BLOG
The best of Redbone, Afropuff & Black G.R.I.T.S., plus new musings otherwise unpublishedThe full blog archive is available at RedboneAfropuff.com.
Radical Self-Love: Writing Intimate Spaces in the Age of Tyranny
After the 2016 presidential election, I wondered if writing about God and sex was still important. I realized my work is about self-love, and self-love in a world that hates you is one of the most subversive things you can commit to.
What’s self-love got to do with it right now?
In normal circumstances, in everyday misogyny and anti-blackness, when white supremacy is just doing its usual thing, we have to learn and re-teach ourselves self-love all the time and in the artistic and literary ways we have for centuries. But in a pandemic? What does self-love even look like right now?
The Pursuit of Wholeness
In 2015, I had a farewell dinner with a friend a few nights before I left Louisville. As we sat inside a dark restaurant filled with families but better suited for couples, awaiting our order of Indo-Chinese fusion dishes we had never heard of, my friend asked,...
My Price for Black Feminism
For more than a year now, I’ve been trying to figure out how much of a capitalist I am. Am I doing what I must to navigate the capitalist system I live in, or have I become convinced this system that so brutalized my ancestors and that continues to make people and...
The Complexities of Black Christianity
I recently attended Ira Dworkin’s talk about his book, “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State.” In the Q&A, I asked: How did Sheppard and Brown see their identity in relation to Africa and their responsibility to the...
12 (or so) Questions I have After Talking to a Black Man About #SurvivingRKelly
I have several questions for a man I know, and men like him, who have watched video of R. Kelly raping black girls and still want successful black men to escape prosecution.
The Word for 2019
Some people have a ritual of choosing a word to focus on for the year. This has not been my ritual, but in my mind, in my reading, as I write down my goals and desires, one word appears repeatedly: transformation. I spent about an hour or so this evening trying to...
The Difficult Reality I’m Reckoning with and The Realest Questions I’m Asking Myself, Now That Sh!t is Really Going Down
We say Black people, other people of color, and other oppressed groups fight and win. I’ve realized that’s not exactly true, and we need to reckon with a dismal reality.
Dance Feminism
How a dance that came about because of kidnapping and rape teaches sexual freedom
![The Role of the [Unknown] Artist](https://www.mariamwilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Window-look-e1514861803736-1080x675.jpeg)
The Role of the [Unknown] Artist
Ntozake Shange defined the role of the artist, but what if you are an artist no one knows?
![Cause of [Erica’s] Death](https://www.mariamwilliams.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Screen-Shot-2017-12-30-at-11.07.57-PM-930x675.png)
Cause of [Erica’s] Death
My last post of 2017 is a poem. Lines for a poem about “weather” had been drifting in and out of my head for a couple of weeks, but the pen wouldn’t move until I heard about Erica Garner’s heart attack. Timely posts are rare for me, and poetry that reacts to news even more so. This feels necessary to share now, so I’m sharing it with you.