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: Film & TV
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Love, Hip Hop, and Ratchet Respectability (Something Like A Review)
In a recently published book chapter called, “Brains, Booty, and All Bizness”: Identity Politics, Ratchet Respectability, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta, I define ratchet respectability as “a hybrid characterization of hegemonic, racist, sexist, and classist notions of black womanhood,” which allows black women to combine ratchet behaviors (generally linked to race) to the politics […]
Misogyny and Infamy: On the Erasure of Dark Skinned Black Women As Love Interests in Straight Outta Compton
Straight Outta Compton is clearly doing the damn thing at the box office. Since its debut about a month ago, the film has become the highest grossing music biopic in history. And no shade, but shade…given the music biopics of late…that Whitney biopic that should have been called the Whitney and Bobby Show, that Aaliyah […]
The Bold and Beautiful Possibilities of a Transgender Storyline on Daytime
Soap operas have been an on-again-off-again part of my every (week) day life since I was a little blackgirl trying to keep up with conversations in my mama’s living room. All the grown women in my family watched “the stories,” whether it meant having them on while they cooked and got ready for a second […]