ABSTRACT
Bell hooks’s critique of Lemonade created a firestorm of responses from myriad scholars, artists, writers, and others who self-identify as black and feminist. The overwhelming response to Lemonade by black women of all ethnicities, classes, and creeds is a testament to the undeniable, though often unrecognized, power of black women’s lived experiences. Beyonce’s body of work engages with black feminist ethos in ways that are yet to be explored. The global platform on which Beyonce stands is incomparable to anything black feminists saw in their generation or since. The Lemonade Reader is a collection of essays in which multiple generations of black feminist scholars and thinkers engage in intellectual discourse and confront the emotional labor around the Lemonade phenomenon. The audiovisual album also portrays the potential for Black women’s worlds to fall apart through the experience of child loss, be it through miscarriage or state violence.
