Comparison Of Ta-Nehisi Coates The Joy Of Motherhood

The poem The Joy of Motherhood shows several similarities to Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Both the poem and the book speak about the realities of being Black in America and they both use beautiful language. In Between the World and Me, Coates describes his experience trying to navigate being a minority in a world that’s dominated by Eurocentric ideas in an open letter to his son. Coates also touches on his own experience dealing with police brutality and some of the major issues that were going on during the time he was growing up. The Joy of Motherhood does the same thing, although it talks about these issues in the perspective of a woman looking onwards to the prospects of becoming a mother in America. Both works have the

In the book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, she depicts the mass incarceration rate in American and recalls cases of people going to prison that personally affected here. The majority of the African-American men are either in prison or have some type of criminal record making it unable for them to vote and get jobs. Alexander describes the criminal justice systems as the “New Jim Crow,” a modern type of oppression for African Americans. Not only does FreeQuency talk about mass incarceration rate she also touches on police brutality in her poem. FreeQuency says, “criminal before child,” (FreeQuency, 59) and “I will not take it for Oscar Granted/that they will not come/and kill my son” (FreeQuency, 67-69). FreeQuency relates directly to prominent current events surrounding police brutality. Oscar Grant was an unarmed man that was shot in the back by a police officer. The events that transpired that day were recorded on the phone and caused protests to erupt. I related the lines “criminal before child,” to the shooting of Tamir Rice. Tamir was a twelve-year-old boy that was playing with a toy gun and was shot twice and died later on that day. Overall, in the poem FreeQuency uses emotional word choices that can directly relate to two prominent issues that involve

I think that the point of the poem of FreeQuency’s poem is awareness, so that everyone that reads her poem will for a second be able to step into the shoes of minorities in America; the result of her poem would launch people to try to use their own white privilege and begin to speak up for a group of people that have continually been oppressed by different means in America. I think the issues that FreeQuency addresses in her poem needs to continue to be talked about and in the center of the media so we keep the conversation going. Police brutality has been happening for a long time and our access to technology has only brought the problem to the light recently. It’s important to keep the conversation going so that we can begin to change the system and that these issues that are holding FreeQuency back from having a child won’t be a problem anymore. Overall, what I took away from the poem is that we as a country need to come together and try to change the system so everyone is able to feel safe in our country. It’s so important for other people to begin to see and understand the constant struggles that minorities go through because since it doesn’t relate to the majority of people they won’t ever even give it a second thought. However, by having poems like The Joy of Motherhood FreeQuency is able to touch a large base of people with her personal experience being black in America, and I believe many other African-Americans can