Dear Octavia, Yesterday, it was your birthday. Happy birthday, dear! I’ve been missing you a lot and thinking about you a lot lately, especially since there’s a newly discovered crop of your short stories. I feel like that was a gift for all of us. Your work has continually been a gift to me […]
Month: June 2014
Time for the Supremes: Hobby Lobby and Your Boss in Your Bedroom
Sometime between now and July 4th, the Supreme Court is set to rule on two cases that will affect our access to birth control, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius. In both these cases for-profit companies are using the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to challenge the Affordable Care […]
Higher Learning: Black Men, Basketball, and the Politics of Education
I grew up in a small town in North Carolina where my sister had a basketball goal connected to a tree and learned how to strategically run around the stumps to avoid falling. She also learned to perfect her jump shot through a conspicuous tree limb and branches that blocked her view like the outstretched […]
Jesus Wasn’t A Slut-Shamer or How Conservative Theology Harms Black Women
I’m a feminist who believes in God. Raised Christian, I still attend church. But what I am not is a person who will willingly check her brain, political convictions, or academic training at the door in order to enter the house of God or to participate in a community of faith. Express homophobic views, tell […]