I’ve been to Wakanda twice now. And with nonstop, direct flights leaving from Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, the next time I go I ain’t coming back. You’ve probably read and/or avoided reading 1.5 million think pieces about Black Panther. And, yes, this is another. But, quite frankly, I’m not going down the rabbit hole of whether […]
Category: Pop Culture
Biological Clocks and Balldrops: A New Year’s Reflection on Black Women’s Time
I spent New Year’s Day re-reading A Wrinkle A Time, a book I first encountered in middle school. I have been invested in re-reading the book both because I’m eagerly anticipating Ava DuVernay’s forthcoming rendition of the movie, with a mixed Black girl as protagonist. But I also wanted to read it because I have […]
In Search of Black Love
Summer 17 has been a hotbed of a hot ass mess. Between the atrocity that is the current presidential administration pushing backward retrograde policies intended to further marginalize and disenfranchise women and communities of color (especially those who are poor, undocumented, and LGBTQ) and the continued looming threat of the domestic terrorism of white supremacy, […]
Being Reflected in Moonlight
February 26, 2017, Moonlight won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. February 26, 2017, marked the fifth anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death. In my mind, these two things are not random coincidences. Both Trayvon and Chiron, the protagonist of Moonlight, are Black boys from Miami who were trying to make a way in the world […]
Petty Is As Petty Does
Scene 1: Six of the eight members of the CFC gather in Atlanta, GA, birthplace of the collective. We are celebrating the launch of our book! We read selections from our book (available online and in fine independent bookstores everywhere) and chop it up with our local fam at Charis Books & More, North America’s […]
New Year, Same Dope Me
I’m one of those folks who like, and generally keep, resolutions. I’m also an annoyingly chipper morning person. Like, I wake up singing “Good Morning!” and don’t need to drink coffee. But, I digress. For me, the new year starts in mid-December, around my birthday. I start taking stock in what was the year like, […]
Moonlight Musings & Motherhood: On Paula, Teresa and the Complicated Role of (Bad) Black Mamas in Film
I attended a campus screening of the film Moonlight on Monday night at the University of Alabama (shout out to Lamar Wilson, Jennifer Jones and Steve Mobley, Jr. for hosting). Moonlight is a coming of age film about black boyhood, masculinity, sexual identity, friendship, love, and chosen family. The film was written and directed by Barry […]
On Becky, M.I.A.,and the Problem of that “Good Hair”
It’s a ‘do you remember where you were when…?” kind of event. Years from now, I’ll say, “I was at a friends birthday party where some of us gathered around the TV, shushing the others, to watch Lemonade premiere.” It was a warm, April evening in Houston and I got to the party with about […]
Lemonade, Sweet Tea, and Dirty Laundry on the Clothesline
Homemade lemonade was relief from the humid heat of North Carolina summers. Sweet and sour lemon water always tasted better after it had been sitting for a few days, bathed in the sun so the sugar syrup could fully absorb the lemon pieces floating at the top of a see through pitcher, like a see […]
Black Girl Is a Verb: A New American Grammar Book
In her famous essay, “Interstices: A Small Drama of Words,” the venerable literary critic Hortense Spillers wrote, “Black women are the beached whales of the sexual universe, unvoiced, misseen, not doing, awaiting their verb.” At the time, Spillers was talking about the lack of texts about Black women’s sexuality and the lack of a collectively-honed […]