Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

Fiction | Anthology/Varied Collection | YA | Published in 2019

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Symbols & Motifs

Art

Art is a recurring motif throughout the collection, as characters use art as a form of escape and expression. Whether it is music, television, or painting, as characters battle with the difficulties of their lives they find an escape through the beauty of creativity.

In the story “Warning: Color May Fade,” Nivia faces the pressure from her parents to pursue a more solid career, although Nivia’s true passion is art. In her life leading up to the story, she regularly sketches in her notebook pictures of herself that she would not share with the world. Art for her is a way to explore who she really is apart from the pressures of her family to perform well and pursue a career that they find acceptable. Similarly, Geri in the story “The (R)evolution of Nigeria Jones” repeatedly watches the television show Friends. It serves as a reminder of her deceased mother while also giving her insight into the lives of “white” people—showing her that white people who are not, as her father repeatedly tells her, destined to oppress people of color.

For Sobechi in “Samson and the Delilahs,” his artistic escape is music. When he hears Dez play metal music for him for the first time, he feels alive and is able to be free from the expectations of his mother. He also realizes that the artists like System of a Down draw inspiration from past atrocities to create art—something that he wishes to do by getting in touch with his mother’s cultural roots in Nigeria. As he rekindles his relationship with Dez later in the story, he thinks of everything that she has given him through music: He wants to thank her for “giving [him] music to live [his] life to, music that gave [him] the courage to unlock something in [his] mummy. Music that’s helping [him] become a better son” (176).

Like Sobechi, Tank in “Wild Horses, Wild Hearts” also finds escape through music. As he battles with his sexuality and his feelings for Skyler, he often thinks of Britney Spears. When he finally makes the decision to reveal his feelings for Skyler to his family, he “breathe[s] in and out, repeating [his] favorite Britney Spears lyrics in [his] head” (231). This reveals the important role that Britney Spears’s songs—about love but also about strength and power—play in Tank’s life, giving him the courage he needs to reveal his truth. Each of these characters, as they struggle with Societal Expectations Versus Being the Authentic Self, finds reprieve from their difficult lives and courage through art.

The Black Collective

As the title of the collection, Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America, implies, one motif of the collection is the idea of the Black Collective—a standard group into which people of color are expected to fit, with their ability or inability to fit into that standard determining whether they are “black enough.” This motif explores the theme of Societal Expectations Versus Being the Authentic Self, as characters struggle with both what it means to fit into the Black Collective and how to do so while still remaining true to themselves.

In the story “Black Enough,” the titular phrase is used in the argument between Cam and his ex-girlfriend, Jessica. He questions her about whether she does not like him because he is not “black enough”—referring to the way that he dresses and talks; however, she makes it clear that there is no such thing as “black enough” with regard to superficial things like physical features, the clothing one wears, or the way one talks. Instead, what is important to her is the fact that he Cam neglects issues relevant to people of color, able to ignore their struggles because of his own money and social position. Cam then makes the conscious decision to join the Black Collective by reaching out to Myron and beginning to understand the importance of Black issues.

Joni makes this same effort in the story “Oreo,” first by choosing to apply to an HBCU—against her father’s wishes—and then in her conversation with Junior, in which she attempts to understand why he considers her “white on the inside” (123). Her family’s wealth and her all-white, affluent school make her feel as though she does not truly understand where she comes from or what it is like for other people of color, causing what is essentially a feeling of exclusion from the Black Collective. Conversely, in the story “The (R)evolution of Nigeria Jones,” Geri struggles with her presence in a semblance of the Black Collective known as the Movement. From her childhood, she is forced to follow her father’s belief in universal oppression of Black people by white people, leaving no room for “gray area” or connection to people of other races and ethnicities. As a result, she struggles with adapting to normal life outside of the Movement and assimilation into the real world around her.

The vast difference between the characters in “Black Enough” and “Oreo,” and Geri in “The (R)evolution of Nigeria Jones,” conveys the importance of balance. While being part of the Black Collective is important for each of these characters, it also comes with the understanding that there also needs to be room for the authentic self, as they battle with who they wish to be—and who society expects them to be.

Hair

Hair repeatedly plays an important role for characters throughout the stories in the collection. In “Stop Playing,” the protagonist Keri hopes to win back the affection of her ex-boyfriend Lucas by “wearing [his] favorite light-pink dress over his favorite swimsuit” (178). However, she refuses to wear her hair pressed how he likes it, instead wearing “two big Afro puffs” because “they used to be [her] favorite” (178)—before she dated Lucas. For Keri, the puffs in her hair symbolize her desire to be true to herself. While most of her actions and feelings revolve around what Lucas wants, to her own detriment, she refuses to change her hair, representing the authentic part of her that eventually wins out over the part of her that buys into Lucas’s negative judgments about her.

In the story “Whoa!”, the narrator, Danté, is obsessed with his looks, paying for college through his modeling and spending several minutes each morning performing a ritual steam bath to promote his beauty. His hair is particularly important to him, as he notes that it is “a crown of product-rich short locks that stand up like black daggers, with sides shaved low from temple to temple. It’s a signature look that gets [him] modeling jobs” (235-36). However, when he tells John that his hair is in “locks,” John misunderstands and immediately calls them “shackles” (235). Danté is “shackled” throughout the text by his own vanity and beauty, as represented by his hair and John’s humorous misinterpretation of the word “lock.” However, through his conversation with John—regardless of whether that conversation is real or imagined—Danté discovers the importance of connecting with his cultural roots. Although he loses his modeling job, he is in some ways “freed” from the “shackles” of his hair and, by extension, his obsession with his looks, allowing him reconnects with his grandmother at the conclusion of the text.

Just as Danté’s hair represents his disconnect from his roots, Cam’s hair in “Black Enough” symbolizes his lack of understanding of how to fit in with other people of color. Before the start of the text, he refused to get his haircut in South Carolina, instead electing to do it back home in Texas. However, to impress Jessica, he chooses to cut his hair a certain way like the other kids in South Carolina, thinking that it will make him more “Black.” However, he fails to realize that it is not his hair that will make him connect with Jessica and others, but rather his understanding of issues that people of color face.

In sum, the symbolic significance of hair varies across the stories in the collection. In some, hair represents a misleading fixation on matters that are ultimately unimportant or insignificant. In others, hair instead represents a way of choosing to be one’s authentic self in spite of expectations to do otherwise.