This poem stems from my experience as a mixed race child, and the difficulty of claiming my blackness (and hence, my father) due to the paleness of my skin. It draws on traditional "black" colloquialism as well as the rhythm of slave songs inspired by Langston Hughes' poems. It speaks to the struggle of wanting to claim a certain identity but being hindered by the very thing that you wish to claim: your own body.
The poem ends on a plea to the father figure by the speaker, on a note of desperation. The speaker realizes in the end that there is no answer, no solution, to her question. How can she claim her blackness? She can't.

Also in the last stanza is the acknowledgement of what the speaker truly desires. More than a desire to claim her blackness, the speaker longs for the ability to be her father's daughter. But since he is gone, this too, as well as her right to her blackness, is/seems impossible.