Competition Between Black Women

Recent years have shown some unprecedented examples of Black women rising to exalted levels of status in our society. The most obvious being Former First Lady Michelle Obama. Yet even as we celebrated FLOTUS she and other women, like author and basketball wife Ayesha Curry, have been set up as examples of “classy” women and used as contrast to shame and criticize the rest of us.

In thinking about how women are set up in competition, I like to point to works like Toni Morrison’s 1973 novel Sula. Morrison’s novel centers on a friendship between two girls, Sula and Nel. Nel is from the respectable family (although her grandmother may have a sex work past), and Sula’s mother is sexually adventurous.

The girls follow in the footsteps of their families, and a man eventually comes between them. Because of her lineage, Sula is always presumed to be the “bad” one. However, these are the last words she says to Nel on her deathbed: “Know what? About who was good. How you know it was you? I mean maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was me.”

The Accidental Mistress

My latest novel, THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS is a tale of two Black sisters. Violet and Lily are immigrants from Trinidad. Violet comes to the US as a young teen on an educational visa to boarding school. Lily comes in her late teens, undocumented, and becomes a stripper.

The book opens as Violet is living the dream: she’s climbing the career ladder and is about to marry her African American millionaire boyfriend from Harvard. But when she lets a stranger use her phone, it leads to case of mistaken identity and her life falls apart. She loses the job, the man, and is under FBI investigation for possibly being the mistress of a strip club mogul who skipped town with the pension fund. In order to clear her name, she has to team up with an unlikely bunch, including the strip club mogul’s spurned wife, a group of women from a health clinic that serves sex workers, and most challenging of all, her estranged sister. 

This novel shakes up notions of respectability politics, and looks at how Black women get pitted against each other. Black women are labeled “good girls” or “bad girls,” depending on the choices that they make. But Black women’s choices are heavily constrained by both the privileges they do or don’t have and the types of traumas they experience. Structural issues like racism, sexism, classism, and colorism all play a role in the options Black women get to choose from.

Then the women who are labeled as “bad girls” get targeted and blamed. But the book shows how “good girl” status is precarious. And while the good girl life offers many material privileges, sometimes the bad girls’ crew has a stronger sense of loyalty and solidarity. And sometimes they have more fun.

Issues of competition between women show up in the “bad girl” community, as well. The following scene takes place in a New York strip club, where all women compete, but some of the competition is rigged among race and color lines. It is common for black women to be barred from the most lucrative work.

In this excerpt, a dancehall rapper in a VIP booth shows interest in Lily, a dark-skinned dancer:

“A watta guwaan yasso?” he turned to his handlers and demanded to know where they had been hiding Lily. He removed his shades, walked over, and sidled up close to her. At six feet with her heels on, they stood eye to eye. He whispered about sending these skinny, pale girls off the couch so he could have a lap dance with her.

She flushed with delight. He asked her name in that deep, rumbling voice of his. His breath smelled of marijuana and hard liquor.

“Lily,” came out of her mouth before she could even stop herself, could offer her stage name: Cleopatra.

He grinned at her and began to walk her into his booth. The other girls didn’t like it. With every additional dancer who came in, the tips had to be split one more way.

But before she could step past the rope, a security guard rolled up and blocked her way.

“Sorry, she doesn’t work VIP,” he said to the artist.

This is one of the many examples of institutionalized mistreatment that leads Lily to become a labor organizer for the strippers in her community.

THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS is the latest in my Justice Hustlers series, which carves out space for women of color in the crime genre at the intersection of wealth redistribution, sexual capital, labor rights, and women’s healthcare. These novels are action packed and sexually charged stories of hood problems, political struggle, international solidarity, and brown romance.

The first book, UPTOWN THIEF (2016) introduces Latina Robin Hood protagonist Marisol Rivera, who runs a women’s clinic in New York City, and involves robberies of corrupt corporate CEOs involved in a sex trafficking scandal, and a major heist of a security-obsessed billionaire. Marisol also has to figure out if the hot ex-cop is feeding her tips to help her out or to set her up.

Who’s The Boss?

The second book, THE BOSS (2017) continues the saga with African American protagonist Tyesha Couvillier, who’s trying to move up from escort to executive director, but her ratchet Chicago relatives show up with family drama, and so does the bad boy rap star who’s been trying to woo her. This time the team needs to heist the Ukrainian mob which has been trying to stop some of Manhattan’s strippers from unionizing.

In other words, in books #1 and #2, this series centers the bad girls: escorts, strippers, and the clinic that loves them. It also showcases the inner-brilliance of Black and Brown women who use everything they have to survive and support those they love: street smarts, book learning, muscle, hard work, erotic capital, and sexual labor. THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS is a bit of a departure, because for the first time, the main protagonist is a “good girl.”

The following excerpt from the novel features a conversation between the sisters:

“This is about your boyfriend, isn’t it?” Lily asked. “First I show up in the slutty dress. Then I go off and fuck his friend. I’m embarrassing you, aren’t I?”

Violet’s mouth opened. “Well, to be honest about it,” she began. “I think Quentin is going to propose to me soon. I want him to think I’m. . . marriage material.”

“And what?” Lily asked. “You’re worried he won’t buy the milk if the cow’s sister gives it away all over town for free?” Lily snorted. “You should be thanking me. I’m the bad cop to your good cop. I make you look like wife material by contrast.”

Like Sula, THE ACCIDENTAL MISTRESS is a meditation on what it means to be a good Black woman. Except instead of literary fiction set in a small town during the first half of the 20^th century, it’s contemporary urban fiction, and centers on a heist. The idea of being good isn’t the right goal.

I want Black women to be free. Still, these questions for Black women about respectability, strategies for living our lives, and what is the true nature of freedom, will continue to challenge us as long as racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression exist.

But I’ll end with a quote from GabiFresh: “Any time you’re worried about people disliking you just remember that PEOPLE HATE BEYONCE and go back to doing what you do. You can be literal perfection and it won’t matter.”

That’s right, GabiFresh. Being good is a distraction. Black women: do you. Get free.

Follow Aya de Leon on social media:

• Facebook
• Twitter