Home and Belonging in Black Girl, Call Home: Newark, Family, and the Search for Self
Introduction: The Thematic Claim
In Black Girl, Call Home, Jasmine Mans frames home not as a static address but as an active, often contested, process of construction. The collection argues that belonging is forged through memory, care, and the reclamation of identity—rooted in the literal geography of Newark, New Jersey, and in the emotional landscapes of family, particularly the mother-daughter relation. The speaker moves through domestic spaces (kitchens, hair salons), urban routes (the 39 bus), and ancestral ties (grandmother, father) to build a home that is both inherited and self-made. This analysis traces the theme across three key movements in the collection: the initial rejection of imposed conformity through hair, the complex domestic spirituality centered on the mother, and the grounding of identity in Newark’s streets and the acknowledgment of lineage.
Reclaiming the Body as Home: Hair and Autonomy
The collection opens with the declaration “I Ain’t Gon’ Be Bald-Headed No More,” a manifesto against shorn or straightened hair. This first chapter uses hair as a symbol of returning to oneself—a literal coming home to the body. The speaker rejects past forced conformity, choosing natural hair as an act of self-acceptance and cultural identity. The hair symbol recurs throughout the book, linking physical appearance to emotional and spiritual belonging. In Chapter 2, “Momma Has a Hair Salon in the Kitchen,” the domestic kitchen becomes a site of maternal care and control. The speaker observes her mother’s intense prayer style, merging the sacred with the mundane. This chapter establishes Momma as both a creator of home (through hairstyling, cooking, prayer) and a figure of tension—her one-sided conversations with God hint at a controlling personality. The daughter’s watchful eye reveals a home life where love and dominance coexist. The speaker must navigate her mother’s version of belonging while carving out her own.
Domestic Spirituality and Mother-Daughter Bonds
The poem “That Was Her Way of Showing God” deepens the portrait of Momma as a spiritual touchstone. Here, the mother expresses faith through everyday acts—gestures that demonstrate devotion without words. The speaker learns to read her mother’s silent ceremonies, a theme echoed in Chapter 5, “We Host These Variables.” That prose poem honors “the silent story, the emotions unaccompanied by human language” and describes “the silent ceremony between mother and daughter.” The speaker acknowledges the “distance between mother and daughter” yet recognizes the “wealth of brick and clay, ready to be made anew.” Home, then, includes the space of unspoken understanding, the variables daughters hold for mothers. The mother-daughter relationship in Black Girl, Call Home is both a home and a bridge—built over burned ground, requiring attentive silence and active reclamation. The mother character emerges as a central figure in this construction of belonging, even when her love feels heavy or demanding. Later poems, such as “Monologue: Mother Yells at (Insert Name of Black Girl Here),” present the kitchen as a stage for maternal rage—the mother tapping a wooden spoon, waving it in her daughter’s face—showing that home also contains conflict and discipline. Yet this domestic theater is part of the ceremony of becoming; the daughter sits quietly, giving “girlish nods,” absorbing the lesson of survival.
Newark as Geographic and Emotional Anchor
The speaker’s sense of home is inseparable from Newark, New Jersey. Poems like “The 39 Bus Makes Stops in the South Ward” turn a routine commute into a meditation on belonging. The bus route becomes a character, its stops mapping the speaker’s identity and memory. The South Ward is not just a neighborhood but a shaping force. In Chapter 114, “Nola,” the instruction to read the poem aloud emphasizes oral tradition and the power of speaking a name—whether New Orleans or a person—as an act of reclaiming place. The collection’s final acknowledgments, titled “Brown Marks,” open with a Newark area code (973-330-0082) and the parenthetical “(dial home).” This gesture transforms the book itself into a phone call, an invitation to connect to the literal home of Newark and the metaphorical home of community. Mans thanks family, mentors, and fellow Black women writers, underscoring that home is sustained by a network of care. The ocean symbol and cigarette smoke also appear in the collection as motifs of fleeting presence and ancestral memory, though the outline provides limited evidence for their role in the home theme.
Complexity and Contradiction: Inheritance and Erasure
The collection does not present home as an uncomplicated refuge. The speaker’s grandmother (Nana) appears in Chapter 20, “Because I Am a Woman Now,” with her heart “trapped between cancers in both lungs.” Here, home includes proximity to mortality—the speaker becomes a woman through witnessing illness and grief. The father is defined not by blood but by a singular quality in “The Thing That Made Him My Father,” suggesting that paternal belonging is earned through action. Poems like “Birthing Babies Not Her Own” and “Girlish” question traditional family roles: the former explores maternal sacrifice in raising children of another lineage, while the latter examines the liminal state between girlhood and womanhood, a space where belonging feels uncertain. Even the title of the collection—Black Girl, Call Home—implies a distance, a need to reach out. The speaker’s voice is both urgent and reflective, searching for a home that sometimes feels lost or incomplete.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the symbol of hair in the opening chapter establish the theme of belonging?
The speaker’s rejection of bald-headed or straightened hair in favor of natural hair represents a reclaiming of her body and cultural identity. Hair becomes the first site of home—a return to self after a period of forced conformity. It sets the tone for the entire collection, where physical appearance is tied to emotional and spiritual belonging.
2. In what ways do the mother-daughter poems complicate the idea of home as a safe space?
Poems like “Momma Has a Hair Salon in the Kitchen” and “Monologue: Mother Yells at (Insert Name of Black Girl Here)” show the mother as both caregiver and disciplinarian. Home is a place of intense prayer, silent ceremonies, and also maternal rage. The speaker must negotiate this complexity, learning to hold both love and tension as part of belonging.
3. How is Newark, New Jersey, portrayed as more than a setting?
Newark is a character in the collection—the 39 bus route, the South Ward, the area code in the acknowledgments—all ground the speaker’s identity. The city shapes her memories, her daily rhythms, and her sense of community. Home is literal geography, but also the emotional resonance of a place that has witnessed her growth.
4. What role does ancestral lineage play in the speaker’s search for home?
The grandmother (Nana) and father are figures who define belonging through mortality and earned connection. The speaker’s acknowledgments honor deceased loved ones and Black women writers, creating a lineage of creative and spiritual inheritance. Home extends beyond the present to include ancestors and predecessors whose work made the speaker’s voice possible.
5. How does the poem “We Host These Variables” redefine the mother-daughter relationship as a form of home?
The prose poem frames the mother-daughter bond as a “silent ceremony of blood and becoming.” The speaker admits she has “no words to describe her in wholeness,” yet she honors the unspoken connection. Home is not only physical spaces but the intimacy of shared silence, questions without language, and the ongoing effort to understand one another.