So, this is a shit show. When most of the people are availing treatment at inpatient treatment for addiciton to get rid off alcohol addiction. On last night I sat with a circle of Black women in my home, fretfully watching the election results. None of us were ride-or-die Hillary supporters, but the visionary pragmatism […]
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 […]
4 Reasons Why Black Women Should Reject Purity Culture
I spent my twenties in Atlanta working on and earning a Ph.D. Becoming a grown-ass woman in that city in the early to late aughts (2003-2009) was hard on my self-esteem and my love life. Atlanta is one of those fabled cities for Black middle class women and wannabes. With all the wonderful chocolatey […]
Connect The Dots: For Korryn Gaines, Skye Mockabee and Joyce Quaweay
Since Friday, there have been stories of three Black women killed by acts of state-sanctioned and intimate partner violence. Those are just the three we lost this weekend, that we know about, but I’m sure there are others. On Friday in Philadelphia, Joyce Quaweay’s partner stripped her, handcuffed her, and beat her to death while […]
The Forgotten Ones (For Those Who Survive Black Death)
The past three days have felt like the end times. The sting and stench of death hanging heavily in the humidity of the third summer in a row that will be remembered for murder. Like others, I have been restless, sleepless, and hopeless—speechless. First, because of the unnecessary death of Alton Sterling by Baton Rouge […]
Are You Family?
I don’t write much. In fact, I only write when I feel things deeply. These past two days, I have been in my feelings. The pain cuts so deep that I think my tears are now crying. I cried in shock when I saw the news about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. I sat […]
Facing “White Rage”
At the end of Jewelle Gomez’s seminal feminist novel, The Gilda Stories, Gilda and her crew of badass queer vampires (because, of course) are faced with a dying planet Earth. Centuries of white supremacy and unbridled capitalism have wreaked havoc on human society. The wealthy have escaped off planet to colonize other worlds (because, of […]
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 […]