The Potty Mouth Granny

  • 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

  • Losing My Brother: A Soliloquy

    November — He was missing. Missing is a strange word. It sounds temporary. Like misplaced keys. Like a sock behind the dryer. It suggests retrieval. Resolution. But this was different. Received a call telling me that he was missing. Sending my son to the police station to file a missing person report. Asking friends on…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Afeni Shakur

    Afeni Shakur was not a background character in history — she was a thunderclap with oratory skills. Activist, organizer, political defendant, mother of a cultural supernova. Steel spine, poetic fire. She was born on January 10, 1947, and became an ancestor on May 2, 2016 — and her contributions to Blackness are immense. Long before…

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  • Wild Women History

    My reading project for the past two years has been diving into the history of women — and it’s been fascinating. What I’ve learned is that women have been treated like shit for thousands of years, regardless of race or socioeconomic status. If you’re a woman, you’re treated like you ain’t worth two dead flies.…

    thepottymouthgranny