I’ve been to Wakanda twice now. And with nonstop, direct flights leaving from Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport, the next time I go I ain’t coming back. You’ve probably read and/or avoided reading 1.5 million think pieces about Black Panther. And, yes, this is another. But, quite frankly, I’m not going down the rabbit hole of whether […]
Category: LBGT*QIQTSAA
Atlanta’s Housing Problem: How to Help & Get Help
Safe, affordable housing is a fundamentally feminist issue and, without a doubt, a fundamental human right. Yet so often access to safe and affordable housing is a struggle for many of our most vulnerable communities. My hometown of Atlanta is a rapidly gentrifying chocolate city with huge wealth disparities. In fact, the city has the […]
Being Reflected in Moonlight
February 26, 2017, Moonlight won Best Picture at the Academy Awards. February 26, 2017, marked the fifth anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death. In my mind, these two things are not random coincidences. Both Trayvon and Chiron, the protagonist of Moonlight, are Black boys from Miami who were trying to make a way in the world […]
How to Survive the Next Four Years
Crunkista’s working survival guide…for the next four years I have never prayed so much in my life. After the election results came in, I walked around in black disbelief. I mean that literally, I now wear black anytime I am outside the house. At first it was because I was mourning the loss of a […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Love, Hip Hop, and Ratchet Respectability (Something Like A Review)
In a recently published book chapter called, “Brains, Booty, and All Bizness”: Identity Politics, Ratchet Respectability, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta, I define ratchet respectability as “a hybrid characterization of hegemonic, racist, sexist, and classist notions of black womanhood,” which allows black women to combine ratchet behaviors (generally linked to race) to the […]
The Bold and Beautiful Possibilities of a Transgender Storyline on Daytime
Soap operas have been an on-again-off-again part of my every (week) day life since I was a little blackgirl trying to keep up with conversations in my mama’s living room. All the grown women in my family watched “the stories,” whether it meant having them on while they cooked and got ready for a second […]
Words to Live By
I’m ready to say “don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lorde split ya” to the month of October. Is it me or was this past month just extra ridiculous? From the ongoing shenanigans in Ferguson, to the exploits of so-called white allies in the anti-street harassment movement, to the tomfoolery of Thug […]