On the Anger of Black Women.

• Author: Taylor, Vanessa
• Position: BOOK EXCERPT

"The sun goes down, the batons come up."

I went to Ferguson, Missouri, in the fall of 2014 in a van full of strangers. All of us went as a result of mobilization around "Ferguson October," but, beyond that, we were all brought by a break. Something--not the same thing for everybody, but something nonetheless--snapped inside all of us when Fergusons uprising first began.

For me, it was a broken string located deep inside of my chest, somewhere to the left and behind my heart, so every one of its beats had an awkward, hollow twang. In the car ride down, I stared out the window and reflected on how strange it was to be surrounded by people I didn't know.

Before the trip was over, I would find myself among strangers in the parking lot of the Ferguson Police Department, outside a QuikTrip, and inside two jail cells.

I made the comment about batons that opens this essay while sitting inside of a Hardee's as police officers stood at the ordering counter. Or maybe I said it while standing on a street whose name I can no longer recall, listening to the drone of helicopters flying low overhead, showing their metal bellies. Maybe I timed each word to the beat of the police's batons on the sidewalk as their line approached and I gripped the arms of the people around me tighter.

Wherever and however I said it, it was a joke. Being Black and young means coming from a tradition of making a comedy sketch out of your own suffering. It is meant for select consumption, the type of "oh, that's so wrong" laughter that eventually settles into an uncomfortably weighted silence. The laughter drifted away as the joke carried itself with startling ease across state lines, following us north back home to Minnesota.

The van that was once full of strangers deposited me outside of my apartment. I knew part of the world there expected me to carry on as if nothing had happened. It expected me to abandon Ferguson in Ferguson. But back in Minnesota, I found myself curling around the heat of my own anger, watching the snow melt to reveal what was hidden underneath.

Everything that happened in Ferguson was left there not because it was an oddity but the norm. It may have been a malignant tumor, but it came from a cancerous system that made up the entire country. I saw this looking around the state I called home and realized maybe the only punchline to be found was me.

In June 1981, the Black lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet Audre Lorde gave a keynote presentation at the...