In the last several years there has been a growing conversation among Black women about what it means to live outside of the struggle of survival. A widespread intention to reclaim and recommit to what social media has coined as a “soft life.”
My relationship to softness, ease and pleasure has been complicated, which isn’t unheard of for a Black woman in America. Words like “ease” don’t always relate to the reality of how Black women get to exist in this country.
The enslaved Black women of my ancestry, who worked the plantation fields of the American South, weren’t afforded the chance to be familiar with softness. The domestic workers in the homes of white families might not have had the space to explore the concept of pleasure.
