Respectability Politics Never Worked. And I Am Done Pretending Otherwise.
Respectability politics was built on the premise that the problem was perception. The problem was never perception. It was power. And no amount of polish changes who is holding the boot.
The Grandmother Archive. What We Forgot to Ask.
The recipe she never wrote down. The remedy she learned from her mother. The family story that lived only in her. The grandmother archive closes quietly and most of us do not know we needed it until it is already gone.
We Lost Something When We Stopped Writing Letters. I Am Coming to Get It Back.
I collect stationery I do not write on nearly enough. That is ending. A defense of the handwritten letter, the well-turned phrase, the scented envelope, and the lost art of telling someone off in perfect King’s English.
The Mentor Gap. Or – I Will Help You When You Are Ready to Be Helped.
The mentor gap is not about women who refuse to reach back. It is about a generation so confident in its own framework that the hand gets a polite nod – right up until the drywall moment. Then they call.
I Choose Him Every Time. A Black Woman’s Honest Accounting of Narcissistic Love.
I have an advanced degree in psychological development. I understand trauma bonding, attachment theory, and the neuroscience of why women stay. I choose a malignant narcissist every single time. This is the honest accounting nobody is giving.
God Is Not the Problem. The Church Might Be.
Fifty years of faithfulness. A pastor who was busy for the funeral. I did not leave God. I left the building.
The Hair Was Just the Beginning.
I got my first relaxer at fifteen. Twenty years of creamy crack. Every six weeks. On schedule. Without question. Because that is what you did and the world was very clear about why. At thirty-five, I stopped. Cold turkey. Cut twenty-two inches down to four inches and started over. People thought I was crazy. I […]
They Know the Crossover. They Don’t Know the Culture
They pumped up when a late eighties Black song came on the work call. Then I quoted Frankie Beverly, the Commodores, and Sade in the team chat for a week. Nobody knew what they were from. The divide is not a crack. It is a canyon.
The Pit They Dug and the Climb I Had to Make Alone
The deepest wounds do not come from enemies. They come from the people who were supposed to love you best. This is about what it actually takes to climb out.
The Great Divide: Why the “Africanfuturism” Split Is Really About Money, Power, and Survival
From Nnedi Okorafor’s literary stand to the Essence Festival’s Jollof contest – the cultural divide between Black Americans and Continental Africans is not accidental. It is funded. And we need to talk about what is really at stake.