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New Book Claims the Destruction of Black Relationships Is 'America's Unrecognized Civil Rights Issue'
The effort to explain why so many extraordinary Black women are involuntarily single has initiated one study after another, after another, and solicited the unflattering insights of many Black men who, just by default of being Black men, have been arbitrarily promoted to subject matter experts. What we’ve learned from that string of stumbles and…
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This Black Woman Just Got a New Executive Role in Publishing—Here’s Why That Matters to the Industry
Before “diversity and inclusion” were buzzwords and hashtags, Monique Patterson had been actualizing them in the publishing industry for 20 years at St. Martin’s Press, one of the country’s largest publishing companies. She wants people who’ve been underrepresented; who desire to be authors; who have a story in mind to have access to their dream;…
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How Two Black Women Sidestepped Corporate America to Build a Fierce, All-Star Literary Agency
On the social media surface, the country is engaged in a big embrace of Blackness. Companies vowing to hire and advance more Black staff. Philanthropists pledging hefty donations to Black organizations. Editors making space for Black stories in mainstream, notoriously vanilla publications. After years under indictment for its willful whiteness and undermotivated diversification, the publishing…
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For Literature-Loving Black Women, Online Book Clubs Have Lessened the Social Distance
If there was ever a time to cocoon yourself in the escapism and solace of books, it’s been this three-quarter year pandemic. We’ve had more unscheduled free time available for reading, a hobby that gets so easily de-prioritized in our gotta-be-here, need-to-do-that schedules, and in a presidency and COVID-embattled year that feel more sci-fi than…
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Thanks to This 16-Year-Old Author, Black Girls at Predominantly White Schools Are Telling Their Stories
If you’ve never been Black surrounded by a constant overwhelm of White—at school, your place of work, in your neighborhood—just know there can never be enough memoirs, screenplays or comedies to exhaust the complex experience. You are ever a racial ambassador, an explainer of non-white culturisms, a human Google for thoughtless questions, a pioneering barrier-breaker…
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Misty Copeland’s Bunheads Is for Children, but There’s a Message for Everyone at the Barre
Last Tuesday, there were several ways you could have spent your 7 pm hour in the Eastern Standard Time Zone—including, but not limited to, witnessing an embattled president categorically lower a standard he’d set in public tantrum-throwing. But in a kinder, gentler section of the internet that evening, positivity and light abounded as Misty Copeland…
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For Colored Girls in Their 30s and 40s Who Feel Like Life May Have Passed Them By
In the predawn quiet before the world reanimated itself, my phone lit up, announcing an incoming call from a friend I absolutely love. She’s an early riser like me, so we have high-energy conversations at obnoxious hours of the morning when everyone else is still asleep. But I was on deadline this particular day, so…
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Young Black Men Are Missing in DC, Too, and They’re Not Coming Home as Quickly
Weeks ago, as social media alerts from Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department ignited an outcry about the number of missing black girls in the District, we witnessed the synergism of our community at work. We retweeted, reposted and reshared their photos and information. Folks discussed and debated the prevalence of contributing social factors. Celebrities, politicians…
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Black Feminism Should Serve the Women Who Aren’t at the Table, Too
There’s a young woman who lives on the first floor of my apartment building. She’s cute, probably in her mid-20s, although life has prematurely etched the signature of age across her face and carriage. She’s a mama to four sons, none of them more than 5 or 6 years old, all absolutely adorable, stair-jumping, ripping-and-tearing,…
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Affordable Care Act Remains a Defining Moment in Obama’s Presidency
So many presidents tried it. From Harry S. Truman to Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton. Some say as many as seven presidents attempted to pass some form of national health care with few results, often stymied by the notion that social welfare should be left up to the states. But Barack Obama, in his first…
