By Verde Arzu
Poem by Tupac Shakur
On Being Worthy
Jada Pinkett Smith is the current example of American culture telling Black women to shut up. Our stories don’t matter, our voices are too loud, too aggressive, too something. This reverberated message is historical in nature and entrenched in the fabric of America, dating back to slavery and the stolen voices of Black women subjugated into silence. Jada Pinkett Smith’s memoir is more than the juicy, sensationalized click-bait the internet has tried to make it out to be. It is the story of a Black woman’s journey through life, her experiences, lessons learned, and wisdom to be passed down, and it is worthy of being told. In the words of Tupac Shakur, Jada Pinkett Smith is a literal example of the proverbial ‘rose that grew from concrete.
On Humble Beginnings
Jada Pinkett Smith, a multi-talented actress who the universe seemingly pulled out of the jaws of the dark, grimy streets of Baltimore as a young teenage drug dealer. A life no doubt headed for prison or worse–the grave. Pinkett Smith was reared by a single mother, a working nurse, who struggled with drug addiction for a great deal of her childhood. At the tender age of seven, as she walked casually down the street with her father by her side, he confessed, “I’m a drug addict and a criminal. So, I can’t be your father.” And with that, he relinquished his rights as her parent. In a sit-down interview at The Guild Theater in Sacramento, Pinkett stated her response was “thank you” because she recognized he was not in her life the way other fathers were and she appreciated his honesty. However, it was her stepfather who promised he would always be in her life, that his disappearance after he and her mother divorced, caused her to have “a very difficult relationship with how I should interact with men in an intimate space—that lack of trust it’s something I am still unpacking.” Some of that unpacking and healing, Pinkett Smith reveals happened along her journey of writing of her memoir, and no doubt must continue to happen during each interview conversation. Healing happens when we speak and reveal the trauma of our past experiences. Worthy teaches its readers lessons on self-reflection and healing.
On Curating Self
Jada Pinkett Smith’s, Worthy, heeds the advice of countless trailblazing women, whose shoulders she undoubtedly stands upon. Pinkett Smith courageously and audaciously tells the story of a life filled with trials, tribulations, young wild, frivolous choices, a grandmother’s love and garden, and the seeds from whence her talents were cultivated and grew. Her story pulls the reader into the human experience of overcoming by going through. The story of a Black woman growing up in America under the spotlight of the media since she won over the hearts of TV watchers at the tender age of eighteen, playing the role of freshman Lena James on the hit TV show, A Different World. A role personally curated for her by award-winning director Debbie Allen.
Today, Pinkett Smith is the curator of her own story, “my belief is that every woman is worthy, a walking treasure, and deserves to live her life as the heroine of her own story. When we as women have the courage to find the keys to the treasure chest of ourselves, we find Divine freedom (a freedom not whimsical), and with this, our lives are deliberately and unapologetically crafted by our own hands.” Black women must continue to be the curators of our own stories, they hold too much spiritual power to let others tell them for us.
On Tupac
It was through their similar upbringings that drew Jada Pinkett Smith and legendary hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur close to each other as teenagers. Both their mothers struggled with addiction. Their bond was unbreakable, Pinkett Smith recalls they developed “an unspoken pact. Imma watch your back and your gonna watch my back. We didn’t have our mothers.” They found safety and security in their loyalty to one another. Although the tabloids, fans, and social media posts continue to question Pinkett Smith’s relationship to Tupac, it is clear from her book and interviews that their friendship was a kinship that provided a steady calm in a world filled with so much instability. Theirs was an “everlasting friendship” that was tragically cut far too soon by gun violence. Instead of being told to shut up about speaking his name, she should be encouraged to continue to speak about him. We are blessed when we make soul and spiritual connections in our youth that last into our adulthood.
On Just ‘Shut Up!’
From just one interview of Pinkett Smith doing a promotional tour of her memoir posted to social media outlet, Instagram, the comments poured in:
“Can I mute all posts related to her?”
“This lady does not shut up.”
“Shut up! Geezus!!!”
“Will clearly smacked the wrong person.”
“Shut up, already. Damn it.”
“Someone cut her mic.”
“OMG…SHUT UPPPPP.”
Then, there was the picture posted of the then WWE wrestler, The Rock, holding a mic with the caption, “SHUT UP, BITCH!” imprinted on it.
From social media posts to magazine articles, the comments mirrored a call for Pinkett Smith to shut up.
Instead of acquiescing to the demand to ‘just SHUT UP’ while others create the narrative of her life, Pinkett Smith snatched her words and her voice back. And though it be 2023, a revolutionary act for any Black woman.
Telling Black women to sit down, shut up, and endure cruelty, injustice, lies, and so much more is entrenched and woven into the fabric of America’s quilt. It is a tale as old as time and American as apple pie.
During the era of the enslaved African on stolen Native land, Black women were viewed and treated as chattel, non-human, property, and as such had no rights to their own bodies–their own words. Black women have lived through centuries of incomprehensible trauma, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse while bearing the children of their predators. Enduring it all in silence.
The suffrage movement is yet another example of Black women being forced into the margins of the soundless void and omitted from the historical pages of history–from being acknowledged among those women who worked tirelessly to fight for women’s right to vote. Yet, Black women were suppressed for another forty-five years before they were allowed the right to vote themselves.
During the 1960s and early ‘70s of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement, Black women, though heavy lifters towards the march for freedom and equality, were largely marginalized and silenced behind the voices of their male counterparts.
In Patricia Broussard’s journal publication, Black Women ‘s Post-Slavery Silence Syndrome: A Twenty-First Century Remnant of Slavery, Jim Crow, and Systemic Racism–Who Will Tell Her Stories? Broussard asserts that, “Black women have been promised that their stories will be told, but the telling of their stories has always taken a back seat to more pressing problems surrounding the African-American race.”
It is author and social critic bell hooks (2021) who reminds Black women in her book, Sisters of the Yam, that “we must be about the business of saving ourselves.” Harlem Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston warns Black women that, “if you’re silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Pinkett Smith takes heed to the words of her ancestors in the writing of her memoir Worthy.
“and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
so it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive”
-Audre Lorde