Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education Volume 16 | Issue 2 Article 4 September 2017 From Colorism to Conjurings: Tracing the Dust in Beyoncé's Lemonade Cienna Davis Freie Universitat, Berlin, Germany,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/taboo Recommended Citation Davis, C. (2018). From Colorism to Conjurings: Tracing the Dust in Beyoncé's Lemonade. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 16 (2). https://doi.org/10.31390/taboo.16.2.04 Taboo,Cienna Fall Davis 2017 7 From Colorism to Conjurings Tracing the Dust in Beyoncé’s Lemonade Cienna Davis Abstract Colorism creates relentless tension and pressure in the lives of Black women. Pop-star Beyoncé Gisele Knowles-Carter is an interesting case in the discussion of colorism because her career has expressed a rich intimacy to Southern Black cul- ture and female empowerment while also playing into tropes of the mulatta “fancy girl,” whose relative proximity to whiteness adheres social value within mainstream culture. Finding aesthetic and thematic parallels between Beyoncé’s recent project Lemonade (2016) and Julie Dash’s cult-classic film Daughters of the Dust (1991) I draw a critical connection between Yellow Mary Peazant and Beyoncé, the prodigal child and the licentious “post-racial,” pop-star to argue that while Lemonade may not present the same critique of exclusionary Black womanhood present within Daughters of the Dust, reactions to the Beyoncé’s visual album and the “Formation” music video inadvertently demonstrate the longevity of harmful colorist prejudices and the disparaging of Black female sexual and creative agency within the Black community.