Read bell hooks’ Essay On Beyoncé’s Lemonade
“Viewers who like to suggest Lemonade was created solely or primarily for black female audiences are missing the point.”
Author and activist bell hooks published a critical analysis of Beyoncé's Lemonade visual album. In the essay, hooks critiques Beyoncé for what she calls "the business of capitalist money making at its best." She applauds Beyoncé for paying homage to her foremothers and portraying positive images of the black female body, but says that the album lacks the nuance to heal emotional trauma:
It is the broad scope of Lemonade’s visual landscape that makes it so distinctive—the construction of a powerfully symbolic black female sisterhood that resists invisibility, that refuses to be silent. This in and of itself is no small feat—it shifts the gaze of white mainstream culture. It challenges us all to look anew, to radically revision how we see the black female body. However, this radical repositioning of black female images does not truly overshadow or change conventional sexist constructions of black female identity.
Read bell hooks' analysis of Beyoncé's Lemonade via The Bell Hooks Institute and revisit The FADER's article on the female soul muses of Beyoncé's Lemonade.