audio for flex

The play "Slave" explores the different aspects of black girlhood and the challenges they face. It distinguishes between black girlhood and black womanhood, highlighting the unique struggles of young black girls. The characters Starra, Sydney, Cherise, and April each represent different experiences within black girlhood, such as competition, jealousy, identity, and sexual violence. The play emphasizes the need for better understanding and support within the black community, and the importance of breaking societal stereotypes about young black girls. Coach Francine's character development demonstrates the complexities of mentorship and the responsibility to help black girls overcome challenges and succeed. Hello, my name is Montaz, and my name is Valya, and we'll be discussing the play that we watched at the Denver Theater named Slave. We wanted to talk about the different aspects of black girlhood each girl experienced. Black girls experience and face different struggles and challenges throughout the play. Yeah, I think it's very important that we make a clear distinction between black girlhood and black women, which the play really does, because the challenges that black girls face in history and also in society today are clearly different from the challenges that women face. And not being able to discuss this part of their history is in a kind of way stating that it just doesn't happen, and black girls moved directly from childhood to womanhood, and it is an essential part of their life. There's something else I want to highlight about the difference between black womanhood and black girlhood is that black girlhood is also very difficult, and this play shows the struggle of black girlhood in general. Something very interesting but also jarring was how this play showed these young girls how young these girls were, with them dancing, singing, goofing around, and just all in general just being young girls. Then we were cut to serious topics like abortion and sexual assault, which can show the different range of serious aspects of young girlhood about how young these girls are, but also facing these difficult challenges, which make it different from many other types of girlhood. First we'll start with Starra. Starra represents the pressure of competition and jealousy. As the second best player on the team, her enemy towards Sydney reflects broader themes of self-worth and validation within and outside of her community. Her actions, which were often driven by jealousy, like poking the condom hole, and just all in general sabotaging Sydney, highlight the darker side of competitive environments, often mirroring the societal pressures young black women face to prove themselves. Yeah, I mean, I didn't hate Starra's character, but I had to agree that some of the things she did were quite questionable, but if you also analyze why she did the things she did and her desire to, kind of like, not impress, but to make her mother proud, her mother who wasn't there, proud, shows that she's portraying the resilience that black girls have in society and that they continue to strive to be better and to do everything they can. And even though she did it in a very questionable way, very questionable and not good ways, I think she did represent this resilience black girl who is trying to just make it out of society. And also something I wanted to highlight with her jealousy was, we talked about how she had a lack of self-worth and validation, and that could mainly be that because Sydney was seen as the golden girl from California, and she was this poor young black girl with no parents, and from the death course of Arkansas, as she would say, this hurt her self-esteem, and she just wanted to be the best she could be, get an WNBA, and prove to her mom that she could complete this dream that she always wanted to do. Yeah, Sydney's character was also, I don't think it's something that a lot of people discuss within the black community, or about young black girls and the kind of jealousy or I don't know if envy that they go through, and betrayal as well, which can lead to future trust issues in the future, which also just becomes something different and something worse, which needs to be fixed and sorted. And so reconciliation between Sydney and Starra really showed how it is important that the black girls in our communities today are able to find better ways to interact or just like solve their problems and get maybe behind them or find a way to, yeah. Also, yeah, that was a very good way to put it. She was often the target of Starra's jealousy, and from the way that I see it, like Starra sort of, and the other girls sort of like put her on this pedestal of being this amazing girl from California, all the scouts wanted her, they never really knew of her personal struggles, and so she often faced the challenges of just like, I don't know, being an outsider from her own friends, and the way they viewed her was completely different from how she actually was, they just viewed her as superior, and they just had this notion that she, that because she was from California and they were from the dirt course of Arkansas, as Starra would put it, that she was this, we can cut that part. Yeah, so it was really, it did show really how even within this community that everyone or most people view as together or as one, there is still often a person who feels like a minority, even within the group, or somebody who's not being understood or being heard as well, and I think another person who continuously showed that or felt that she was not being heard or not being understood, and partially also because she was failing to understand myself was Cherise, who in a way just portrayed how the balance between religion and society and sexuality, just struggling with that as a young black girl and how she was going about most of the issues without actually having more than just basic, I don't know, yeah. Yeah, Starra's cousin Cherise, she often deals with the internal conflict regarding her sexuality, which also adds a layer to the portrayal of black girls, like her denial and discomfort with her identity, it opens up discussions on the intersections of religion, sexuality, and cultural expectations within the black community, but I also wanted to add something else, her reaction to Starra's sabotage was something that I found really interesting, she didn't reveal it, and she was going to let Starra get away with what she did to Sydney, and I just wanted to talk about how it reveals complexities in her personal morals, how her, it shows how, it reveals complexities in how personal morals are accepted by family, loyalty, and secrecy, and she talked about that. Yeah, and we see that she's in a relationship with Donna, who is more of like, she's accepted who she is, and she's, I don't know, maybe she was understanding of how hard it was for Cherise to actually come to terms with who she was, and we just see how a partner of somebody who's struggling with this self-acceptance might also be affected by this person's inability to come to terms with their identity. Yeah, I also, Donna's acceptance of her own sexuality, which contrasts with Cherise's denial, specifically shows the different experiences within black girlhood, especially with how the different environments she's been in and her personal journey influence how she was more self-accepted with herself, versus how Cherise fell into religion. Yeah, and I think the last girl in this play, or not the last girl in this play, but the last person that we're discussing from this play is April, who shows the struggles of just morally, mentally, and everything that possibly happens within the black community when a girl has experienced any kind of sexual violence, and just the complications that it causes. Yeah, April's storylines about her pregnancy and the decision on how she handled it, and the familial trauma provides a look at the personal and societal challenges faced by young black women. Her struggle, it reflects the broader themes of autonomy, generational trauma, how she didn't want to continue that lineage of her family and sexual assault, and the pressures and expectations of young women within the black community, especially with sports, because she really wanted to continue playing basketball, but the coach, she didn't see it as something that she wanted April to do, which really affected her, and which is the reason why she almost got that abortion. Yeah, and just to add on to that, April did show how, in society, once a black girl has a child, her life has to come to an end, and she's failed at life, and stuff like that, and that's not fair, and this really shows how just moving from that kind of view of pregnancy as the end of a black woman's life, or a young black girl's life, and the starting of a new life, and how it should be changed, and yeah, also how the coach dealt with this issue, Coach Francine dealt with this issue, was very crucial, because she kind of aided us with understanding how this complexity, all the challenges that these girls were going through, was something that she was familiar with, not like personally for some of them, but something that she had dealt with on her own, and something she was trying to help the girls understand, and even throughout the play, you see her character development, her changing her mind from also viewing pregnancy as the end of, or something that ruins a black girl's career, or a black girl's future, to more like, it's a first step for something new, and she can still continue doing what she wants to do in her life. After she saw how badly her decision was affecting April with her almost getting the abortion, and it actually almost ruined the team dynamic, I feel like she represents that mother figure, that she doesn't want to have that generational lineage of trauma transferring to her students, and she just, she wanted it to end with her, and it showed her great resilience, and her initial decision underscored the complexities of mentorship, care, and responsibility, because she saw how badly it was affecting April, but she wanted to have the responsibility of being that mother figure who paved the way for the next generation to be better than the last one.