Angry Black Woman

by Tyra Davis

She, for the lack of a better word, was happy, albeit generically. Looking at herself in the mirror, she was pleased that even she could not see 37 years in her reflection, and was accepting, in a magazine editorial sense, of the body frame that made her characteristically a woman of color, specifically a black woman. But "happy black woman" had become some what of an oxymoron in the 21st Century as that damn New Yorker cover and CNN had ostensibly revealed to those who weren't already in the know. She stood in her underwear, a contradiction in terms, plotting her happy take over of the government from her bathroom. Her first law, she thought, would be to mandate that black women smile when walking down the street or going to the store or working at the office (especially while working at the office) so that the world would no longer think of the happy black woman as an anomaly. As preparation to lead such a revolution, she practiced her own smile in the mirror and realized she had her work cut out for her.

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Tyra Davis lives and works in New York City. Writing is her dirty little secret.