The spread of HIV/AIDS, the down-low brother phenomenon (even in its hype and inflation) and high black male incarceration rates have contributed to an unnerving disparity regarding the life sentence of singlehood that appears to be imposed on today’s black women.
To say that the personal lives of black women everywhere is in a state of emergency would be appropriate – and at times an understatement.
But just like the commonly accepted safeguard of the contents of a woman’s pocketbook, the lips of the ladies trying to transition through the current love recession have been clamped shut with regard to revealing their own personal experiences. So, for the most part, one must rely on statistics to relay the message.
However, in the spirit of another St. Louis native Ntzoke Shange’s For Colored Girls…, an updated perspective of the love trials and tribulations faced by black women has hit the stage with Sharon K. McGhee’s The Pocket Book Monologues.
And St. Louis will have an opportunity to take part in emptying its contents next Saturday at the Sheldon thanks to the Omicron Theta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc.
McGhee, who has risen from U. City to make a national name for herself in the mass communications industry by way of radio and television in Chicago, returns home to share her critically acclaimed play.
Pocketbook is inspired by another collection of monologues with a title that is a bit too liberal for the tongues of most African-American women whose Southern grannies taught them to create inconspicuous code names for their female anatomy. McGhee tackles molestation, puberty, prison love, prostitution and menopause in a series of vignettes that chronicle love struggles and success stories with significant others (and self).
Unlike the formulaic dramadies that have been rewritten and re-toured by way of “Urban” stageplays and “single black female” films, Pocketbook is gripping in its realism. McGhee manages to be graphic and understated at the same time.
McGhee’s words go against the grain of keeping the pain of taboo subject matter that most women knowingly have in common, but bury inside their souls. Reading about a successful woman who is careful in every single aspect of life – down to the color coordination of her closet – but fails to pay the same attention to detail in her sex life, only to suffer irreversible repercussions, is equally eye-opening and liberating.
Instead of repeating that African-American women are the new face of HIV/AIDS, accompanied by the all-too-common cliché that “it looks just like you,” McGhee uses her monologues to show black women in all walks of life that “it is you – now what are you going to do about it?”
Pocketbook does not include the typical storylines that focus on an overly exaggerated climax to whatever drama that is on the verge of dismantling the foundation of the strong, sassy and successful black woman who often chooses accessories better than men.
Totally the antithesis, Pocketbook unveils the emotions and reasoning that lie behind the incidents – which will linger in the heart and souls of viewers.
This all comes with the territory of “sistahood.” But McGhee uses these lessons in an effort to create a generation of women warriors who – regardless of their relationship status, upbringing or self-esteem issues – manage to triumph over love and life.
Omicron Theta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc presents The Pocketbook Monologues by Sharon K. McGhee at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Jun. 22 at the Sheldon Concert Hall, 3648 Washington. Tickets are $35 and can be purchased through Metrotix at (314) 534-1111. For more information, call (314) 725-8138.
