In the article “Moving Beyond Pain” by Bell Hooks, the author talks about Beyonce’s album “Lemonade”, the author makes the claim that “is intent; its purpose is to seduce, celebrate, and delight—to challenge the ongoing present day devaluation and dehumanization of the black female body”. This is because through the album it shows “the construction of a powerfully symbolic black female sisterhood that resists invisibility, that refuses to be silent”. The author also makes the claim that that this album even though shows an empowerment of black women in one had, it also continues with a stereotypical idea that black women is always the victim. She claims this because the album starts with “a story of pain and betrayal highlighting the trauma it produces”. The article also criticises how in the album it also present black women  as violent since in one of the songs she “boldly struts through the street with baseball bat in hand, randomly smashing cars”. which is very important because another of the author’s main point was about how “women do not and will not seize power and create self-love and self-esteem through violent acts”. Meaning that even though the song had the right motivation of showing women as free and empowered, violence is not the correct way to do it, since it defeats the whole purpose.

One of the points that confused me about this article was on the second to last paragraph, where the author talks about beyonce’s album as a fictional world. And from this assertion she start talking about how in Beyonce’s world black women get to actually have a voice, their “emotional pain can be exposed and revealed”. Which makes me wonder, if she is trying to say that black women in real life don’t get to say how they feel, or to have a voice? And that this shows that black women are going through emotional violence. Which she then says in order for this problem to be solve “men must do the work of inner and outer transformation”, which also confuses me because I got no idea of what that’s suppose to mean, and how is it going to solve anything.

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