Reflections

Conversations around menstrual leave and menopause support continue to evolve in both the UK and Kenya. As workplaces strive for inclusivity, attention to women’s health needs, particularly during menstruation and menopause is becoming increasingly significant.

This article explores the meaning of justice for women of colour who’ve experienced gendered violence, in conversation with analysis of Nina Simone’s performances of two songs.

Nina Simone’s rendition of the song, ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’, is a yearning for justice and respect against deliberate misunderstanding, including of herself. It is a haunting melody and its lyrics, which invoke a sense of vulnerability resonate because they speak to that part of us which wants to be understood. It may remind some of us dealing with the shadows of trauma of gendered abuse that more than anything else we want justice and what it means in the context of our lived experiences to be heard.

This post critically compares Audre Lorde’s poetry to Nina Simone’s lyrics to ‘Four Women’ in order to underline the urgent need for the tales of black women to be heard and for intersectional oppression experienced in relation to race, gender, socioeconomic status and identity to be addressed.

Audre Lorde, born in 1934, was a black writer, feminist and civil rights activist whose writings advocated what is now called intersectionality, a word coined by black feminist, Kimberle Crenshaw in the 1980s to recognise that social identities are multiple, and oppressions overlap. Lorde’s words ‘because I am woman, because I am black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself – a Black woman warrior poet…’ highlight this intersectionality and the different features that shape us as women. Lorde’s words can be contrasted with Nina Simone’s lyrics to ‘Four Women’, where the key message lies between the lines, and what remains unsaid about the women is a powerful portrayal of how much more women are, and their struggle to define themselves.