I loved Patsy so much that I got the beautiful book hangover that one gets when you miss the 400+ pages that took you on an epic journey. I’m really proud of this TIME Magazine review: There have been few narrative epics that effectively tally the emotional, logistical, physical, psychological and financial trials […]
Review: The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison
I am ecstatic to share my review for Bitch Media on Toni Morrison’s stunning collection of speeches, essays and meditations, out today, The Source of Self-Regard. I inhaled it and underlined entire paragraphs over the last two months. I went to the Schomburg for something else entirely and found an annotated bibliography that informed a […]
Lane Moore’s How to Be Alone
“Your commitment to survival is more than a notion; it’s a balm, an affirmation, an eternal love note, and a sacred love manifestation that starts as a whisper and rises into the atmosphere. How to be Alone gave me closure. What a gift it is to know that there’s another person in the world who’s so brave […]
Celebrating a Profound Literary Inheritance: Glory Edim on the Well-Read Black Girl Anthology
Celebrating a Profound Literary Inheritance: Glory Edim on the Well-Read Black Girl Anthology Celebrating a Profound Literary Inheritance: Glory Edim on the Well-Read Black Girl Anthology — Read on longreads.com/2018/11/06/glory-edim-on-the-well-read-black-girl-anthology/
Did someone say Book Lovers Day?
It makes total sense that Book Lovers Day would fall right in the middle of the hottest days of summer, when there really isn’t anything better than sitting in front of the air conditioning (or some other cooling device) and reading. As it happens, as I’ve been in the homestretch of finishing a work in […]
On Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story & Memoirs on the Movement for Black Lives
I’ve been reading some of the beautiful and important memoirs of the Movement for Black Lives that are forthcoming from Black feminists like Barbara Ransby & Charlene Carruthers as well as screening Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin story, which begins airing tonight on the Paramount Network, since the end of June. I wrote about […]
When your greatest shame is also what makes you free
The spring before I left the Bronx to go to boarding school, to accept a scholarship that would change the entire trajectory of my life, I had an abortion. I was 15. I was raised a devout Catholic; I’ve always been a deeply spiritual person. But I also had been so desperately lonely for such […]
Notes From the Reading Life: Thelma Golden & Kaitlyn Greenidge
Last Friday evening, I was first in line at the Harry Belafonte Library in Harlem to listen to the first in a series of talks co-presented by the National Book Foundation and the New York Public Library called Notes from the Reading Life featuring two Black women I admire: Thelma Golden and Kaitlyn Greenidge. Golden […]
Notes from the Bronx Book Festival
I wrote about the Bronx Book Festival for the Village Voice and how the Bronx is having a resurgence of the book scene with the work and leadership of Saraceia J. Fennell and Noelle Santos, but there were a couple of quotes from one of the panels that I wanted to add in the spirit […]
‘A life of spectacular promise undone by demons’
Trigger warning for the trauma of homelessness and mental illness This beautiful New York Times profile of Nakesha Williams, a Williams College graduate who died homeless on the street at the age of 46, was the first thing I read yesterday. My friend Amy sent it to me, saying it reminded her of the story […]
