BEAUTY IN BLACK RESISTANCE: THE IMPERISHABLE BEAUTY IN ASSATA SHAKUR’S PROTEST

Abstract

Beauty is a summation of the traits in a person or thing that agreeably exalts the spirit. The Black Civil Rights activist Assata Shakur brings forth exquisiteness by proving herself to be a manifestation of internalised oppression of black women. Women of colour continue to be dehumanised and marginalized even in the post-modern scenario. Construction of beauty and femininity are invisibly linked and such constructions seemed to be central to systems of marginalisation. Assata is labelled as a terrorist as she boldly transgressed all the boundaries raised by the social constructs of gender and race in Eurocentric power structure. She fought for the liberation of Black people in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper is an attempt to look the black stubborn lady Assata Shakur through intersectional lenses of gender and race and portray the terrorist-beauty in her self-assertion beyond all the colonial gazes on her identity. As a Black woman she faced so many challenges in her identity. But she refused to simply ‘represent’ her race but demanded space and visibility beyond the immotile racial-gender identity imposed on her by the society and cultural constructs.