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People of Earth (Black Folks)
We are the people of the earth,born from dust, sunlight, water, and time. We are the color of riverbanks after rain,of cinnamon and chestnuts,of copper pennies warmed by a summer afternoon,of fertile soil waiting for seeds,of coffee, cocoa, amber, honey, and mahogany. We are not one shade. We are a thousand whispers of brown,a million…
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Confessions of a Bookworm Who Turned Out to Be a Nerd
For most of my life, I thought of myself as a bookworm, not a nerd. In my mind, nerds were the people who loved math, science, computers, and all the technical subjects that made my eyes glaze over. They were the kids building robots, memorizing equations, and spending their weekends at science fairs. I was…
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The Long Shadow of Patriarchy
Patriarchy did not fall out of the sky one random Tuesday afternoon like bad weather. Human beings created it. Layer by layer. Rule by rule. Fear by fear. Property deed by property deed. And once you really start studying history, you realize patriarchy is not simply “men being in charge.” It is an entire social…
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Back in the Day
Do you remember life before the internet? I remember life before the internet. Back in the ancient days when knowledge came from heavy encyclopedias lined up proudly on bookshelves like sacred artifacts. Back when the Yellow Pages was practically a Bible and finding a phone number required patience, determination, and strong wrists from flipping all…
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The Romanticization of Marriage Amongst Black Folks
Every day on social media, Black people bewail the lack of marriage in the community. Folks write think pieces, make podcasts, go live for three hours at a time mourning the “breakdown of the Black family” like they’re standing over a gravesite in a church hat and hard-bottom shoes. But some of these same people…
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Roseland: The Neighborhood They Keep Trying to Bury
Located on the far South Side of Chicago, Roseland sits roughly between 95th Street to 115th Street, bordered by State Street to the west and Indiana Avenue to the east, though longtime residents will tell you neighborhood boundaries in Chicago are as emotional as they are geographical. Roseland rests near Pullman, West Pullman, Riverdale, and…
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Pullman: The Neighborhood Built Like a Dream and Haunted Like a Warning
There’s something eerie and beautiful about Pullman. You can feel it the minute you step into the neighborhood. The streets slow down. The brick row houses stand there like old witnesses with their backs straight, refusing to bow to time. It feels almost too orderly for Chicago. Too quiet. Too preserved. Like history itself is…
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Wisdom and Age Ain’t the Same Thing
Perhaps one of the reasons some Black women are leery of receiving advice from older women is because some of these Crones are out of order. Age does not automatically bring wisdom, emotional maturity, accountability, or honesty. Some older women are still deeply invested in patriarchy, bitterness, competition, respectability politics, and suffering in silence. Some…
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TMVII: The Rise of the Motherfucking Mange
It’s a new STI out here y’all and it’s called TMVII. Or as I lovingly call it, the motherfucking mange. Now I know actual mange is something dogs get, but listen… I’m a writer with a vivid imagination and this new shit got “quarantine the blankets and boil the draws” energy. It causes painful lesions,…
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Bronzeville: Where the Great Migration Learned to Breathe
There are cities within cities. And then there’s Bronzeville— not just a neighborhood, but a testimony. To understand Bronzeville, you have to walk backward through time, into the long shadow of the Great Migration—that massive, sacred movement of Black folks who packed up their lives in the South and headed north with nothing but grit,…
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The Potty Mouth Granny 