My grandparents’ arranged marriage that planted its feet and stood rooted for 67 years strikes me as something magical. At mid-day, on September 12, 2009, a couple—an 80-year-old black man and an 83-year-old black woman, their hands clasped in a tight hold—walked into a doctor’s office in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Their names …
A Black Composer’s Legacy, Publishing Thoughts for the Minority Writer, and Timket
Curated reading links. Favorite Essays I Read This Week: As a Black Woman, I’m Learning that Rest Is Resistance, Michelle Chikaonda Tears flooded my face when I read Her Kind, a heart-wrenching essay from Naomi Jackson on losing and finding her mind. A Litany for Survival by Naomi Jackson on giving birth as a black woman in America. Reflections, While Sitting …
How To Talk to Someone Who’s Obsessed With the Color of Your Skin
A flash fiction. There is a deafening silence in the conference room, filled with white people. Wearing pantsuits and high heels and carrying your laptop, you’ve entered this room and stood on the stage with a straight shoulder a moment ago. When your audience gawks at you, the hairs on the back of your neck …
A Timeless New Year, 15 Books by Black Authors, and Christmas Celebration on January 7
Curated links. Favorite Flash Fiction I Read This Week: Your Mother Imagines You Dead (Via Fracture Lit) Favorite Short Fiction I Read This Week: What It’s Worth Giving Up to Stay in a Family (Via Electric Lit) Useful Article on Writing: Good Enough Is Just Fine, More To That A Book I’m Currently Reading: Aggie Jordan’s memoir A …
The ABC of My Kinky Hair, Mystery Novels That Examine Race, and the Best Way To Wash Your Face
Curated links. Favorite Essays I Read This Week: Afros, Braids, Cornrows: Embracing the ABC of my Kinky Hair, Iris Leona Marie Cross Mourning the Loss of My Dad — and His Jeep (Via The Cut) Favorite Flash Fiction I Read This Week: Unnecessary Things, Tatyana Tolstaya Favorite Writing Advice I Read This Week: 17 Steps to Accelerate …
When the Shooting Stops, 10 Black Twitter Moments, and the Ge’ez Calendar
Curated links. Favorite Article I Read This Week: Inconsolable Loss and Overpowering Damage Useful Article on Focusing More on the Things That Matter to You: In Your Own Way, Oliver Burkeman Useful Article on Writing (especially if you write short stories or novels): The 22 Rules of Storytelling, according to Pixar A Book I’m Currently …
Courageous Discomfort, Journey to a Promised Land, and 13 Months in a Year
Reading lists. Favorite Book on Race I Read This Month: Courageous Discomfort: How to Have Important, Brave, Life—Changing Conversations about Race and Racism. Books like White Fragility and How To Be An Antiracist discuss how to have uncomfortable conversations with white people. But there is something unique about Courageous Discomfort, a book on race and racism written by a Black …
I’m Exhausted by People Thinking the Reason I’m Sitting in a Senior Room Is That I’m Black,
NOT That I’m Excellent At My Job At Beshale hotel, in Addis Ababa, I met a Friend of a friend for Ethiopian Coffee. This Friend of a friend was a white man in his late 30s. In our conversation, what position I am at the institute I work for came up. When I said I’m …
Friends Suggest To Bombard My Online Harasser’s Email With Obscene Text Bubbles, But I Won’t
Let us avoid resorting to avoid ourselves. First, he started flirting during zoom meetings. The flirtation escalated to taking screenshots of me. Then he circulated my picture among his friends and emailed me sexually explicit statements. I stood in the middle of my kitchen, powerless and hurt, my body shivered as if my online harasser …
This Precious Dark Skin
A memory told completely in poetic verse. Powerlessness your voice silenced, wrecked gutted hunched body numb body utter absence of any feeling creeps up your spine like an army of spiders. A white workspace under a spotlight, everybody breathing down your neck, suffocating, people sitting on a chair formulating a circle around your workplace looking …