EXPOSES INNER LIVES OF BLACK WOMEN / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM EXPOSES INNER LIVES OF BLACK WOMEN / TUTORIALOUTLE | Page 2

Beyoncé rejects any magic
predicated on constraint with Lemonade, a meditation on the process
of becoming a black
woman in a society in which black women matter the least, are
"the mule of the world" and are the most disrespected,
neglected, and unprotected. Through the metaphor of lemonade — the
South's other cold drink, sweet tea's antithesis and sometimes
nemesis, but perhaps its best
collaborator — Beyoncé insists on alternative forms of inner magic
that demand emotional
disclosure for healing, wholeness and a freer kind of freedom.
Lemonade is an extended introduction to "Formation," the
song, visual and live performance
that transformed our collective 2016 Super Bowl weekends. As the
culmination of a different
kind of Great Migration story, "Formation" foreshadowed
the movements between space (rural
and urban) and time that Lemonade takes up. But
"Formation" tells us little of the physical,
emotional and social labor — the trans-formation, as it were — it took
to get in-formation. We
learn from Lemonade that "Formation," the last track on
the audio album, is the result of a
dissembling and silenced black womanhood, broken, baptized, forged
in fire and resurrected
through the strength of intergenerational mother wit to sing and
signify resilience and
resistance.
Black women's expression of emotion can be discursively and
physically dangerous for us, and
sometimes telling our truth leads to violence or death. But on screen
and in our minds,
Lemonade provides a risk-free emotional space that sonically and
visually highlights what we
all miss when we dismiss and neglect black women's emotional lives.
In a musical landscape
replete with black men's emoting — Kanye West's misogynist