Part of the reason folks rallied in reaction to Trayvon Martin’s murder has to do with ideas about who is an appropriate or worthy victim. He was shot by a vigilante, he wasn’t armed, he was a good student, had some class privilege, he was doing something mundane, simply returning from buying Skittles and ice […]
Images in the River-Black Girls Dialogue
Nina Simone’s haunting ballad “Images” based on the poem by Waring Cuney tells a story about black girls we know all to well. Not knowing our beauty and not seeing our images; for many of my friends and family it has been a struggle for us to see ourselves as beautiful, worthy of love, and […]
The Love of Black Mothers and the Care of Black Children
I In august of 2011, I had to call my mother – on a cell phone with not a lot of power left because I had been checking Facebook and texting friends, hoping to be released from a CT Scan clinic at Duke Hospital – to tell her that in less than two hours, I […]
Re-Nigging on the Promises: #Justice4Trayvon
Another Black kid is dead. This time it’s 17 year old Trayvon Martin. His life snuffed out at the hands of an overzealous, trigger happy white neighborhood watch commander named George Zimmerman, who thought Trayvon looked “suspicious” as he walked back to his father’s home in a suburban Florida neighborhood with a pack of skittles […]
The (Public Service) Announcement: Black Women & HIV
March 10 was National Women and Girls HIV Awareness Day, a nationwide observance that is used to help raise awareness about the peculiar impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls. One of the goals of the day is to help facilitate discussions and disseminate information about prevention, testing, and/or living with and coping with the […]
‘Dos and Don’ts
The summer of 2000 I went to my hairdresser and said, “I want you to cut all of this off,” pointing emphatically to my badly-damaged permed hair. She asked me if I was sure and I told her I was–and off went four or five inches of angst onto her linoleum floor. What was left […]
no strings
i thought that i could be brave enough to make love to you with no strings attached but your arms around me felt like strings your fingers, like strings when you used them to massage my neck and caress my back and my legs felt like strings when i held them around your neck & […]
Birthday Sex
Today is our second blogiversary! The journey of these last two years in community with each other and all of you, our beloved readers, has been exhilarating, soul-affirming, life-sustaining, sometimes challenging and frustrating, but totally completely worth it. Thank you for joining us on the journey! So on this day when we are celebrating our […]
Battle of the What?: A Brief Reflection on the Battle of the Complexions Controversy
I am sick and tired of the cultural story line that insists only one version (complexion) of black women can be “in style” (beautiful, popular, desirable) at any given time. There seems to […]
Feminist Care Packages: Healing Love for Hard Times
“Thrown away where? The world is round.” – Luciente This month we’d hoped to talk about love and relationships but a lot of terrible things have been happening in the world. Whitney died. Too Short gave some terrible advice. So did Not So Very Smart brothas. and there’s a thread in these narratives about black women and girls bringing things […]