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Radical Self-Love: Writing Intimate Spaces in the Age of Tyranny
For two weeks after the election, I wrote nothing. I was enrolled in two writing workshops for my MFA, and I wrote nothing. I submitted a poem I had written over the summer and didn’t bother to revise for my poetry workshop that week. The following week, I skipped my...
The Night My Body Said No
In a recent interview on All Things Considered, Vanessa Grigoriadis, author of Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus, talked with NPR about Betsy DeVos’s recent decision to roll back the Obama Administration’s Title IX guidelines on how colleges...
Why the Time for Pleasure is Now
Like many people, I spent most of Saturday at my computer and on my phone reading and re-tweeting updates about the white supremacists who had descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia. My emotions ranged from anger to sadness to disgust. And try as I do to promote...
The Ruth-Boaz Myth and the Gospel of Sexual Freedom (#SFS17 Day 2)
I attended a conference session called, “Defusing the Power of Toxic Religion for Sexual Advocacy,” because I’m writing a memoir about intersections of faith, family, and feminism in my life and of my experience with black female sexuality within the context of the...
The Gospel of Reproductive Justice
At a table on the quiet side of the room, five black women are talking. Sex. Helping a friend buy her first vibrator. Midwifery. Crunk Feminist Collective. Sexual health education. A sexual health education session in an AME church. The girls asked the sex educator...
A Letter to My Students on the Eve of their AP Exams
Originally published May 15, 2017 I sent this letter via email to senior high school students I teach in Camden, NJ, earlier this month. If it suits you, consider it Monday Motivation. What can you conquer today? Dear Students, I took one AP exam when I was in...
The Decade Before Consent
*Trigger warning* The week of August of 15, my news feed was filled with damning articles and opinions about Nate Parker and support of his acclaimed film Birth of a Nation, now that news has resurfaced of a rape he was acquitted of 15 years ago. As I interrogated my...
Why Being Single Often Feels Like Punishment for Black Church Girls
How is a church like prison and being incarcerated like belonging to a church? Both have a way of asking, “How do you plan to handle potentially lifelong, involuntary celibacy?” Read more. ← On my bicycle, at the intersection of blackness and...
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