The piece above has a darker feel, with the black face staring forward without showing any emotion. The part of Ntozake Shange's poem, No more love poems #3, lady in blue, for which the piece was painted, states "we deal too much with emotions/so why don't we move on, and then we are white/ " . This blank, emotionless look shows expectations for black women to be stoic, while it is acceptable for white women to show emotion without being labeled as over the top or crazy. The ropes, tied around the woman's waist, indicate the restrictions this places on black women; in the lower part of the work, the ropes seem to loosen slightly, representing women who free themselves from these constraints imposed on them by