Sistahood in the Media: Where We Are Now

I’ve been thinking about a lot about sisterhood, fam. Or maybe Sistahood, that bond that Black women form beyond blood relation. It can include friendship, but sometimes not. I know I’ve given that strong sister love and attention to a woman I didn’t but barely like, because she needed it that minute. I’ve received a moment of Sistahood from strangers on public transit. Sistahood is #YouOKSis as much as it is girl weekend get-aways. Sistahood is the way we believe and believe in each other before everyone else does, and after everyone else has moved on. I’ve been thinking about how we express Sistahood, how we experience it, and how we (and others) represent it in media. Thinking about how it is a concept we love but how the work of it…well sometimes that’s a lot. Maybe I started this train of thought after I watched Step, which is mostly about Black girlhood coming into Black womanhood in the shade of poverty and institutional neglect, but it is also about how a group of Black women — teacher, coach, principal, counselor, mom — teach Black girls about Sistahood, how to be sisters to each other, and how that can lead to success. Believing in themselves isn’t a magic remedy in Step, but it is part and parcel of each of the girls comes to support the others. This happened, is happening right now with each of us in different ways.

But Step wasn’t the first movie this year that centered the special Sistahood relationship. I remember speaking to an Asian American friend about…