"I was served lemons, but I made lemonade."

Oh, Beyonce. There's so much I could write. But let's try to get beyond the whole cheating scandal and Becky and everything to take a more critical view of Lemonade. A little background for the uninformed: Lemonade is Beyonce's sixth album, dropped Saturday night April 23 on HBO--a visual album and what I've heard called her life's masterpiece. On the surface level, it follows her path to forgiveness after (presumably) Jay-Z's infidelity, and this is what most people around me have been keen to discuss: "Did it really happen? If someone can cheat on Bey, we're all just mere mortals..." (yes, actual quote). There's so much more to the album, though, on layers not meant for its White audience. Lemonade is a celebration of Black womanhood, and Black woman solidarity; an interrogation of sidechick culture and tensions with White women; an exploration of life itself through what Audre Lorde calls the "erotic as power"--deeply empowered, passionate commitment to oneself, one's work, others (please read: http://uk.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/11881_Chapter_5.pdf). This is a theme I've seen in Beyonce's work before, especially in the documentary of her life, Life Is But A Dream.

At the same, Lemonade isn't meant for me. As a White, American, Jewish woman, there are things I understand about the album--and many things I yet don't. There are certainly pieces that make me uncomfortable. And--it doesn't matter. I find this such an interesting reversal of media tactics, which usually play so heavily into White interests, casting recognizable (read: White) faces and directors, stealing work from POC (Memoirs of a Geisha...), and everything else. Here, we have a very mainstream artist making unmistakably Black art, and White critics feeling displaced. Beyonce used White techniques and "acceptable" forms of music and persona to establish herself in the public eye to fantastic effect, and has gained the credibility to go in this direction.

Similarly, I want to recognize that I'm not the person who should be writing about Lemonade, and I wouldn't be if not for this course. There's already enough White writing out there on the subject, and enough requests for us to step down and give space for Black women's voices. For anyone who wants to understand the album better, I'd recommend the Lemonade Syllabus (https://issuu.com/candicebenbow/docs/lemonade_syllabus_2016), through which I'm working my way.

Here--despite the fact that I'd love to write about every song and every frame--I want to focus on the fourth track, "Sorry." Each song opens with spoken word adapted from the poetry of Warsan Shire. In black and white, we see Beyonce and a group of young Black women, who wear natural hair and are painted with white, riding in a party bus. 

They move as Beyonce speaks: "So what are you gonna say at my funeral, now that you've killed me? Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted. Most bomb pussy who, because of me, sleep evaded. Her god was listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks."
As the instrumental opening begins, the camera pans through a Southern garden, across a porch, up to a plantation-style home. Serena Williams walks through the halls, which are lined with seated women, looking back at the camera as she approaches Beyonce, reclining in a throne.

The rest of the main body of the song (which repeats "I ain't sorry," "I ain't thinkin' 'bout you." "Boy, bye" and "Middle fingers up," to name a few tone-giving lines) switches between footage of Serena dancing near Beyonce's throne and of Beyonce and the women dancing on the bus. 

The song takes a turn: we see them then outside of the bus, standing before the camera, as Beyonce sings, "Looking at my watch he should've been home/Today I regret the night I put that ring on/He always got them fucking excuses/I pray the lord you reveal what his truth is."

This frame alternates with one of Beyonce seated, singing, as the song slows down and becomes more serious, and we hear: "I left a note in the hallway/By the time you read it I'll be far away/I'm far away/But I ain't fucking with nobody/Let's have a toast to the good life/Suicide before you see this tear fall down my eyes/Me and my baby we gon' be alright/We gon' live a good life/Big homie better grow up/Me and my whoadies 'bout to stroll up/I see them boppers in the corner/They sneaking out the back door/He only want me when I'm not there/He better call Becky with the good hair/He better call Becky with the good hair."

 Centering Black women throughout the piece is intentional, but featuring Serena Williams especially: as one of the best athletes in the world, she's been the subject of a huge amount of racist, misogynist ridicule, especially with reference to her body.

Overall, though the song does deal more explicitly with  issues of infidelity, it's more about celebrating empowerment--"Me and my baby we gon' be alright." It is unapologetically Black, claiming what we've called strategic essentialism by organizing around a marginalized culture particular to Black women. And it's beautiful.