The Potty Mouth Granny

  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • The Day Death Missed Me

    Today is the 32nd anniversary of the day I got hit by not one, but two cars — and somehow stayed among the living. I don’t remember the impact. Just crossing the street. Not the sound. Not the moment my body met metal. My mind keeps that door locked. What I do remember is waking…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Cheering the Boots That’s Still Kicking Our Asses

    The USA is home to Black people cheering on SS Brownshirts and censorship—and that sentence should rattle the teeth. We are watching a grim magic trick in real time: history in a cheap disguise, hoping nobody recognizes the smell. The Sturmabteilung once strutted through Germany claiming order, purity, and national pride, while quietly laying the…

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  • Sharpshooters of My Bloodline

    Lately I’ve been thinking about my great-grandfather and his little brother. They were enslaved on the Barrow Plantation in Louisiana when they made the decision to run. How they did it, I will never know. At just eighteen and fifteen years old, they chose motion over fear, the unknown over the certainty of chains. They…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • Fabulous Me

    In May, it will be twenty years since I graduated from college. Me—the high school dropout they quietly counted out. Me—the mother of two children by the age of twenty-one. Me—the welfare recipient society loves to reduce to a statistic. And also me—the college student who walked across that stage with a 3.8 GPA, a…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • When Blood Recognizes Itself

    Lately, I’ve been seeing the faces of my ancestors in strangers. A jawline in the grocery store line. A pair of eyes on the bus that feel like déjà vu with a pulse. A woman laughing two tables over, her mouth moving exactly like my mother’s used to when joy caught her off guard. It’s…

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  • The Normalization of Foolishness

    I will be 55 years old next month if the creek don’t rise, and I’ve never seen such foolishness from a standing president of the United States in my whole damn life. And people are acting like this shit is normal. Somewhere along the way, we got desensitized. Outrage fatigue set in. Every new scandal,…

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  • The Human Side of Myths: Stories of Monsters and Spirits

    Across time and tongue, humanity has told the same stories under different stars. In the hush of night, around fires that crackled with both warmth and warning, people have whispered of spirits that rise, beasts that prowl, and angels that fall. But beneath every monster’s face and every god’s name lies something achingly human —…

    thepottymouthgranny

  • The Myths We Carry

    Across time and tongue, humanity has told the same stories under different stars. In the hush of night, around fires that crackled with both warmth and warning, people have whispered of spirits that rise, beasts that prowl, and angels that fall. But beneath every monster’s face and every god’s name lies something achingly human —…

    thepottymouthgranny