the South. And just more stories that give a more complex sense of who we are.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Northwestern University Press

"There's more to our life than racism"

As Stewart has moved about the country, a common conversation she recalls is having to bust myths about the Black southern experience.

“When some of my friends up North would ask me, what do you plan to do after college? And I would say, ‘go back to Louisiana,’ they just wouldn’t understand,” Stewart told Blavity. “And there’s just this thought, ‘why would you go back there? Isn’t like the Ku Klux Klan waiting for you?’ It just seemed like a lot of them have never really been down South and the way that they talked about it completely did not match up to how I lived and how I grew up.”

Stewart said there’s a misconception that Black folks in the South live in daily fear.

“I think that the thing that most stood out was there was kind of this assumption that Black people in the South were afraid of white people and were kind of always thinking about being in danger because white people are lurking and ready to attack us or something,” she said. “And the thing that didn’t match up for me was how little we actually talked about white people at home, how very little, it seemed like white people were the center of our lives.”

Simultaneously, Stewart is pushing back on the monolithic mindset that doesn’t seem to allow people to understand that you can both experience joy and live in a form of turmoil.

“I think for a long time, there’s been this worry that if we talk about anything else, other than the racism that Black people experience that other people are gonna look at that and say, ‘well, see, they’re not having problems, so everything’s good,'” Stewart said. “Part of what I’m trying to get at is why are we worried about those people? There’s more to our life than racism.”

"White people don't get to define our story."

More importantly, however, Stewart’s goal as a writer is to tell stories from the perspective of the people experiencing them.

“The thing that I’m also just kind of interested in is how people are gonna respond to that because I’m taking for granted that the people I’m talking to know that racism is a problem, right?” Stewart said. “I’m just saying it’s not the thing that completely determines our lives. There’s more to us and white people don’t get to define our story.”

Squeezing the "Lemonade"

As a university professor, Stewart said she understands young people. It’s one of the reasons she wanted her academic book to feel more like a recreational read. Enter Beyoncé.

Queen Bey’s 2016 visual album, Lemonade is analyzed in the book as it provides an example of how to experience joy amid chaos. The visual album was filmed in several parts at the Madewood Plantation House along Bayou Lafourche in Napoleonville, Louisiana. As the album sought to tell stories about Black American experiences, noticeably absent from plantation scenes were white people.

“Why was it so important for there not to be white people on the plantation? What’s striking to me is how little white people show up in that album. I mean, they’re not on the plantation,” Stewart said. “And there’s this thought that all the stories we get told about slavery are ones where it’s just Black people suffering. And you hear young people saying we don’t want any more movies about slavery. And I think what they mean is they don’t want more tragic stories about Black people. They don’t want more torture porn, they want more complex stories. And one of the ways that I think Beyoncé tried to do that is just to take white people out of the equation and just focus on how we relate to each other.”

Stewart wanted her book to resonate with younger people and have a positive approach.

“I wanted it to be more than an academic book and I wanted it to reach,” she said. “I’m also a teacher, so I’m spending time with young people. So, I’m trying to think about, well, what would resonate with them? And the visual album Lemonade is really trying to tell a more complex story about Black womanhood in the cell. What you mostly get is Black women trying to heal themselves. Young people do need those sorts of stories. We get a lot about how racism puts us in a horrible position, but we don’t get a lot about, well, how do you put yourself together, out of that?”

You can never truly ban books

Given the ignorance associated with banning books, one might think Stewart would be worried about her book ending up on one of those lists. She not only finds the idea hilarious but as an avid reader and writer, she also doesn’t think banning books is at all an effective means of hiding content.

“It never really works,” she said. “It seems like once you ban a book, you generate all this interest in it. So in a way, they’ve kind of shot themselves in the foot. You know, now people are gonna go out and read Toni Morrison and now Toni Morrison’s books are gonna be sold out because young people wanna know, ‘well, why don’t you want me to read this?'”

Her stance is that authority figures should just leave books alone.

“As college professors, we don’t have to worry about books being banned,” she said. “What we have to worry about is, especially because I’m in Tennessee, we have to worry about the things that we assign. It can’t be taken that you’re only talking about one side and that gets really complicated when you’re talking about issues like slavery. It’s like, what other side is there? But, leave all the books alone, right? Because I’m an educator, I don’t really understand banning books, and I don’t think you should be afraid of books. The real danger is that when you take out books, you make young people not understand the world that they live in, and that’s really dangerous.”

Living the life you write about

Writing about Black joy is one thing, experiencing it is something else. For Stewart, it’s very important to live the life you write about. These days, gardening has brought her joy.

“Just finding spaces for joy is especially important right now,” she said. “So one of the things that have been kind of fun is there’s a Facebook group called ‘Black Women Who Love Gardening.’ And I’m so happy to be a part of that group because you just see so many stories of Black women who’ve turned to gardening as a way to take care of themselves through these really difficult times. I kind of see that as a space of Black joy.”

The Politics of Black Joy, published by Northwestern University Press, is available for purchase.