So-called Black love...necessarily invents itself against the backdrop of legal and extra-legal exploitation of Black people that could reasonably disrupt intimacy except that Black people make choices... for Black people intimacy is not painless and is one of the most profound yet mundane aspects of our lives.
Category: writing
What happened; what I felt
For the first time in four years my ICD "delivered therapy," which I discovered days after "the event" when my electrophysiologist's nurse called to ask "if I was okay."
Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era
Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era is an edited collection of critical essays and poetry that investigates contemporary elegy within the black diaspora. Scores of contemporary writers have turned to elegiac poetry and prose in order to militate against the white supremacist logic that has led to recent deaths of unarmed black men, women, and children. This volume combines scholarly and creative understandings of the elegy in order to discern how mourning feeds our political awareness in this dystopian time as writers attempt to see, hear, and say something in relation to the bodies of the dead as well as to living readers.
Belonging
I don’t think there is anyone who doesn’t want to belong to something or somebody. Not ownership belong to but be a part of belong to. Even me. I say even me because I’m a natural, albeit ironic, loner. Ironic because I’m a twin and we make two of five sisters. Ironic still because there [...]
Protected: When you too bougie for GoFundMe
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
It’s Better Out Than In
Talking to myself--especially when it becomes a lot of talk all of a sudden, always tells me there is something I'm trying to work out of my brain and especially out of my body. It's interesting that I haven't been able to run lately, one of my choice ways of working stuff out of my mind and body.
Voice
I have two things for sure in this world--faith and voice and I feel responsible for using them
Body Talk
The training, racing, and creative process...is a triumph over the physical and psychic conditions just outside the parameters of control which would censor and stilt performance.
Breathing Lessons’ Growing Pains
...common roles illustrate how Black women, and their sexuality, have often been synonymous with deviance. And reclaiming, repackaging, and/or discarding the roles has given women agency; a control denied the Good Girl who is essentially invisible. She needs that.
50 Books I’ve Loved (in no particular order)
1. Browngirl, Brownstones – Paule Marshall 2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith 3. Segu – Maryse Conde 4. The Secret of Gumbo Grove – Eleanora Tate 5. No Easy Place To Be – Steven Corbin 6. Long Distance Life – Marita Golden 7. Sweet Whispers Brother Rush – Virginia Hamilton 8. Assata [...]
