“Where Do You Go When You Go Quiet?”The Ethics of Interiority in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Beyoncé

This essay traces the ethical impulse of Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album, Lemonade. I frame the writings of Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston as antecedent creations that depict black women’s journeys into interior psychic spaces as method for healing. Reading the trope of water and other visual cues within Lemonade, I find that Beyoncé advocates for transformed social relations which blossom from healthier modes of relating to oneself and others, an endeavor that has material value in the #BlackLivesMatter era.