Queenie

Queenie encounters almost daily microaggressions and overt racism. Her identities as Black, female, poor, and full-figured all intersect and compound one another to create an experience of oppression. As Queenie spirals into a state of sadness and anxiety after Tom breaks up with her, separating it from this backdrop of white supremacy and misogyny becomes impossible for her. Everything about her identity, including her childhood, career struggles, relationship challenges, and inability to express herself, contribute to her hardship.

Gentrification and police brutality are two forms of organized racial violence that Queenie focuses on. While reading about Philando Castile’s murder, Queenie asks Kyazike: “‘[A]re they going to kill us all? […] For doing nothing. Nothing at all. For just being. For being black in the wrong place, at the wrong time?’” (176). Queenie can’t just focus on herself and her personal problems because large-scale violence against Black people is happening all around her. She pitches ways to write about police violence for the paper, but her boss rejects them as too “radical” or “confrontational.” In addition to trivializing the issues that Queenie feels passionate about, however, her boss is upset at her for not working enough. Throughout the book, others imply that Queenie is lucky for having the job she has as a Black woman.

In her dating life, Queenie constantly faces misogynoir—a combination of racism and sexism that Black women encounter. She became familiar with it during her childhood, when Roy ingrained in her and her mother that they were worthless. As Elspeth points out, this chain of sexual and domestic violence also relates to race; while Elspeth isn’t helpful because she doesn’t explain her statement or speak with compassion, lack of wealth and institutional support makes Black women more vulnerable to intimate partner violence. As Queenie dates and sleeps with new men, she experiences physical violence and sexual expectations based on her race. For example, after she rejects Adi’s request for a blow job, he says: “‘All right, all right, jeez. You black girls are so up yourselves, innit. […] If I’m not getting my dick sucked, shall we move to the back?’” (49). While the men that sleep with Queenie appear to treat their wives and girlfriends with respect and keep them safe, they have different expectations of Queenie. They all make fetishistic comments and expect subserviency and/or hypersexuality from her.

Even in completely public settings, people treat Queenie with contempt and dehumanize her. For instance, at the public pool she’s considered “aggressive” for not wanting random people to touch her and expecting an apology. At the club, when a white person touches her, the bouncer sees Queenie, not the other girl, as the issue. Through all these experiences, Queenie knows that others expect her to hold in her anger: “But it’s best to keep a low profile when you always feel like you could be kicked out at any minute if someone starts feeling a little ‘uncomfortable’ in your presence” (35). When Queenie allows herself to release her anger toward Ted, another white person offers to call the police on her, showing how unsafe it can be for her to express her emotions. In Queenie’s final therapy sessions, she allows herself to release all her pent-up emotions, and the way that all this daily racism and misogynoir impacts her is obvious:

“I can’t wake up and not be a black woman, Janet. I can’t walk into a room and not be a black woman, Janet. On the bus, on the Tube, at work, in the cafeteria. Loud, brash, sassy, angry, mouthy, confrontational, bitchy. […] There are the ones people think are nice, though: well-spoken, surprisingly intelligent, exotic. My favorite is sexy, I think? I guess I should be grateful for any attention at all” (275).

While Queenie can’t change the fact that white supremacy and misogyny exist, she has found more ways to release her anger and promised herself not to go on dates with racist men by the end of the book.