In Grief 101: Righteous Rage, Melanin Monroe (Black co-researcher, age 28) transforms her personal grief into a poetic testimony of survival, self-reclamation, and righteous fury. During the first 15 minutes of Session 3 of the Good Grief program, we sat in an unusually small configuration, just myself, Black Spruce, and Melanin Monroe at a single table, rather than the usual rectangle of two pushed together. The room felt quieter, more contained. In that intimate setting, Melanin recounted how and why she wrote the piece on Christmas Day, a time that, for her, was marked by absence and betrayal. The holiday fell during a short break in the program, a pause in collective gathering that she shared, made the weight of grief feel even more pronounced. In that quiet, she turned to poetry as a way to process the dissonance between what she needed – care, protection, belonging – and what she received. Instead, she was made to feel “crazy”, her emotions and pain bypassed and under the weight of conditions constructed by capitalism. “Capitalism is a huge part of being an African child,” she explained, naming material pressures placed on Black families, but in the long shadow of slavery and the ongoing devaluation of Black labour and care. Her rage then, is not only valid but necessary. “You should feel angry until you’re done,” she said. “And sometimes, you’re never done.” Melanin Monroe speaks not only from her present self, but from a place of holding her younger selves, those versions of her who were right to feel what they felt.

Drawing from inspiration from the song Crazy by the Black musical duo Gnarls Barkley, Melanin Monroe challenged the medicalized and moral judgements often cast on expressions of grief that defy social acceptability. Rage, like hypersexuality or other so-called unseemly responses to loss, is pathologized, made strange she says. But she reclaims it: “I’m finally being like, oh, I’m that crazy. It’s cool.” Her poem moves through the many registers of anger, and in doing so refuses the containment of grief within polite or passive forms. Her words pulse with what Simpson (2017) gestures as a sign of life, what Lorde (1984) names as a transformative force, and what Cooper (2018) coins a superpower. Grief 101: Righteous Rage is a declaration that to feel deeply, to rage truthfully, is itself a form of a resistance.

I was struck by how quickly Melanin Monroe's words resonated with others in the room. By that point, the room had filled, others had joined us, and the space expanded. What began as an intimate conversation unfolded into a shared moment of recognition, as others affirmed the grief and fury so powerfully named. Black Spruce (Indigenous & queer co-researcher, age 32) affirmed, “That resonates with me. I relate to that.” Qolati (Black Somali co-researcher, age 27) amplified the feeling: “Story of my life. I think that's something I struggle with as well, where when I'm really passionate about something, I'm told that I'm volatile.” Her reflection extends Melanin Monroe’s naming of how the figure of the angry Black woman is not just dismissed but made threatening, unrecognizable. “I have to sit down who I am and my essence to be collapsible to others,” Qolati continues. “It chokes me. I hate it. But I have to think about: is my accent heavy right now? How am I coming across?” These responses speak to the layered surveillance and self-containment that Black femmes navigate daily, the demand to make their grief tolerable, their anger quiet, their presence less. In the context of the Good Grief program, what Melanin Monroe voiced did not remain solitary; it was a catalyst for collective naming. Her righteous rage opened space for others to feel seen, to say, me too, and to reclaim the emotions they had been told were too much.

While grief and rage can be life-affirming testimonies of what matters, what hurts, and what must be protected, they are also often made into spectacles. Anger, especially when expressed by Black, Indigenous, and racialized people, is watched, judged, disciplined. This creates a kind of tension: the same affects that hold potential for transformation are also under the insidious gaze of whiteness which demands not only composure, but performance.

Cooper, B. (2018). Eloquent rage: A Black feminist discovers her superpower. St. Martin’s Press.
Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.
Simpson, L. B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press.