When I was a little Black girl with barrettes in my hair, I loved running, skipping, and jumping. I loved waking up and being able to move. I wasn’t very fast, a shame for a girl in a Jamaican family for sure, but I loved running around all the same. There was so much joy […]
Tag: black girls
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
“What do you think I want, respect or compliance?” This was the question I posed my class this week, after I asked them to define the terms. For compliance they yelled out things like “following orders” and “obedience.” They defined “respect” as “valuing the thoughts of others” “being loyal,” and so on. I asked […]
My Brother’s Keeper & the Co-Optation of Intersectionality
Yesterday, while we lamented the SCOTUS decision to exempt Hobby Lobby and other Corporations-cum-People from paying for Lessina birth control because it violates their religious freedom, I learned that 30 Black women released a signed letter offering their support for the President’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative. This letter from women like former Atlanta mayor […]
Blackgirls Matter
but we don’t see her enough. to know she’s not stronger than steel that super-human shit is made for TV but made for real life blackgirls break we matter but we don’t hear ourselves enough. screams are muted by stereotypes and assumptions that swallow and misunderstand our words when they are not softly-spoken or […]
Who Will Keep Our Sisters? A Rant About the Incredibly Bad Arguments in Defense of My Brother’s Keeper
It’s Saturday Morning. It’s International Women’s Day. And I have a rant. A rant that I need to share in this community of like-minded folks. A rant so that I don’t lose my shit with some educated Black men, who need to be hemmed up by the cufflinks. On Thursday, in my weekly column at […]
Twerkers Beware: Juicy J Thinks Reading is Fundamental
Yesterday, Juicy J announced the winner of the $50,000 twerking scholarship that he began advertising in October in a partnership with World Star Hip Hop. The winner, 19 year old biology major Zaire Holmes distinguished herself from many other applicants by deciding not to twerk. It turns out twerking was not required. Congratulations […]
Somebody, Anybody? It’s Hard Out Here for a Sista
Trigger warning: Violent language “Somebody, anybody sing a Black girl song” Ntozake Shange, For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow was Enuf Being a Black woman or girl in the United States has never been easy. That much […]
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 […]
Learning Community with Black Girls
In a two-part series called Meet the Authors, the CFC talks to Drs. Ruth Nicole Brown, Chamara Jewel Kwakye, and Bettina Love about their recently released books, Wish to Live: The Hip-Hop Feminist Pedagogy Reader and Hip hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Identities and Politics in the New South. Both books describe Black girlhoodand hip […]
Blue-Eyed Jazz & Love: 3 Blackgirl Lessons I Learned From Toni Morrison
As a writer when I feel the pull of creativity it is as seductive as the lure of a would-be lover, arms outstretched with whispers in my ear as sweet as honey mixed with molasses. It is enough to keep you up all night and daydreaming throughout the day imagining the next thing to say […]