From “If I were a white woman” by Shantasha Naomi Laing

From "If I were a white woman"
by Shantasha Naomi Laing

If I were a white woman,
I'd float by on mediocracy.
I'd take subpar humor
And rise the ranks of comedienne.
Or maybe my girl next door looks
would land me high-paid commercial gigs.
Better yet, maybe I'd become a model, uniqueness replaced by
palatable whiteness, european ancestry, and a symmetrical 
enough face. 

Most times I shuffle poems around and choose a date to post them on the blog. With Shantasha Naomi Laing’s “If I were a white woman,” there was no shuffling. I read her book after I made all the posts for 2025, but I knew I wanted hers to be apart of a celebration. Maybe a “Poetry Break” post. Instead, I decided to hold that off and began a new project on Canva, creating this card first.

You can find “If I were a white woman” and several of her poems in her collection Not a Monolith: Poems and Musings of a Black Woman (affiliate). As of this writing, it is available on Kindle Unlimited.