24 May 2013
Kristen E. Nelson is the author of Write, Dad (Unthinkable Creatures Press, 2012). She has recently published work in The Volta, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Tarpaulin Sky Journal, Trickhouse, and Everyday Genius, among others. She is a founder and the Executive Director of Casa Libre en la Solana, a non-profit writing center in Tucson, Arizona; a production editor for Tarpaulin [...]
22 May 2013
By Elizabeth Dorssom I first started referring to myself as a feminist when I was 17. Even though I didn’t identify as a feminist until I was older I was definitely a feminist from a very young age. When I was in elementary school I enjoyed playing with Hot Wheels cars instead [...]
20 May 2013
By Molly Baker On April 23, University of Arizona student Dean Saxton, better known as Brother Dean, stood on a bench brandishing a sign that bluntly stated in bold, black letters “You Deserve Rape.” Saxton proceeded to verbally harass many women that walked by on their way to class, calling them [...]
15 May 2013
By Mohadesa Najumi When I think about what modesty means in today’s political, cultural and religious environment, I am inclined to believe that the concept itself does not involve choice, or any dimension of freedom or independent thought. Rather, modesty constitutes a dictatorial concept forced upon women whether they agree [...]
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 [...]
When I was eleven years old the Dance Theatre of Harlem came for the first time to Cincinnati, my hometown. Weeks leading up to the company’s arrival, I stared at the color photo of a black ballerina in a thin hardcover book about dancers around the world that someone had given to me as a birthday gift. Over the years of taking ballet classes where I was the only...
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I often celebrate and lift up the names of two women–Audre Lorde and Toni Cade Bambara –who are not related to me by blood but whose metaphorical and literal presence had a profound impact on my life. These two women, one of whom I never met and one who became very, very instrumental in my life, transformed me: Audre Lorde, the self-defined Black feminist, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet; and...
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to sleep all day in loving arms or call my mother and hear her say Bushra? I was thinking of you right now to sleep all day in loving arms or spend the morning in my apartment in the Bronx feeling the sun warm the linoleum looking out the window and thinking: I am dealing with mother nature when I’m dealing with the weather I’m not really missing...
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I found, while thinking about the far-reaching world of the creative Black woman, that often the truest answer to a question that really matters can be found very close. So I was not surprised when my own mother popped into my mind. –Alice Walker I realized, when meditating on Alice Walker’s “In Search of my Mother’s Garden,” that I have allowed my celebration of the many black mothers in my...
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It was not that Ilana Randolph did not like people. She did. What she didn’t like was the way they looked at her, and at each other, either locked in magnetic gazes that were supposed to hold forever, or from an ocean’s width of distance. By seventeen, Ilana had made a study of watching pairs and groups of people—tear-stricken and wet-lashed lovers on soap operas, newlyweds on the steps...
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In 1977, I won my elementary school’s spelling bee, sending me to the regional match where, after several rounds, I was defeated by the word jaundice. I was eleven years old, an exacting, bright, precocious little Virgo. In a local newspaper article about my achievement, I was quoted as saying, “I’m a big fan of Women’s Lib”—proof that my feminism started even before my period did. Many years later,...
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Dear Mummy, Thank you for living life with such joy even when life itself has not be generous to you. Thank you for teaching us to live life as if there was no tomorrow and no sorrow. Thank you for giving us the strength to roll with the punches and land punches of our own in order to survive. Thank you for demonstrating to us the power of empathy—how...
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I have always been awful at football. And for that, I give thanks. The first thing I want to do is to thank my mother, Carole Elizabeth Benton Ricks, and my father, Alvin Antonio Ricks, for not letting me play football until junior high school and for never being particularly enthusiastic about my doing so. They were both Harlem kids transplanted by the thermals of the Great Society to...
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The defenders of the National Football League (NFL) have been busy. In the wake of the suicide of Junior Seau, on the heels of several other untimely deaths, “bountygate,” several former lawsuits regarding concussions, and growing scientific literature highlighting the dangers of football, its protectors have gone on the offensive. From citing other potential factors that have led to ridiculous rates of suicide, traumatic brain injuries, and a life-after-football...
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By Daniel R. Morrison and Monica J. Casper Last year in TFW, we wrote about the gendered aspects of traumatic brain injury (TBI), noting stark differences between men’s experiences as aggressors in combat and on the playing field and women’s experiences as targets of intimate violence. In the wake of Junior Seau’s suicide and the initial announcement by his family that his brain would be donated for research purposes, the injured brains of athletes and...
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TFW is excited to highlight the inventive work of several phenomenal women filmmakers in a three-day forum that ends today. Carmen Torres, tiona m., Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Anna Barsan, Pratibha Parmar, and Nev Nnaji reflect on the plight of women filmmakers in a male-dominated industry, feminist approaches taken up in filmmaking, filmmaking as both an art form and modality for social change, and their processes. To read Wednesday’s fuller introduction to the...
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Filmmaker Pratibha Parmar has an exemplary track record for her passionate commitment to making films with integrity and illuminating untold stories with visual flair and imagination. A writer, director, and producer, her award-winning work has been widely exhibited at international film festivals and broadcast globally. Pratibha’s dedication in bringing complex subjects into mainstream media has helped change the contours of popular discourse on race, feminism, sexuality, and creativity. Pratibha’s...
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TFW is excited to highlight the inventive work of several phenomenal women filmmakers in a forum that runs from Wednesday through Friday. Carmen Torres, tiona m., Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Anna Barsan, Pratibha Parmar, and Nev Nnaji reflect on the plight of women filmmakers in a male-dominated industry, feminist approaches taken up in filmmaking, filmmaking as both an art form and modality for social change, and their processes. To read yesterday’s fuller introduction,...
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22 May 2013
By Aditi Rao Dear Mr. Yadav, I too am an Indian Woman “Referring to the recent ‘Slut Walk’ held in the Capital, Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav said we had naked women walking down the streets with tattoos on their cheeks, whereas Indian women did not even look up while [...]
17 May 2013
Assata do not dry like dissipated plums under castro’s bronzing sun you mural fortress you live memorial spirited artifice rouged sea salt that marinates america’s wound Assata you like stripped bone road unaware of which exit is free birth brown coagulated rhythm redefined reborn rumba queen Assata dusk breath [...]
16 May 2013
“Affirmation” by Assata Shakur* ___ I believe in living. I believe in the spectrum of Beta days and Gamma people. I believe in sunshine. In windmills and waterfalls, tricycles and rocking chairs. And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts. And sprouts grow into trees. I believe in the magic [...]
7 May 2013
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