consumption of black women ' s hurt and anger that other media, notably reality television, encourage. Instead, with Beyoncé ' s account of her black girl alchemist journey as only a starting point, Lemonade concerns itself with legitimating and creating space for a range of black women ' s emotions, pushing back against the generational curse of hurt patriarchs and unrelenting state actors who refuse to stop hurting the women and girls who sacrifice the most and love them best. In still and quiet formation, black women, donning white, watch us from plantation porches, returning the gaze to remind us that they are people who are feeling. Serena looks at us. Leah Chase ' s eyes smile at us. Quvenzhané watches us. Beyoncé meets and holds our eyes. Lesley McSpadden, Sybrina Fulton and Gwen Carr, mothers of the slain Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner, look at us, asking us to look at them and the pictures they hold of their murdered sons. Southern black women, their hair freshly Marcelcurled, look and smile. We are to be seen, they say, not just watched and consumed. The film ' s thesis is made evident in the transition from & quot; Pray You Catch Me & quot; to & quot; Hold Up.& quot; Diving from atop a building into herself, the transition finds Beyoncé ' s true self under water, slumbering, while she outwardly tries to dissemble, to bracket the hurt and anxiety of a potentially cheating partner. What follows is an emergence from baptismal waters. Donning the saffron garb associated with Yoruba Orisha Oshun, whose presence endures in black Southern religious practice, Beyoncé emerges from the water undissembled. As such, she is both joy and rage, bringing forth more water in which the street ' s