When I was writing my latest blog post about Essence magazine, I mentioned that every month the poetry was hidden in the very back of the magazine, and how insulting I thought this was. But I didn’t say that, before the poetry in Essence was regulated to the “colored section,” there used to be a […]
They did that Sister horribly, but I can’t say I’m surprised. I looked at my watch and discovered, it was right about time for a Sister to get thrown under the bus—again.
My solution to the current Black-on-Black dating situation facing Black women is to encourage Sisters to stop worrying about Black men, and start tending to their own self-esteem. I mean, we’ve tried everything else, like throwing our pride to the side–at this point what do we Sisters have to lose by celebrating ourselves FIRST?
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but I am fascinated by old, Black men. It’s strange, because most old, Black men I know are seriously sexist, but for some reason, that doesn’t bother me in the least. That’s part of their complexity, what makes them, well, fascinating.
It’s been years ago, but still, I remember where I was sitting at the table when I mentioned that I was a fiction writer as well as a poet, and all those women laughed at me. It was a multiracial crew, but even the colored women laughed at me. I remember it all, and the memory still hurts.
On Saturday, I’m leaving on my long trip to the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. They were sweet enough to give me the Kay Evans Fellowship in Poetry, and I am so grateful, because I need to focus on my writing full-time, for at least a month; I’ll be there from the middle of […]
Some of y’all know that my poetry deals with African American music. Though I’m primarily known as a blues poet, all forms of Black music and how these affect our culture and who we are as a community have been a preoccupation of mine for a while. An essay of mine, “Blues for Tar Baby: […]
On Sunday, I wasn’t watching the BET Music Awards, so I didn’t catch Chris Brown breaking down into real or fake tears. I didn’t even know the awards were on because I don’t have cable and I can’t get regular local TV stations either. Sometimes I do watch some of my favorite programs on the […]