ICYMI: Amanda Seales’ Ode To #BlackGirlMagic

Actress Amanda Seales blew everybody away with her breathtaking spoken word performance at the recent BET Social Media Awards.

The performance has been shared all over social media and Black women are claiming Seales’ poetry as words to live by for 2018.

Check out the clip below.

Here are the words of the poem.

First of all

We make this look easy

Us black girls with all kindsa curls

Smellin a cocoa butter

Out here every damn day savin the world.

Time and time again

We find the ways and means

Between packing lunches, planning launches, and *act out* patting weaves

To get information

And stay in FORMATION,

“Girl you heard what they’re sayin?”

“Ain’t no games to be playin”. So we show up

And show out

And Turn up

And, “turn this motha out”

And flip it

And Yasssss biiihhhh

Throw sideyes

Gather

Get folks all the way together

With edges still in place

Skin defying time and space

They call it magic cuz ain’t no way to explain our *sing* “amazing grace”

How sweet the sound

Of a black girl’s point of a view

Knowing that nobody does it like we do, boo

Pride in our power

Strength in our strides

You can attempt to imitate

But soul you cannot buy.

We work twice as hard

And must be twice as perfect,

Purveyors of potent truths

We deliver in small doses

Cuz folks is, shook when she’s movin

“OH NO, IT’S ANOTHER ANGRY BLACK WOMAN!”

Bump that

We’re not hostile,

We’re passionate;

Clappin back is our way of declaring (claps) we aint havin it

They go low, we go high

They say no, we defy

They didn’t want us to read

Kept us out of libraries they built

Now we are the biggest buyers of books

So, we can read you for filth!!! Our magic is in our love and tears

Our fears and our flyness

Our sistahoods and insecurities

Our ride or, don’t even try it.

We are not the one,

And still we rise,

This is for colored girls who’ve considered gettin your life and are

RECLAIMING OUR TIME

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