I watched their interaction from a distance, feeling my body stiffen, hips losing their riddim. At one point in my life, I was that girl and could imagine the thoughts speeding through her head. So I had a decision to make—let her handle it or potentially risk my life saving her. The word risk is not something I say casually. Back in 2016, a 22-year old woman was shot in the face at the Brooklyn West Indian Day Jouvert, only a few blocks from my home, for refusing a man’s advances. The man was later acquitted.
Then, I considered of all the ways that young girl would be blamed for her harassment with a litany of accusatory questions and statements reflecting the cultural norms in our society: “What was she doing there in the first place? If she didn’t like it, she could’ve just walked away. What was she wearing? She was pretty much naked out there. She knows what Jouvert is like, why would she go? Where were her parents? Well, that’s what happens when you act grown!”
The title of my newest novel is inspired by a word that has been repeatedly flung on Black girls since our enslavements. The term is associated with the concept of being too adult-like for one’s age, posturing inappropriately, thus deserving the consequences of their own making. We Black girls have been told all our lives we were “fast” even when we were simply existing, as if we are responsible for the way our bodies develop or how men behave around those bodies. Even when these interactions result in our death, justice is fleeting.
It’s why our grandmothers, mothers, and aunties drilled heated warnings about being too grown into our psyches. Their harshness wasn’t rooted in unjust criticism or the belief that us Black girls were inherently bad. It was rooted in survival after living through a time when Black women were rarely believed and rarely received the justice they deserve. They were trying to spare us from the pain.