Fish dreams signal pregnancy in my family. The premonition, which was mostly my grandmother’s or another maternal figure, has been consistent and accurate for as long as I can remember. All girl children were implicated by any dream that featured fish. . . Menses signaled to my family that I was to be watched, warned, […]
Author: rboylorn
Life is Not a Fairytale: Black Women and Depression
I have a confession to make. Despite my outward appearance and demeanor, some days it is a physical struggle to get out of bed in the morning. At least once a month I cry myself to sleep, to the point of waking up with puffy red eyes and hiccups. Dating back as far as I […]
Listen Harder. Look Longer.
“every 3 minutes a woman is beaten/every five minutes a woman is raped/every ten minutes a little girl is molested” –ntozake shange (with no immediate cause) Ntozake shange’s poem, with no immediate cause, begins with statistics that push us into awareness about the perpetual nature of violence against women in our communities. And while I […]
Daddy’s Little Girl
There are a few episodes of The Cosby Show that make me cry. Probably as much for their unrealistic portrayals of black life that looked nothing like my real-life experiences as for the happily-ever-after endings that concluded every 30 minute segment. The things I found most believable and desirable, however, were not necessarily the brownstone […]
“You are pretty for a dark-skinned girl”
I have heard this statement many times in my life from well-meaning black women, surprised black boys and peers, family members and perfect strangers who usually make the statement in response or reply to not having seen me in a while or in genuine wonder and fascination. The words come as somewhat of a shock […]