On Tuesday, I will be participating in a roundtable discussion on “Medicine, Marginalization, and Resistance: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.” As a 2023 Humanities Research Center (HRC) Fellow at VCU, the goal of the fellowship is to “foster intellectual exchange and to enhance the quality of research at VCU by exposing faculty to different perspectives and methodologies.”
The event takes place on March 12, 2024, 3-4:30 pm on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University [Virginia Room B-University Student Commons].
Join us for a roundtable discussion of medicine, marginalization and resistance with the HRC’s residential fellows Grace Gipson, Adin Lears, Gabriela León-Pérez, and Victoria Tucker. The fellows will discuss their work during their 2023-24 residency, exploring health humanities topics ranging from Black womanhood and disability in Marvel Comics’ Misty Knight, conceptions of medicine and the body in late medieval England, the health and well-being of Indigenous immigrants from Latin America to the US, and the experiences and contributions of Black nurses in Virginia during the transition from segregation to desegregation.
The presentations will be followed by a panel Q&A. All are welcome!
Cover Art for Heroes for Hire #4 (May 2011), Art by Doug Braithwaite
Misty Knight (played by Simone Missick) in the television series Marvel’s “Luke Cage”
During the roundtable, I will be able to discuss one of the chapters in my book project on Marvel Comics “Misty Knight” discussing Blackness, womanhood, and disability.
If you are in the Richmond Area come and check it out!! You can register for the event here!
Well, we are almost a month into 2024, how are you feeling?? Still, needing a good book to read? Needing to replenish your library? Looking for your next literary escape? I got you covered!! Starting a new year with a new list of recommendations.
Check out January’s Monthly Book Recommendations below:
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde ~Tia Williams
Black Meme ~Legacy Russell
Medgar & Myrlie: Medgar Evers and The Love Story That Awakened America ~Joy-Ann Reid
James ~Percival Everett
The Blueprint ~Rae Giana Rashad
Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir ~Walela Nehanda
Dead in Long Beach, California ~Venita Blackburn
The American Daughters ~Maurice Carlos Ruffin
And as always, remember you can always go back and check out 2023’s lists and past recommendations in the “Resource” section of the website!
An Extra Bonus…For all my candle and book fans, check out this literary treat below…
You can purchase this candle and others at Noble Objects!!
Another week of hot topics hot off the press!! Lots of goodies to get your week started!! Check them out below:
A Black Twitter docu-series is headed to Hulu!! Inspired by Jason Parham’s detailed oral history, A People’s History of Black Twitter, comes the story of “the rise, the movements, the voices and the memes that made Black Twitter an influential and dominant force in nearly every aspect of American political and cultural life.” The three-part docu-series is led by showrunner and executive producer Prentice Penny (Insecure) and will be his first project under Onyx Collective . As tweeted by Penny, “For those who know me you know how much love, respect, fear, and admiration I have for #BlackTwitter so I can’t be more excited and scared to a doc about the culture – just remember im doing this in love.”
Brown Twitter birds. Shown top left is the original illustration by Alex Eben Meyer (http://www.eben.com) that appeared in the Slate article, “How Black People Use Twitter”. The remaining birds are parodies by Twitter user @InnyVinny illustrating the diversity of the Black Twitter community. The resulting #browntwitterbird hashtag game went viral, as users adopted or suggested new Twitter birds
According to Crayola Executive James Wells, “creativity is currency” for young children!! And starting on January 23 through January 29th, teachers, children, their families can celebrate “Crayola’s Creativity Week!!” As part of the week-long celebration there will be free-virtual events, resources, and opportunities for kids to earn lots of prizes! Youth will be able to tap into their creative side whether in the classroom or in the comfort of their home.
As we prepare for the Mardi Gras season you gotta make sure you have your King Cake!! Well you are in luck I have a few places where you can order your own special “Fat Tuesday” treat online:
What do Nikki Giovanni and Sundance have in common…well a documentary titled Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project made its debut in Park City on January 20th. Directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson “craft a vision fit for the radical imagination of Nikki Giovanni.” The synopsis reads, through intimate vérité, archival footage, and visually innovative treatments of her poetry, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project pushes the boundaries of biographical documentary film to reveal the enduring influence of one of America’s greatest living artists and social commentators.
And lastly, if you plan to be out in the Bay Area, you should check out the new exhibit at the ICA San Francisco!! Two Black women California artists Tahirah Rasheed and Autumn Breon “are celebrating Black beauty and relaxation ” in the exhibition Resting Our Eyes. As a new institution, the ICA San Francisco will celebrate the work of Rasheed and Breon along with work from Carrie Mae Weems, Derrick Adams, Sadie Barnette, Genevieve Gaignard, and Simone Leigh. “Focusing on the liberation and celebration of Black women through the lens of leisure and physical adornment, Resting Our Eyes features new and existing works from 20 multi-generational Black artists working across sculpture, photography, video, mixed media, painting, and textile.” Resting Our Eyes will be on display from January 21-June 25!
[The images above include Ja’Tovia Gary, Citational Ethics (Saidiya Hartman, 2017), 2020; Curators Tahirah Rasheed and Autumn Breon at “Resting Our Eyes” at the ICA San Francisco (Photo by Vikram Valluri for BFA); and the ICA-SF]
22 Founders of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. on the campus of Howard University (Washington, DC)
109 Years Ago today twenty-two college-educated Black women on the campus of Howard University set out to change the world through scholarship, sisterhood, and service!! These Black women were bold, intelligent, innovative, creative, and just simply AMAZING!! I mean one of their first acts of public service was participating in the Women’s Suffrage March in 1913, talk about a proud moment!!
As one of the largest sororities founded in the United States, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. continues to blaze the trail sparked and lit by our 22 founders. As an organization we have made our mark in everything from education, politics, the military, social activism, women’s and civil rights, international programming, economic development & job training, housing equity, HIV/AIDS awareness, and SO MUCH MORE!!
I had the privilege and honor of becoming a proud member of this organization almost 19 years ago on the campus of Clark Atlanta University (Shout out to my Pearl Bearing Sigma Chapter Sorors)!! One of the best decisions I ever made!! With each passing year Founders Day becomes more and more special, and reminds me that through my personal and professional life I am making a change!
With a membership of more than 350,000 and over 1,000+ collegiate and alumnae chapters located in the United States, Canada, Japan (Tokyo and Okinawa), Germany, the Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica and the Republic of Korea, lets just say Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. is all about making a global impact!!
So to ALL my Sorors of DST near and far… Happy 109th!!
*To learn more about my wonderful organization check out the following link here!!
The new season of Insecure has started and we are 2 episodes!! Let me tell you as someone who has been watching the show since DAY ONE, Issa rae and the show never ceases to amaze me!! So much so that I had to write down a few notes in the form of a ‘thank you’ note post expressing my appreciation!! I remember actually hearing about the show in 2016 while vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard and attending the annual MVAAFF. If nothing else I had planned to watched the series off the strength of Issa Rae’s previous web series “Awkward Black Girl” and the fact that it was a series about young Black professionals. With little to no expectations, like many others we just dived in. In the words of R&B singer Vivian Green, we were always riding an “emotional rollercoaster” 30 mins at a time when it came to this show.
It is not often that you find a show that tells so many stories and is so relatable that you have to step back and say “damn that’s really close to my life” or “I totally know that feeling!” Every season has created an on-going dialogue, surrounding everything from entrepreneurship to family planning (birth and death) to complex relationships/dating to self-preservation to job security to simply just believing in one’s self, all topics that will surely continue linger in the atmosphere even after the last and final episode. For me, Insecure is the Living Single of its time! As a professional, awkward, funny, driven Black woman seeing the various experiences of Black womanhood play out on-screen via the vision of a Black woman always gave me a sense of hope and promise.
And so I have to thank you for showing the many complex layers of relationships and friendship and that they are not perfect nor should we strive for them to be. To be honest in each of the four main Black female characters (Issa, Molly, Kelli, and Tiffany) I found a piece of myself in each character. That’s what makes being a Black woman so great!! Life truly is a learning process. You provided us another outlet that permits us to stumble, fail, get back up, find joy, be angry, and persevere!!
Black women friendships as personified in HBO’s Insecure
Thank you for normalizing therapy, particularly for Black women…The familiarity of each session was so very refreshing….this is so needed and necessary. The way therapy is showcased on this show is a great example of how it can be utilized in fiction but translate into reality.
Molly in a therapy session on ‘Insecure’ Season 2-Episode 2 “Hella Questions”
The fashion and hair…So versatile..Daring…Forward-thinking…Inspiring…I definitely picked up a few things and added them to my closet.
How about all the cameos….Syd, Sterling K. Brown, Lil Rel Howery, Kyla Pratt, Luke James, Kofi Siriboe, Jidenna, Hayley Kiyoko, Dawn Richard, Wendy Raquel Robinson, and many more…
I will always look at couches, Best Buy shirts, and Coachella very differently and I’m good with that!
New and improved vocabulary…words/concepts/phrases like ‘zaddy’, ‘ho-tation’, ‘Go for it, go for it, go! Ho for it, ho for it, ho!’, ‘work in progress’, ‘thug yoda’, and ‘we got y’all’ will always have a special place in the Black community.
Thank you for the location…location…location!!
Oh and I cannot forget the amazing soundtracks, my music game continues to level up thanks to this show!!
Official ‘Insecure’ Playlist from Spotify
Watching this show this show for me personally allowed me to have those moments of thinking about how to evaluate my life and actions. Lots of growth and self-reflection!! I definitely increased my intake of daily affirmations and learned to truly be honest with myself and others. About five years ago, Issa Rae made a statement to NPR that definitely resonated then and even more so now, “We don’t get to just have a show about regular Black people being basic.” Who would have thought basic, regular, and awkwardness were just the things we needed in life.
Once again my Sunday nights will never be the same after Insecure comes to a final close. Insecure will join such shows as Lovecraft Country, Power, and The Wire, as premium channels shows that were well worth the extra purchasing cost.
So when it is all said and done…Issa you switched up the tv landscape around how we CAN center Black people and culture in a variety of ways….And I thank you Issa Rae for making this contribution to the pop culture landscape!!
This month we are reflecting and celebrating Black girl and woman experiences!! We got a nice mix of novels, memoirs, and Black literature to keep you engaged and entertained!
Check out this month’s selections and pre-order and/or head on over to your nearest bookstore!!
Luster A Novel ~Raven Leilani
Carefree Black Girls: A Celebration of Black Women in Pop Culture ~Zeba Blay
On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library ~Glory Edim
Leaving Breezy Street: A Memoir ~Brenda Myers-Powell w/April Reynolds
The Poison Heart ~Kalynn Bayron
Remember you can always go back and check out the previous month’s recommendations in the “Resource” section of the website!!
Just in case you may have missed last week’s episode of Conversations with Beloved and Kindred, I got you covered!!
In this episode, Dr. Robinson and I break down episodes 7 and 8 of Lovecraft Country. Much like the previous episodes, these episodes were very much imaginative, personal and focused on a particular moment. However, what really sets these episodes a part from the earlier ones were their centering, specifically, on the Black woman and Black girl experiences. As two Black women who have experienced various perspectives of Black girlhood (southern and midwestern) to currently navigating Black womanhood both episodes are very relatable.
Being able to not only acknowledge and focus on the many layers of their experiences (trauma, resistance, joy, naming, anger, etc.) is essential because it allows for their stories to be seen as real made visible to a large audience.
To hear more about what we thought, check it out below:
On next time, we will discuss the 2018 supernatural/sci-fi/superhero/drama film Fast Colors from director Julia Hart and starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lorraine Toussaint, and Saniyya Sidney. Here in this film we get to see #BlackGirlMagic, Black Female Star Power and the Black Female Imaginary on full display!!
Black Future Feminist 