The recent news that ATL rapper Shawty Lo (of Laffy Taffy fame) may be the potential star of a new reality show featuring him, his 11 children, and his 10 baby mamas had this feminist searching for somebody’s pearls to clutch, seeing as how even the First Lady’s love of pearls has not inspired me […]
Tag: Black Women
The Summer We Got Free: A Book Talk with Mia McKenzie
The Summer We Got Free is Mia McKenzie‘s first novel and I was honored to be asked to write a blurb for the back. I wrote: Mia McKenzie’s The Summer We Got Free answers Toni Cade Bambara’s question “do you want to be well?” with it’s own. Do you remember what I was like when […]
Armed and… Ambivalent?
Let’s begin with a confession: I was born and raised in the great state of Texas and prior to two weeks ago, I had never fired a gun. That will certainly be surprising to some folks as Texas often invokes images of shotguns, six shooters and gun-toting cowboys. For me, however, Texas is about home, […]
a praise song for mamas: a mother’s day mix
I am invested in sepia mamas. My mother lines my eyelids and floats my dreams. She sits on the right hand of the throne she abdicated to all I might become. “Mama gonna work it out,” Martin versioned at his best. Her frame, I shouldn’t calcify. And I’ll leave her flesh be. I know they […]
Tu(r)ning to Black Love
This past week, I found myself swept in an emotional whirlwind witnessing Whitney’s homegoing while remembering that she was not even in the ground before the Fox-affiliated shock jocks called her a babbling idiot, bag lady, and a crack ho that should have died years ago. From AM talk radio to morning cable television, a […]
Somewhere Between Black Power and White Rage
There have been several public “events” privileging race, gender, and class during the past weeks in New York City that featured prominent Black feminists. After the film screening of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, the conference about Anita Hill 20 Years Later: Sex, Power and Speaking the Truth, and the Occupy Wall Street movement based […]
Did you say lesbians? I love lesbians!
So I’m sitting in a coffee shop talking with a brother about a trip he took to Africa to work in a village. I was a little annoyed by his comments that more black kids should be taken to Africa so they can see how good they have it in America, but I decided not […]
It Gets Wetter: A Message to Women Who Frequently Have Horrible, Rushed Sex (NSFW)
Here’s a bold truth: I don’t enjoy penetration of any kind unless I’m wet enough to drown a dolphin. And this truth wouldn’t be a problem if sex weren’t always about penetration. One sex therapist put it best when she said, “If most women don’t have orgasms during ‘sex,’ but do have orgasms, perhaps we […]
Nene vs. Star: Black Women & The Vulnerability of Anger
The first season of The Apprentice brought with it an impressive black woman (Omarosa Manigault) who deconstructed her brilliance to pacify an audience that seeks (if not requires) black women to fit a particular prototype on television. Omarosa embodied what Patricia Hill Collins would designate the black lady, a black woman whose intellect and success […]
Inconceivable: Black Infertility
“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. . .” said CF Rboylorn, Fish Dreams and Fantasies: Contemplating Motherhood. There have been […]