14 Jun 2013
Mark Anthony Neal is a professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African-American Studies at Duke University. Dr. Neal received his PhD in American Studies from University of Buffalo. He is the author of five books, including the recently published Looking for Leroy: Looking For Leroy: [...]
9 Jun 2013
By Mohadesa Najumi Many people object to the phrase “rape culture.” They don’t understand how a culture as civilized as ours can be defined by a force as destructive as rape. They deem it an overstatement, an “over-analysis” by angry bra-burning feminists. Some even consider it an oxymoron. And others [...]
5 Jun 2013
By Bruna Lobato In my first creative writing class as a Brazilian international student at a private American college I received my fiction assignment back with comments and a tall slender “A” written in green ink. I was glad to see validation that I, a non-native speaker, could write well [...]
3 Jun 2013
By Ashley Yenick Do millennials know of any famous feminists in our society? There are many feminists mentioned in this video: bell hooks, Audrey Lorde, Peggy McIntosh, Susan B. Anthony, Gloria Steinem, and Michelle Obama. I was intrigued to hear that Michelle Obama was considered a feminist. I think the interviewee’s [...]
7 May 2013
*Trigger warning* Sometimes I feel like the NRA is actively just trying to lose all the credibility it has left in this world. Just when you thought the NRA’s annual convention in Houston this weekend couldn’t draw any more negative attention, it goes out and casually promotes a company selling a product [...]
29 Mar 2013
By Monica Torres When I sign my name, it’s Monica, not Mónica. When I order pupusas at my favorite restaurant, the waiter will give my accent an approving nod, as if to say, you’re one of us. But it will only take a harder question for me to reveal the [...]
18 Mar 2013
By Alexa Lambertis At an early age, I was exposed to a woman who essentially changed my life. A sweet lady with a southern background, she was introduced to me as a family friend. I met her in her own home, where we would spend a majority of our time [...]
Sarah Mantilla Griffin Charles Ramsey, the hero who recently rescued Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight from a decade of captivity, has become the latest in a new trend of unwitting viral video stars. As Aisha Harris has noted, Ramsey joins Antoine Dodson, Sweet Brown, and Michelle Clark as a YouTube sensation, generating...
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By Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Heather Laine Talley Perhaps in this twenty-four hour news cycle culture, the horrid sexist and racist sexualization of nine-year old Quvenzhané Wallis both at the Academy Awards and in Twittersphere is now old news. And maybe for her sake, it should be. White feminists’ silence in the face of...
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By Maria Hengeveld On 2 February a security guard found the 17 year old coloured (mixed descent) working class girl Anene Booysen on a construction site in Bredasdorp, a small town in South Africa’s Western Cape. She had been gang-raped, sadistically disemboweled and left for dead with broken fingers and legs. Less than two...
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The B52 bus picks up passengers on the corner of Gates and Lewis Avenue in the mostly working poor to middle class, black Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. This particular bus stop, which is a few blocks south of the famed Marcy Projects of Jay-Z’s past, is visited by hordes of black residents of various...
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By Joseph Osmundson I have spent much of my life running away from white masculinities. I don’t write about home very easily or very often. When I write, I write about New York or about public policy or, most often, about science. Recreating the deep past, the blood memories, can be emotionally exhausting. But...
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By Carlos Ulises Decena At age ten, I joined my local troupe of the Asociación de Scouts Dominicanos (Dominican Boy Scout Association) in Santo Domingo. Immigration to the United States was still years away from my family’s horizon, and joining the troupe sprang from the recognition that biology was not enough: my apprenticeship of...
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By Edgar Rivera Colón The jet black steel girders arched like aging flexed muscles fill my mind as I remember car rides with my Dad across the Pulaski Skyway glistening under motley gray Northern New Jersey skies. I recall my father at the wheel, after he retired from the Western Electric industrial works in...
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Yara Sallam is the Women Human Rights Defenders Program manager at Nazra for Feminist Studies, the first program in Egypt that focuses on women human rights defenders. Yara previously worked as a professional legal assistant at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) in The Gambia, as researcher on Freedom of Religion...
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I have a confession: I didn’t like Beasts of the Southern Wild. And I don’t fully understand why. Don’t get me wrong; there were a number of wonderful facets to the movie. The beautifully textured cinematography and score were, at times, literally breathtaking. Quvenzhané Wallis’s portrayal of Hushpuppy was both perfectly quiet and understatedly...
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By Alice Driver Some people we know only through their words. And so it was with author Charles Bowden and his images of bloated bodies, scurrying rats, of air so hot that a single match would light it on fire, images of savagery inverted into beauty that came with the uncomfortable awareness of the...
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19 Jun 2013
THE ANATOMY OF TRUST OR BREAKING _____ I. HEART The pulse shudders the body at such infinitesimal levels that many of us ignore its existence. Walk around carrying fists in the center of our chests, the bottom tipped somewhat rightward, sitting more-or-less directly below the sternum, squeezing each moment [...]
12 Jun 2013
Diana and the face of the moon another night you are . turning your face ………………….. i am already gone and you are throwing stones . Diana swearing never ….. swearing never …… swearing never ………………………………………… again just say what you are trying [...]
5 Jun 2013
By Kristy Webster The Bee Trap Some girls have eyes like invitations, and some girls wear glasses and scarves, walk with a whistle in their mouth, Some girls leave the window cracked open, they need more air always more than the breeze will bring and some people [...]
13 Jun 2013
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The Guardian