ñeque.
- ☼
- Mar 15, 2019
- 4 min read
“There’s nothing more damaging to a superhero than emotion.”
There was a dialogue consistent throughout Captain Marvel that is triggering for any woman whose abilities have been questioned by calling out her humanity as a weakness. I can still picture the room that I was in over 5 years ago, staring into the eyes of a guy who I was seeing — that I knew would never be able to fully see me — when he first told me: “You’re just too emotional.” When things finally ended with him in one of the most heartbreaking of ways, I stopped dating altogether for years and still have not fully recovered.
Or, growing up in a house with brothers who didn’t realize how it impacted me when they gave me an unsightly nickname whenever I’d had enough — a nickname that has stuck with me until this day.
I know what it’s like as a young woman engineer to be scolded like a child by a superior; to be told that my women’s history month anecdotes for safety moments were unwelcome; to be reduced to fiery tears by another woman engineer all in the name of “tough love", but was actually an effort to pinpoint my flaws and tarnish my reputation before I even had a chance to make one.
“Can you keep your emotions in check?”
------
I have often been told that this was my biggest weakness, so when I first heard of the book “Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower” by Brittney Cooper, I could not WAIT to get my hands on it. It was the first book I read this year, and I thought it would help me finally get my feelings together and make them neater for people to understand, or at least help me figure out how to deal with my feelings internally so that other people would never have to see them affect my ideas or work ever again.
Dr. Brittney Cooper, an associate professor at Rutgers University and fellow Howard Bison (which I didn’t realize until I started reading but was sooooo hype about, because HU YOU KNOW!), shared her narrative of stepping into the superhero she was created to become. Instead of trying to hide it under a bushel, she eventually embraced the rage she felt through her experiences as fully Black and fully woman and converted that energy into pure passion. She took the idea of eloquence as an expectation of a demure lady, married it to validated anger and called it her womanhood. So instead of silencing herself to be accepted by the masses, she found a way to stay true to her story and stand up for her own life. Dr. Cooper rejected the lie of niceness and likability for integrity, honor, grace and empowerment.
Brie Larson as Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel and Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau did the same on screen. You have to see the movie yourself because I am not one to spoil plots, but what I saw were two women whose dreams had been deferred because of their womanhood, but found a way to reclaim them as soon as an opportunity revealed itself. Although they both needed encouragement and a little push from their closest people to take the risk, it was their own bravery that pushed them towards their destiny.
Now this really may sound like hyperbole (or like someone is paying me to write a good review for Marvel), but there was a moment when Carol spoke with Eloquent Rage to her nemesis, and it made me want to turn the movie theater into the sanctuary at Bethel Gospel Tabernacle and run a church lap around the aisles:
“I’ve been fighting with one arm tied behind my back, but what happens when I’m finally set free?”
------
I talk about this often, but freedom is the gift I’ve been given by coming to Ecuador. My bravery — encouraged by God and supported by my family — has opened my world to a space that I could not have imagined back as an undergrad, or even when I was just starting out in my career. These days, I have begun the process of talking with mentors and friends about what I envision for my next phase and I am still pretty unsure about all of it, but it is exciting to be at the cutting edge of my own life’s innovation. I am blessed.
I know that my future is secure, that I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, and that with clear eyes and a full heart, I cannot lose.
My desire these days is to figure out how I can use my Eloquent Rage to support other women as we own our emotions and allow them to empower our souls. Perhaps our emotions are the true energy core, waiting for us to break it out of the cage of fear, set our hearts on fire, and bring light into the darkest parts of our own lives. Then we can change the world around us.
Maybe there’s nothing more damaging to the lies we’ve most believed about ourselves than the emotions that tell us the true stories of who we are. Instead of keeping them in check, maybe it’s when we are most tapped into our emotional selves that we are most free. I intend to use my light to help us all find the love and joy and peace that already exists within.
I am a superhero: I am a woman, I am unique, I am full of raw passion, and I am brave.
☼
(Thanks, Mom)
