Holy Black Girl Defined

"Don't nobody got no holy, everybody got an iPhone" Noname, Prayer Song 

My dissertation allowed me to spend a lot of time with the word holy particularly as it relates to Black girls. Holy and holiness was not a foreign topic to me as I grew up in Christianity and holiness is the ultimate goal because as the old folks would say "holiness is right." The bible instructs us to be holy just as the Savior is. I even grew up in a Holiness Baptist church, which further pointed to the  significance of holy/ being holy.
In my research I thought about what holiness means for the Black girls I organized and still organize with in SOLHOT. An untrained person might believe that my connection of holy/holiness and Black girls is an odd comparison to make. Sacred and secular are disparate. But, for me it's never been more true and pure to think through Black girlhood subjectivity using a sacred lens.Thinking of Black girls and Black girlhood as holy means that we reorient ourselves to know that Black girls "been knowing." More than anything thorough holiness we see Black girls differently in that they are more than enough just the way they are.
This summer, I knew I needed to write this post as I saw friends mourning a former high school classmate. He was gun down in Chicago in front of his parenting partner and their children. The news reports tell of his 4 or 5 year old daughter crying at the scene saying "my dada dead." I thought to myself after reading the report what a shame that his killers had no regard for his life or the life of his little girl to take him violently with them as the audience.The disrespect. In the following days, other friends mourned the life of their homegirl. Also shot, this time by a lover. She leaves behind a daughter as well. Both scenarios far too common for us to still live here. I reasoned in this moment not only would holy reorient us to behold Black girls as being enough, but, seeing Black girls as holy would keep us all up at night until we formed a new world to keep parental death and intimate partner violence from Black girls. What if the most important thing about a Black girl is that she got to be fully present self made whole through love from a parent and lover.
When I say holy, I mean holy in the way that writers Toni Morrison (2004), Sesali Bowen (2015), who is also a SOLHOT homegirl, and independent recording artist Jamila Woods (2016) make use of the term. In Morrison’s Beloved, the character Baby Suggs is given the “small caress” of holy after her name (p. 102). In the text, this small caress was used to signify the cultural “heart-work” that Baby Suggs gave once liberated from the domination and captivity of slavery. She gave her heart through her “unchurched” preaching of the gospel, where she did not criticize people and damn them to hell, rather through her heart-work she told those who would listen that their grace was dependent on the grace that they could imagine; if they could not see grace then then they would not have it (p. 103).
Cultural writer and my homegirl Sesali Bowen unpacks the term “holy” or “holiness” through her explanation of the popular culture reference of R&B artists Rihanna, 125 Beyoncé, and Nicki Minaj as the holy trinity in her feministing.com article, “The Holy TrinityExplained.” Bowen brilliantly articulates the roles that each of the three women holds in the trinity and premises her analysis by stating that, in order to recognize the holiness of carefree, renegade, powerhouse Black girls, “oppressive expectations and restrictions on the agency, legacy, bodies, and lives of Black girls and women in mainstream media must be released.” Similar to Morrison’s Baby Suggs, the holiness of Black women and girls is dependent on their freedom. Specifically, Bowen’s important text points to holiness as being present, unquestionable mythics, messaging that demonstrates the power of Black girl brilliance that defies status quo, carefreeness, and leading. Importantly, the articulations of holy/holiness offered by Toni Morrison and Sesali Bowen make central the everydayness of Black girls as expressed through their love and art.
Whereas Morrison’s Baby Suggs envisions her sharing of love through the “unpreached” gospel with others as holy, Jamila Woods in her song titled Holy (2016) focuses on love as an act meant to inspire self-care where one sees the self as possessing the love needed to face and take on each day. Holiness, then, is sensed through being enough without the need of a lover for completion. The self-care that Woods points to does not seem to be done within community, which could get messy when thinking about the neoliberal understand of self-care being paramount to the collective. Alternatively, it seems as though Woods is thinking through Black girlhood as always already being enough. In thinking with SOLHOT and the ways that our labor is sacred as it relates to centering Black girlhood freedom, it is only possible to do self-care in community with others.
So let's do it. Let's get together and build this world where we can all exist. Where Black girls are grown by love-that of her own and the love we shower her with. I'll see you at 3 p.m and I'll bring the snack too.