Beyonce's Homecoming: A Celebration for the Soul
Every HBCU grad stood proud earlier this week when the Queen Bey dropped Homecoming on Netflix. Now, we had all seen the concert online a year ago. You know which concert I am talking about! The festival formerly known as Coachella was dubbed “Beychella” for all of the amazingness that Beyonce brought to the stage. Beyonce enrolled you in an HBCU, pledged you, celebrated your graduation and gave you your first homecoming with brown liquor all on that stage. (I firmly believe HBCU enrollment will go up because of her performance just like it did while A Different World was on the air.)
So when Netflix announced that the concert film was dropping we were more than ready to relive that experience, but just like ‘Yonce always does, her ass surprised us and gave us more. Some extra ish that we didn’t even know we needed, but we did. ‘Yonce gave us more than a celebration of HBCU greatness. Mrs. Carter inspired us to return to ourselves. To reclaim our swag. To say what we want. To be unapologetic about attaining it. To return to sexy. To be FULLY ourselves - mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, lover, boss, leader and so much more. We saw what can happen when you bring your entire black woman self to the table. How we elevate everyone around us. How our hard work makes everyone greater.
In a world where we are inundated with a steady and daily diet of miscellaneous-black-person-gets-mistreated-by-authorities, the onslaught of the videos and hashtags of the latest person killed does unspoken damage to your soul. You start to question if you can bear it all. Most of my friends live in one of two extremes - a constant state of rage or burying their head in the sand to preserve their ability to get out of bed. This constant diet of brown and black bodies being abused or worse lying lifeless can cause you to unconsciously shrink out of fear for your own safety. But in walks Beyonce - breaking barriers, kicking down -isms, and standing before the world showing not only her greatness but our collective beauty which is like a salve for our wounded soul.
It is a call to us all to remember ourselves, to be ourselves, to grow ourselves and be. Not better, not different, not more but just be… us. To welcome back the parts of ourselves that we had tucked away. To have our own homecoming for our souls.