Category: Womanism

If You Read One Book Today: The New Black Woman by Marita Golden

I'm so happy to wish all a beautiful World Mental Health Day by sharing this book that is so important to me. Don't see The New Black Woman and believe you have to be a Black woman to read it. Do you know a Black woman? Do you love a Black woman? Do you work with one? Do you ask one to be a good neighbor and water your plants or sit your cat while you travel? Do you have one or more teaching your children, being their second mothers all day in school as their job while you probably make way more money at yours? Do you order from her restaurant and brag on how good her food is? Do you have one or a few in your book club, professional group, gym, lecture hall or church pew?

Zora Would Want You To

On days like this, meaning a notable artist like Zora Neale Hurston's birthday, the custom is to suggest enjoying his or her work and to "support" others like them in their names. However, something tells me this is not what Zora would want. I think most writers take their birthdays off for things like cake, people, wine and gluttony over discipline. So today Zora wants us to party in her name. And for you to write your own novel, put elbow grease on your big dream and take her as example somebody somewhere will love your work someday.

We Love Barbie…But We Need New Dolls: My piece on Artist Tiffany Gholar over at BlogHer.com.

“As a young woman dealing with my own issues of body image, I began to look differently at Barbie dolls. I began to wonder whether my re-emerging interest in fashion dolls was a good or a bad thing. And the more I confronted my own disordered patterns of eating and exercise, the more I realized the extent to which social pressure to conform to such stringent standards was the real issue I was facing.” -Tiffany Gholar, THE DOLL PROJECT