by Tsahai Makeda
I was coming off of a weeklong high at one of the nation’s most prolific writers’ retreats and heading home, when I found myself grounded for an extra day in Columbus, Ohio. The airline I booked my travel with had reneged on their promise to get me back to New York safely–THRICE. Everything is by divine design though, because had it not been for those canceled flights, I would not have found myself in an Uber, on a rainy Saturday afternoon, headed to the main library in downtown Columbus. It was the library’s 150th anniversary, and it culminated in the Columbus Bookfest that was packed with readers, writers, books, craft talks and coffee. A writer’s oasis. I decided to close my impromptu day perusing the bookstore the library created on the second floor, filled with all the works of the authors present for the Bookfest. In the sea of covers and spines, a book grabbed me.
Ripe by Negesti Kaudo, the cover art is an illuminous majesty of work, rich and full with dynamic colors; bold, loud, beautiful. Plump lips covered in shimmering gold and bronze lipstick with the book’s title neatly placed across the center of the mouth. The cover screamed out to me, this book is rich! It is. This collection of essays is the author’s impeccable debut that explores race from a variety of intersections that all lead to what it means to her to be a Black woman in America.
Consider the invitation into the collection–the title, Ripe. When we hear that word, instinctively, fruit comes to mind. So it is in this body of work, the exploration of what it means to take up space–to be full of such goodness and sweetness on the inside (Flesh); to have to be hard and tough externally to protect that goodness (Rind); to know the origins of how you came to be and what you can and will become (Seed). To quote Kaudo’s dedication, this book is, “…for every other Black girl who learned to bloom in the dark.”
The collection of twenty-seven essays delivered to the reader using hybrid as form in some pieces, and divided into three sections, “Rind,” “Flesh,” “Seed,” explores race and culture from a most intimate and detailed perspective. The language is sharp. The images, vibrant. Still, this collection raises questions in the reader that Kaudo makes every attempt to answer through an exploration of self. It’s a look at the author’s experiences, nuances, and emotions and how these culminated into the woman she is and the woman she will come to be. It is also a recognition that the world often does not see her in the way she sees herself; often doesn’t see any Black woman’s depth and magnificence.
The opening essay, “Marginalia,” (a title which Kaudo uses twice more in the collection in different context and content) is to prepare the reader for the ride they are about to willingly take. Should apprehension about the collection’s subject matter swell inside you, that is dispelled by the end of the first page. Kaudo’s style of posing the intellectual question and then giving both example and answer in prose is dynamic. “When do children recognize race? When do children begin to point out that another child is an other? In the second grade, a Jewish girl’s parents told her I was ghetto. Later, in fifth grade, another black girl and I read a page in our social studies textbook over and over because it said that during the Holocaust, Jewish people were forced into ghettos. We said, ‘They can’t possibly mean our ghetto.’ They didn’t.” This starting point places us in the margins with the author, with her Blackness. It is beautiful and sweeping; little morsels of her life where she began to see herself the way the world saw her.
The definition of rind is a thick and firm outer coat or covering. In this first section of the book, “Rind,” the essays explore what it really means for a Black woman to have to default to tough skin because society defaults the Black woman to a trope; angry. In “Ether,” Kaudo provokes the thought of whether or not we, Black women, play into the trope or is it that the trope creates the space for us to be apprehensive about feeling our feelings and subsequently expressing them . “A blackout rage is like an orgasm of anger–the buildup sucks, but the release is great.” She posits, “Sometimes I’m angry, sometimes I’m sad, but mostly I wish my emotions could be disconnected from the fact that I am Black and a woman.” Having to navigate white supremacy on a daily basis in macro and micro doses leaves a trail of rage that is oftentimes masked by silence for fear of laying into a stereotype that society has nursed and fed and pampered. Black women not only have to be aware of who they are but simultaneously must leather our skins in order to manage the daggers that come our way. Every day. “Some people deserve to feel the ether. But I swallow it and walk away.”
I too have had to quiet my anger and laugh off disrespect in spaces where folks absolutely deserved my full wrath. It is a bitter morsel to have to swallow. “How to Steal a Culture” looks at blackness and whiteness through a lens of intimacy while playing with form; it is a ‘how-to’. “Always make sure to remind her of her body. Chances are, you’re smaller than her in the hips or breasts, so offering to share clothes can be both a compliment and an insult–a way to spin your superiority as inferiority.” It’s an exposing of a poison that seems to be consistently sprayed on Blackness in an effort to prevent its bloom. Kaudo presents the duality of desiring to be the very thing that you oppress while actively oppressing it.
Her skill when it comes to form is apparent in “UnBothered-A Microaggression.” This has to be my favorite piece in the collection while simultaneously enraging and making me sad. It is charged and electric and dazzles. It also punches and slaps. The form in this piece takes its shape when the phrase, “And when it happens, it won’t sit right with you. You’ll feel a pang in your chest, and you won’t be sure if it’s anger or sadness. you‘ll have three options: fight, flight, or—”, precedes an instance of microaggression. These are layers of a cake filled with catastrophe, disappointment, the unimaginable, and then frosted with exhaustion. “My friend and I are discussing blackness: oppression, lack of history, no place. Our brown friend wants to join the conversation, but becomes frustrated when we say it is not his place, he has no authority. He looks at the two of us with a smirk and says: ‘Raise your hand if you’ve been to Africa.’ He puts both hands up.” The repetition of the phrase that carries through the piece is an expertly crafted catalyst for the rise of emotions that Kaudo is giving us through the multiple experiences. Thirteen to be exact. These moments occur to Black people across the globe, but specifically here in America, at an astounding rate of societal norm. It begs the question, how and what do we do to fix it? And though the question may be a reach, living it is tiring.
Flesh is defined as the soft substance of a human consisting of muscle and fatty tissue. It is the pulpy portion of a fruit. The weighted part of a being. It is typically the parts of ourselves that we pay the most attention to or otherwise, neglect. The pieces in this second section of the book, “Flesh,” promote loving ourselves; our hair, our bodies, our skin, our complexion, our tone of voice, our size, our curves, our fullness of being—in spite of society telling us that there is no value or worth in the aforementioned as it pertains to Black women.
“Black Girl Sabbath” is an homage to what caring for ourselves as practice, as ritual, should be, but still remembering and then reconciling with the ways in which something as basically human as our hair can be rooted in oppression. Kaudo gives us weighted strokes of history while coloring our minds with a kaleidoscope of beauty and wonder as it pertains to hair. “Cosmopolitan published an article about how to have kinky hair…by using a crimping iron. This is one of the moments where white audiences and black vernacular don’t mix.” Kaudo expands on the dance between cultural reference and the use of language and how it wholly negates how a specific culture and/or race of people identify with said reference. Not so much baffling as it is disheartening.
A seed is the germ or propagative source of anything. The beginning. In this final section of the book, “Seed,” we come to understand the depth and range that this body of work encompasses. It is tenderly and carefully woven to give the reader a full view of the tapestry that is Kaudo’s life, elements and pieces of her to swallow whole.
In the essay that the book is titled for, “Ripe,” we go with Kaudo as she experiences a quarter-life crisis and meets the world, in real time, when she comes to the understanding that she is wholly responsible for her own self. There is a caveat. Blackness. Blackness in America. Womanhood. Womanhood in America. Black Womanhood in America.
Kaudo’s use of lyric and prose to explore race, culture, and identity across a host of intersections, but specifically and profoundly as a Black woman in America, is compelling. If you’ve ever felt unseen, unheard, under-appreciated, or under-valued at any juncture in your life’s journey, this read is for you. But if you also want to curb your biases and understand what it means to live a life unlike your own, this read is also for you. Packed with insight, imagery, and a powerful use of language, Ripe, will leave your intellectual palette satisfied.
Tsahai Makeda is a Hudson Valley based writer with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She’s received support for her work from The Kenyon Review Writers Retreat and The Center for Black Fiction Wild Seed Writers Retreat. Her work appears in Killens Review of Arts & Letters, Epiphany, Breadcrumbs, & REWRITE London.
