As the temperatures dipped below freezing in Chicago, my family and I braved the cold to see “Wicked,” the Broadway musical-turned-movie that follows Elphaba and Glinda through their time at Oz’s Shiz University. Unfortunately, the storyline felt all too familiar: Popular, innocent, privileged white woman meets evil, wicked, Black woman. Black woman cast as wicked. White woman cast as good. It was like manifest destiny remade in 2024.
As families of all ages watched the movie, my attention was focused on my daughter growing in my partner’s belly. I couldn’t stop thinking about a question posed at the start of the film, similar to one I often pose in my own research: Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?
I love questions. As a university professor and researcher, it’s my job to ask and answer them. Yet, this inquiry was different. It felt more personal, more emotional, more intense. I kept thinking about the conditions that my daughter might grow up in. And will she believe that, as a woman of color, a Black woman, she is wicked?
I love researching the moments and movements of the past. They help me fill a void in the learning from my own educational experiences. Some call them counter-stories—the narratives counter to the mainstream narratives we learn about as children. Legal scholar Richard Delgado reminds us that stories create bonds, cohesion, meaning and shared understandings. Often created by dominant groups, stories hold power. Counter-stories, on the other hand, challenge power and perceived truth.
In school, when I learned about Black history it was only during two time periods—enslavement and civil rights. I can remember returning home from school to my parents curious to know what I had learned. My father would often frown at the social studies content I recited. Day after day, year after year, he and my mother would introduce a different social studies to me, counter to the lessons I was learning about in school. These counter-stories gave me a sense of pride in myself, my family and my culture. They helped me to locate the wisdom and beauty that I come from, even when others around me shunned, laughed at and erased my culture.
Unfortunately, we live in a world where young women, particularly Black women, are told they have no worth. They are sold images—in their feeds, on billboards and in their schools, that present one notion of beauty. Emergent studies have linked exposure to social media images and videos to eating disorders, mental health issues, and even suicide among teen and adolescent girls. And for Black girls the data is more alarming. A 2017 study by the Center on Gender Justice & Opportunity found that adults view Black girls as less innocent, more adult-like, and in need of harsher in-school punishment than their peers.
With no intervention will my daughter—a Black, Puerto Rican, and Pakistani child—think that her difference is wickedness? That’s a question that inspires me to action. I’ve decided to write a love letter, maybe it’s a counter-story, to my future daughter, and other daughters navigating the hostilities of the world.
Dear daughter,
We don’t have a name picked out yet, but I hope we find one that reflects your beauty, your wisdom, your agency, and the power of your ancestors. No matter what messages that world sends to you, about you, about women, about Black women, Pakistani women, and about Puerto Rican women, know that you don’t have wickedness in you and neither does anyone else. That wickedness comes from the conditions that surround our lives. So, when life has you down, turn your attention toward the systems and structures that harm you and others like you, not toward yourself.
We often celebrate Black women after they die. Whether at the hands of police violence, diet, or patriarchal violence, I wonder what praise and celebration women get while alive? What might it mean for you to celebrate yourself every day? And what might it mean for those around you, including your mom, me, your teachers, and your friends, to celebrate your life? In the celebration we find affirmation. These affirmations may, even if momentarily, move against the tides of oppression that tell you that you don’t matter, that you are wicked. So, even if no one else does, take a moment today, and every day to celebrate you!
Sometimes the world will only notice your anger, your frustration, your rage. For years, Black women have been framed as over-emotional, as angry. See, this is how patriarchy works. It teaches us that expressing our emotions, our feelings, is somehow a sign of weakness. And for Black women, who have endured over 400 years of anti-Black and patriarchal violence, emotions are even more surveilled and punished. When the world tells you to be emotionless, be emotionful. Share all of your feelings! Your pain, your joy, your laughter, and rage with the world.
They will try to steal your magic and claim it as their own. Don’t let them! Know that you have the answers to the questions, the missing pieces to the puzzles, and fuel to the fire. They will observe you with distain, but know they just want what you have. They will bash you, put you down, and tell you that you do not belong. But trust, you are leader we’ve been waiting for!
When the world is presented to you as complete and objective, fixed and permanent, know that you have the power to transform it. When you recognize the world, and yourself as incomplete, you will also realize your role in making it more complete, more fair, more just, more free.
They may call you repulsive, a distortion, wicked. But remember who you are, where you come from, and where you are headed.
So love the ways your skin reflects on the moonlight and the waves of your hair that mirror the tide of the ocean. Love your body, your face, your eyes, and your lips. Love your feet and your kneecaps. Love your teeth and your belly. Love you and everything you are! Love you and everything that you are becoming.
You can do anything and no one needs to remind you of that!
When you fall, defy gravity.
You aren’t wicked. The world is.
Love,
Dad
