I knew I would never be a member of Destiny’s Child. That fact became fully apparent when their song “Lose My Breath” entered the zeitgeist. I am trying to keep my breath. Beyoncé, Kelly, and Michelle stomped around in stiletto boots, cargo pants, and crop top parkas in dark alleys, asking, “Can you keep up?” […]
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Thanks to money, celebrity, and enticing ads with unfulfilled promises, wellness and self-care have become dominant industries. Journalist Rina Raphael has written a compelling book about these ever-growing industries in The Gospel of Wellness. I asked Rina about how wellness can be about curiosity, how wellness depends on location, celebrities’ influence on wellness, and how
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In the novel Eight Nights of Flirting by Hannah Reynolds, Shira enlists her “nemesis/former crush” to teach her how to flirt. Shira is 16 years old and determined to get a boyfriend during Hanukkah. But during their snowed-in time together, Shira learns there is more to Tyler than she thought. She learns to trust her
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I am reclaiming the label of Angry Black Woman. Angry Black Woman is a stereotype that strives to burden Black women by insisting they be seen as belligerent, aloof, argumentative, and any number of other negative attributes. It is a stereotype that mostly plays out in the workplace, where Black women make 67 cents to
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[cw: sex work, trans violence] The second season of P-Valley, created by Katori Hall and streaming on Starz, premiered this past summer. The show is set in small-town Chucalissa, Mississippi, at a strip club called The Pynk, and the episodes are a beautiful mishmash of body, survival, love, money, and exploration. The club itself is
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[cw: Uvalde, Roe v. Wade, gun violence, police officer abuse, racism] In the time that I have been writing this piece, significant global events have occurred. One, in particular, occurred on September 16. On that day, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman, died after being subjected to violence by the morality police, who arrested her
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In the novel Beasts of a Little Land by Juhea Kim, Jade is sold to a courtesan school by her desperate mother. At around the same time, Jade also meets JungHo, an orphan with whom she forms a deep friendship. The story transports the reader to Korea during the Independence Movement. The novel reads tenderly,
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[cw: drugs, child prostitution, murder] Louise Hare wrote the compelling novel Miss Aldridge Regrets. This work of historical fiction kicks off in 1936, a time in which protagonist Lena Aldridge is a nightclub singer in London. She is offered a life-changing opportunity but is suspicious of why she is receiving it. Yet life has always
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Love the image above? We’re bringing back our Read. Resist. Vote. shirts. Get yours now! Hey, everyone! It’s week three in this year’s Read. Resist. Vote. series (you can find week one right here and here’s week two). This week, we again have two more candidates to rally around. We’d like to extend a very
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Jesmeen Kaur Deo sets an incredible tone in her debut novel, TJ Powar Has Something to Prove. TJ is a competitive debater in her senior year of high school. Classmates post an unflattering meme of her cousin, Simran, comparing her with TJ as a standard of beauty. TJ decides to stop getting waxed and ditches
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[cw: death] The author Kristina Forest is an absolute force as a young adult novelist. She centers young Black love with discovery and assurance. Her recent book, Zyla & Kai, is about the titular characters’ dreams and ambitions, and their growing understanding of their desires. At the beginning of the book, Kai is dating and
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In Cherish Farrah, Bethany C. Morrow has written a novel that embodies social horror, showing societal oppression from a horror lens. Described as Get Out meets My Sister, The Serial Killer, Cherish Farrah delves into the uniquely sinister situation experienced by the only two Black girls in a white country club community as one of
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