“Trust in These Words”: Vision, Voice, and Black Women’s Ways of Knowing

Abstract

Under the umbrella of what Brittney Cooper calls “progressive feminist visions,” this article reads Solange’s 2017 essay (“A Letter to My Teenage Self”) and her 2016 album (A Seat at the Table) as part of a Black feminist agenda to unfetter and embolden Black women to affirm their voices, visions, and knowledge(s). In doing this work, Solange makes visible how said voices, visions, and knowledge(s) are not only meaningful but also transformative. “Trust in these words” opens by establishing Solange’s work as progressive feminist visions. It then moves into an analysis of the role of vision and voice in crafting new ways of being and becoming as represented in the epistolary essay, “A Letter to My Teenage Self” and the album A Seat at the Table. The study closes by reflecting on how Solange’s work can be seen as Black feminist epistemologies that allow us to amplify Black women’s humanity.

Keywords

• solange
• feminist
• resistance
• futurism
• hip-hop