The Potty Mouth Granny

  • Social Media and the Illusion of Expertise

    Social media has been a wonderful thing, but it has a dark side. It has given millions of people a voice, which in many ways is beautiful. Folks who were once ignored can now tell their stories, share knowledge, and build community across miles and oceans. That kind of connection would have seemed like science…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Ain’t No Apology in My Story

    I can’t speak for all Black women, but I know this much—I don’t owe a motherfucker an explanation about anything in my life. I was a mother to two children by the age of twenty-one. I received welfare assistance. I didn’t get my GED until I was twenty-seven. I know what it means to start…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Lady Day

    The way Billie Holiday was hounded by the government literally until the day she died is one of the biggest tragedies in Black history. When she sang “Strange Fruit,” that wasn’t just a song. It was an indictment. A slow, haunting autopsy of America. Written by Abel Meeropol, but carried into the bloodstream of the…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Happy Women’s History Month!!!

    History is full of women who kicked the door open, got told to sit down, and then quietly built a whole other house behind the scenes anyway. Let’s wander through a few of them—some loud, some hidden, all undeniable. A Chinese pirate commanded 70,000 people Ching Shih wasn’t just a pirate—she was the pirate. She…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Chatham — Quiet Power, Black Excellence, and Front-Porch Dignity

    Chatham sits on Chicago’s South Side like a well-kept secret that refuses to beg for attention. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t perform. It is. Tree-lined streets, sturdy brick bungalows, lawns edged like someone still believes in order and pride—that’s Chatham’s quiet language. Where it is (and why that matters) Chatham is roughly bounded by 75th…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Segregation Was Not Our Golden Age

    When I see Black people online talking about how segregation was somehow better for us as a people, I feel something rise up in me that I can’t ignore. Not just frustration—something deeper. A kind of ancestral irritation. Because what are we really saying when we romanticize a time built on restriction, humiliation, and enforced…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Pocket Town

    Pocket Town in Chicago is a place name for a very specific little corner of the city’s South Side — it’s not a restaurant or bar, but a neighborhood identity in its own right. This pocket of Chicago life has a rich and complicated vibe, stitched into the larger fabric of Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood.…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Hidden Gems of Chicago – Jackson Park Highlands District

    Tucked into the South Shore area like a well-kept secret with good manners, the Jackson Park Highlands District is one of those neighborhoods that makes you slow your car down. Not because you’re lost — because you’re looking. Developed in the early 1900s, it was designed as an upper-middle-class enclave. Tree-lined streets. Curving boulevards. Large…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Why Chicago’s Architecture is the Best in the World!!!

    Since the election of former President Obama in 2008, folks who have never set foot on my block have had a whole lot to say about the city of my birth. Headlines dripping with doom. Comment sections full of experts who couldn’t find 79th Street with a GPS and a prayer. So I decided to…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Crowned in Antlers, Not Angels

    I’m not a religious person. Never have been. But I’ve also never been convinced that this whole strange, spinning, breathing operation is powered by nothing. There’s a difference between rejecting religion and denying wonder, and I’ve never been able to cross that second line. I was flirting hard with atheism for a minute. Not in…

    thepottymouthgranny