We’ve all seen the memes: 2020 is canceled, person throws garbage labeled 2020 in a dumpster, etc. So much about 2020 has been so strange, the wildfires, the pandemic, the fact that it took so many people this long to realize what life is like for those of us who are Black and the fact […]
A year and some months ago, in March 2019, my worldview was entirely different, both in its scope and in its perception of reality. I was taking a critical race theory class at the time, and I was quite frankly frustrated by it, partly because of the material (which was at times triggering) and partly […]
I keep hearing people say that this is a terrible time. But for Black folx in the United States, the past four plus centuries have been a terrible time. I want to say the names of everyone who has been crushed beneath the knee of white supremacy, but with so many names lost to history […]
When I told a colleague of mine that I was reading An African American and Latinx History of the United States, they were surprised, because they assumed that an African American history is distinct from a Latinx history, and therefore they should each be afforded their own book. My explanation to this person was the […]
Whenever I review a nonfiction book like How to Be an Antiracist I always feel as though I’m in at least a small part also writing an informational and educational essay about the subject of the book, rather than simply reviewing the book itself. In large part that’s because when reviewing a nonfiction book, I’m […]
I think that Stamped from the Beginning is one of the heaviest and one of the most informative books that I have read this year. Often, I speed through texts, even nonfiction, but with a project this large I took my time digesting the material, as there was only so much I could read at […]
Critical Race Theory. Of the classes I’m taking this semester it is probably the simplest and the most difficult. I’m undertaking this task of trying to explain this discipline as I understand it because I want to share why I think that this movement and its key writings should be required reading and study for […]
Pride and Prejudice has been adapted over and over again, but I think I have found my new favorite in Ibi Zoboi’s Pride.[1] The book is narrated in the first person by Zuri Benitez, a seventeen year old girl living in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The story starts at the beginning of summer vacation, when two important […]
I like waking up early. It makes me feel as though I am at peace with the world, when people are quiet, and all I can hear are the few early morning birds, interspersed with the comparatively few cars and buses that drive by. I do sometimes (often) wish that I didn’t live in the […]
Like many black girls in 2012, I loved the video Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls, posted on the channel Chesaleigh. It was funny and on point, and to be honest I forgot about it within a year or so, too busy living my own life to pay much attention to the internet. Meanwhile Franchesca […]