Hot Take: We all need a dose of female rage on our shelves.

I don’t know if it’s my age, the fact that I work within the field of women’s health or that I need to take a break from true crime, but I, and I mean LOVE me some female rage in literature!

After discovering the joy that is “weird girl lit”, this sub-genre had me hooked from the jump. There’s something incredibly reaffirming about reading such subversive writing. On the surface, it may sound like I need to speak to the lady, but please hear me out…

When you’re labelled as a “palatable” Black woman, you find yourself biting your tongue an awful lot…
Let me preface this by saying I am speaking from my lived experience. From a young age that people had some wild preconceived notions about Black people. As I grew up, I became acutely aware of how the world saw Black women. Because I didn’t fit into this blanket rhetoric, I was told “you’re not like most black people I’ve met” or the old favourite “you don’t sound black”. Oh the microaggression of it all! People genuinely thought they were complementing me by saying I was an anomaly, and my kinfolk were less than. Then I entered the workforce….chiiiiiillllle! My hair became an agenda item, my food was “interesting” but I was acutely aware of the fact that while I was “allowed” to talk on the phone with clients, one of my colleagues (also black woman) wasn’t because “she sounded a bit too street.” To be a “palatable Black woman”, had some advantages, but it also made me swallow down a lot of anger. I wanted to be carefree, ostentatious with my blackness and advocate for myself and others. Screw being labelled loud, aggressive, angry. But I didn’t. I held myself back and I was angry at myself for a time. But with life, came more experiences. I am now fiercely proud of who I am, where I’m from, what I believe in and what I I will not stand for. And I used the word fierce because some days, to love yourself in the face of a society that continuously plays in your face and disrespects you, feels like and act of rebellion.

As an advocate for women and birthing people, I work in a field with oppressive history…
During my midwifery degree, I also branched out and became an anti-racism educator for students and birth workers. It was 2020, and the list of Black people dying violently and needlessly made my heart so heavy. The summer of performative black squares and subsequent allyship fatigue that followed made my eyeballs itch. The My inner activist awoke and was fuelled by the flagrant racism being seen EVERYWHERE .

I was going to join a profession that has many colonial influences and legacies (Sims speculum anyone) leading to structural racism that people were not willing to address. It boiled my blood that Black women in the UK were 5 times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth that their white counterparts, but there was no plan implemented to address this outrageous disparity. I would hear very off-key comments about women, their cultures and their bodies. And yes, the rage simmered. So I wrote. I wrote to one my my lecturers and she encouraged me to keep writing. What started as an email, became my first published article, entitled “Should We Decolonise Midwifery Education?” The following passage, I feel, gives historical context to where the field of obstetrics & gynaecology has come from:

“Throughout history we have seen the idea of race and connotations of differences equalling inferiority used in the field of medicine. It was used to justify James Marion Sims’ repeated experimentation on enslaved women without the use of analgesia to advance gynaecological and obstetric procedures.4 To this day he has medical instruments and the Sims Position named after him, but what do we know of the women whose bodies were used? With more historical context, student midwives can gain insight into how colonisation has impacted what we have been taught thus far and examine how it impacts the lives of people today.”

Beckford-Procyk, Chelsea. (2020). Should we Decolonise Midwifery Education?. The Practising midwife. 23. 10.55975/MSKB3041.

So yes, I love being a midwife. But no, I do not like the system we work within.

As a mother who struggled with postnatal depression, I’ve never known rage like it…
Last year I gave birth to our second child. It was a total dream of a birthing experience. He was born at home, in water, surrounded by twinkly lights, spa music and lots of love. I rode that oxytocin high until it left. And when I tell you, it left, I mean it left and took every positive feeling with it.

I fell into what I can now say was the worst period of depression of my life. I veered between soul crushing hopelessness to rage filled bitterness. I was either sad, numb or angry and I have never felt that level of anger take over my thoughts. The smallest of things would wind me up a disproportionate amount. This kind of anger felt like lava. Just bubbling away under the surface.  If anything touched it, it would react an spew. In all honesty, it scared me. But looking back, some days it also kept me going. It made me feel something, which was better than feeling absolutely nothing.

The shadow to my light
So yes, my relationship with female rage has evolved over the years. I have learned to accept my dark along with my light. When I read books that address these feeling, it resonated so deeply with me because little girls are thought to be quiet and play nicely. Society tells young women they should look a certain way. Black women and femmes are expected to endure and “be strong”. Politicians tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. The random guy walking past us tells us to  “smile luv”. Hell, yes women are angry. And I’m so here for it!

Book Recommendations
Of course I couldn’t leave you without some book recs! Here’s a small selection of female rage reads I love.

Let me know some of our rager reads!

Chelsea x