The Kneeling Shadow
How do you feel when words sit right on the tip of your tongue but you don’t have the right, or permission, to say them? Not because anyone’s stopping you. Because something deep inside you already decided you don’t deserve to speak.
That’s exactly the question Ladan Osman digs into in her poem “Connotation,” from her 2015 collection The Kitchen-Dweller’s Testimony. It’s a short poem, but it cuts deep. Osman shows us something we don’t always talk about: racism doesn’t just hit you from the outside. It lives inside you. And sometimes, the worst silence is the one you learn to put on yourself.
This poem opens with a narrative resembling a father’s command: “Walk as God intended. Straight, even. / Not prostrating, a shadow.” Here, two things stand out. First, this line conveys an expectation that the speaker carries herself upright, refusing to submit. Second, there is an acknowledgment that she has become a prostrating shadow, a term associated with a figure who constantly humbles herself in the eyes of the world. This depicts someone whose identity is slowly being worn away, a situation that frequently occurs in the real world and is not merely a decorative metaphor.
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Here we can refer to Frantz Fanon’s perspective in his book Black Skin, White Masks (2008). Fanon argues that colonialism does not merely seize land; it also seizes the way a person views themselves. Fanon calls this the “epidermalization of inferiority”, a process where racial humiliation sinks so deep it enters the body itself, shaping posture, behavior, and identity from within.. It can be concluded that, according to Fanon, the colonial subject can feel colonization from within themselves, independent of external forces (the colonizers).
Going back to this poem, what’s interesting is when the speaker encounters a woman who spits near his shoes and says, “This neighborhood has changed since these people arrived.” The narrator’s response is not anger nor confrontation toward the woman. All she can do at that moment is to think that “I cannot say, ‘You are the spitter; you are trash.’” The narrator falls silent, she can only label herself as “a prostrating shadow,” not as a shadow that shifts shape or water falling from a large bucket. This incident reflects what Fanon argues in Chapter 5 of the same book. There he writes “about being driven into corners and remaining silent, simply wanting to go unnoticed in a world that has imposed meaning upon his body (Fanon, 2008).”
In this silence, the speaker actually already has the correct answer regarding the woman’s statement that contradicted him earlier. In the poem, the correct response to this issue is clearly evident. The problem here is that something significant is preventing her from voicing her opinion; a thought in her subconscious makes her feel that she has absolutely no right to stand up and take a stance, such as protesting against it and reclaiming her own dignity. This case serves as a real-life example and a manifestation of her observation: when people of color attempt to resist and protest, what they receive is not freedom but another form of that alienation. Because the very act of defending oneself has been made to feel like a transgression (Fanon, 2008). The mask, in other words, has been worn so long it begins to feel like skin.
The resistance to simplification in this case serves as a differentiation and makes this work by Osman uniquely his own. In the final line, the speaker compares himself again to a shape-shifting shadow and water pouring from a large bucket, an image loaded with power and movement. The conclusion of this poem is not a sign of defeat for the speaker, but rather a question buried deep within him: “Can I be more than just a kneeling shadow?” There is no definitive answer to his question, precisely because of the impact of racism on his subconscious.
Through reading “Connotation” alongside Fanon’s framework, it becomes clear that the issues of racism and identity will not be resolved simply because the discrimination experienced is halted by the law. In Osman’s poem, the speaker knows exactly what he is about to say to his neighbor. The words are already on the tip of his tongue, ready to be spoken. However, he realizes that having the right to speak in such a way and knowing the exact words to say are two very different things. And this poem serves as clear evidence that the deepest silences are not those imposed from the outside, but those we have learned to impose on ourselves.
