Review: Black Is the Body
I don’t specifically remember how I heard about Emily Bernard’s memoir Black Is the Body. Maybe I heard something about it on the radio? But I do remember being intrigued and excited by the subtitle, Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time and Mine. Not long afterward, I eagerly purchased the title and began reading it at the beginning of the summer.
The introduction and first essay are wonderfully written and intensely engaging. Unfortunately, few of the remaining essays carry the same weight or maintain the same momentum as the memoir’s opening pitch. Bernard covers a lot of ground in these essays: her experiences as a black faculty member at a predominantly white university, her interracial marriage, motherhood, the history of her maternal families’ Mississippi roots, her childhood in Nashville and the ways that these experiences shaped and affected her. But she tells these stories from a distance, adopting an “anthropological lens” and relaying information rather than reliving the memories. Though told in a voice that is warm and personable, these essays lack the emotional depth I’ve come to expect in memoirs. Bernard failed to pull me in or stir in me the same emotions that she felt.
As I continued to read, I found that I was fatigued by Bernard’s distance as well as the collection’s central focus on race. As a black woman who also grew up in the South and attended a PWI, many of my own experiences are similar to Bernard’s. Instead of digging deeper or analyzing these experiences in a more meaningful way, Bernard chose to echo many of the familiar tropes of black writing, leading me to believe that this collection was written with white audiences in mind.
But Bernard’s writing does shine in the stories about her daughters. “Her Glory” is an entertaining story of Isabella’s straightened hair; “Mother on Earth” a story on Bernard’s decision and desire to become a mother.
Black Is the Body was not what I expected it to be, but it has its bright spots. This collection of essays provides one woman’s thoughtful and honest perspective on what it means to be black, Southern, and female in America.
