For those of us who watched our mamas work themselves damn near to death to raise up powerful daughters like us, attributing it to sheer strength of will and hard work is an American fable that doesn’t suit us. Liberal white folks tell themselves these kinds of stories—that they made it because of their own ingenuity and will. But most Black girls have enough humility to see ourselves as walking miracles who, as Audre Lorde famously said, “were never meant to survive.”
