Originally posted on Chicago Review of Books:
Kalisha Buckhanon doesn’t have a smart phone. Her first advice to new writers is to get rid of it. She writes on an old desktop computer without internet for the same reason she likes being a writer in Chicago — it allows her to get work done. And…
Emmett, Trayvon, Markeis, Kalief, Oscar, Tamir, Aiyana, Stephon, Botham, Sandra, Amadou, Eleanor, Terence, Philando, Alton, Walter, Sharmel, Miriam, Tony, Jordan, Rumain, Rekia, Laquan, Eric, Michael… … More “You are not gonna silence me.” -Senator Stephanie Flowers on racist Stand Your Ground “rights”
The ultimate power of evil is diversion, devouring, annihilation and blacking out of what is good. This is all our faults, not Kelly’s. How many more men are out here for us to listen to, most of them much better vocalists than Kelly, and more romantic lyricists as well? … More No Excuses: 20 Black Male Soul Singers to Stream Besides R. Kelly
46 years ago, a moving picture testified to sexual assault against a woman. It moved all around the world, in fact. Only, the world called it “art.” Not much has changed since. This most visible example of a public rape frames sexual assault’s most misunderstood and excused forms: coerced consent, false pretenses and pressure as permission. And people can still buy and sell this sexual assault on film to this day. Why? … More Remembering Maria-Hélène Schneider…
A 16-year old woman of color received what female slaves may have if they refused their master’s sexual advances: death sentences at worst, and more tortured lives at best. … More Cyntoia’s Done Her Time. Have Mercy and Let Her Go.
No matter what I have learned from her brother Bill Genovese’s heart-wrenching push for the truth, I still can not extinguish the feeling of seeing myself in Kitty Genovese: young, happy, independent, innocent, moving toward the future, and fated to be a woman living alone in American big cities. … More When We Are Witnesses…for Kitty Genovese
The women I want the world to start remembering forever are pictured here. Please click on their photos for more information about their lives and stories, as well as ongoing activism in their memories for this remainder of Black History Month. #SayHerName … More 10 Black Women Who Lost Their Lives to Violence
One way to move this tragedy and the deceased in it past public ephemera and into history is to forever connect the loss of their lives to a national symbolic act against domestic terrorism: the legally-mandated abolition of our Confederate flag, and civil prosecution of anyone who waves it. … More Little Rock Nine, Four Little Girls, and One Confederate Flag: A Retrospective
Racial profiling does not discriminate by gender…it’s time to tell our black girls the police may not be working for them. … More “We have to give our black girls “the Talk”- and it’s not about sex…”…my essay on the horrifying McKinney, Texas, injustice, on SheKnows.com…
Read my story “What Billie and Phyllis Sang About”, about an abandoned black woman left to survive alone in Harlem, in the new issue of Atticus Review. My favorite Billie Holiday and Phyllis Hyman music is on the story’s companion soundtrack Here. #BillieandPhyllis … More What Billie and Phyllis Sang About
