Tyler Perry’s STRAW isn’t a film you just watch and walk away from. It doesn’t let you. It sits with you. Stares back at you. Reminds you of the stories people avoid because they’re too real, too uncomfortable, and far too common.
Nope - it isn’t just about race. It’s about what happens when people carry more than they’re allowed to speak—and snap under the weight.
For many single Black mothers, this wasn’t fiction. It was a lived memory. STRAW holds up a mirror—one most people flinch away from—and reflects back what it means to survive in a world that doesn’t offer you softness. It shows what it looks like to break after carrying too much for too long, while everyone around you expects you to just keep going.
I saw myself in her. I saw women I’ve known—friends, clients, relatives, former colleagues—who were expected to hold down jobs, homes, and parenting while navigating systemic failure, financial strain, medical neglect, and emotional isolation. I saw the women who go without rest because nobody else will step in. The ones who cry in parking lots and behind closed doors because breaking in front of their kids isn’t an option. The ones who don’t get mental health support because survival eats every spare hour of their day.
And the film doesn’t sanitize that pain. It doesn’t wrap it in poetic framing or pretend there’s redemption for everyone. It shows how someone can do everything right—love hard, try hard, survive hard—and still fall apart anyway.
It shows a mother trying to hold her child, hold her dignity, hold her home—while everything around her collapses. And if you’ve ever parented through crisis, you know exactly what that looks like. It’s not always loud. Sometimes it’s silence. Sometimes it’s dissociation. Sometimes it’s rage. And sometimes it’s just a numb stare because the body keeps moving even after the soul is exhausted.
We praise strength, but we rarely talk about what it costs.
The reality is this: too many women are living in emotional overload, trying to stretch their love and labor across impossible gaps. And when they finally break, society blames their willpower instead of asking why they were left unsupported in the first place.
The psychology behind this isn’t new. Research has shown that cumulative trauma—especially trauma that’s interpersonal and ongoing—results in emotional collapse, decision fatigue, and shutdown behaviors. Another study by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network found that mothers experiencing poverty-related stress and unaddressed trauma are more likely to suffer severe depression and executive function impairment. And yet, culturally, we still frame their breakdowns as personal failure instead of systemic abandonment.
STRAW doesn’t offer a clean resolution—and it shouldn’t. What it offers instead is an uncomfortable truth: some people don’t bounce back because they were never given a net in the first place.
This film is for every woman who’s had to smile through trauma. For every mother who’s been judged without context. For every caregiver who’s been expected to function through grief. And for every person who’s ever screamed into a pillow instead of asking for help—because help wasn’t an option.
I know it wasn’t easy to watch. But it’s harder to keep pretending this isn’t happening every single day in someone’s life.
For a deeper companion piece on what it means to break under the weight of parenting a dangerous child, read my personal article: When the Wound Calls You “Mom”.
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Sources That Don’t Suck:
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Du Bois Review. 2011;8(1):115–132. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X11000130Jackson FM, Phillips MT, Hogue CJ, Curry-Owens TY. Examining the burdens of gendered racism: implications for birth outcomes among college-educated African American women. Maternal and Child Health Journal. 2001;5(2):95–107.
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011349115711