Saturday Class: Janie Crawford is Grown

In class today,
We mused on Janie and Tea Cake
And how love saves and wounds.

And I said,
Who is Janie’s true love?
And they said,

Tea Cake.
And I said
Are you sure?

And Eboni said,
She love herself like she ’posed to.
She wanted to be like the bee and the flower

But her granny wouldn’t let her.
And we all nodded.
Logan treated her like a mule

And Joe like a doll baby
And Tea Cake was her
Bae. But in the end

She come back home.
And I said
Is this the end of the story?

And Chynna said,
Naw, she ain’t but forty’
It’s just the beginning

Janie got money, and a house
And she ain’t studyin’ nothin’.

Copyright © 2024 by Kelly Norman Ellis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 14, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“My students are some of the great loves of my life. This poem is taken from a real conversation with them during my African American literature course. For a large portion of my teaching life, I have taught on Saturdays. I have found Saturday mornings to be liberating. We are reading literature and discussing ideas in our own language, with our own understanding. My students are filled with energy and joy. I found in this moment that my students recognized the essence of Janie Crawford and expressed that joy with the same gusto as Janie lived.”
—Kelly Norman Ellis