When the bombings started in Austin, I was distracted by other things like a lot of other folks. I saw 17-year-old Draylen Mason’s name and that he had been attacked, but I didn’t register a connection between him and the other people who were being harmed in Austin until too late, until Governor Abbott decided […]
Roses for the Living
Roses for the living. I was thinking of this saying when I first heard that Erica Garner had a heart attack and we were all hopeful for recovery. I was surrounded by my family, and my sweet nephew led us in prayer for her, and my thoughts were consumed with her and her family, what […]
Who Will Help Black Women Win?
“won’t you celebrate with me what I have shaped into a kind of life? I had no model Born in Babylon Both nonwhite and woman What did I see to be except myself? I made it up Here on this bridge between starshine and clay, My one hand holding tight My other hand; come celebrate […]
She’s Gotta Have It
In 2004, when She Hate Me came out, I was assigned to write a story about Spike Lee for the San Francisco Chronicle, where I was a young features reporter at the time. The movie’s tagline was: “One heterosexual male. 18 lesbians. His fee…$10,000 each.” Like a lot of Spike Lee’s work, I thought the […]
On Zadie Smith & The Missing Black American Woman Expert
It is easy to be smitten with Zadie Smith, as I think I am. She has freckles and I love freckles. She can sing. She has a lovely accent. She is witty. She writes well. Actually, she’s brilliant. I’m a fan of her nonfiction, and I was smitten more with Changing My Mind, her book […]
Grand Dames
I spend a lot of time with women who are older than me, so it took me a little while to stop joking about feeling old and realize that I actually was starting to feel like one of them. This mingling with the older crowd started when I was very young. They gave me comfort, […]
Self-care in a time of racial terror
A friend and I were discussing the heroics of Bree Newsome this weekend when I ran out of things to say. Driving in the rain, attending to the life chores that are demanded of us, I was at a loss for how to describe the light that filled me when I saw the video of her climbing that […]
Learning to be Big
I left work completely devastated and in a lot of emotional pain. I was in a season of severe self-doubt, mired in worry. This was about business, about a professional transition, but it was more than that. I was feeling like I was doing something and I had done something that is all too familiar […]
