My sad stories will always be there. I am going to keep telling them even though I hate having the stories to tell. These sad stories will always weigh on me, though that burden lessens the more I rea...
Movies, more often than not, tell the stories of men as if men’s stories are the only stories that matter. When women are involved, they are sidekicks, the romantic interests, the afterthoughts. Rarel...
Life, apparently, requires a trigger warning. This is the uncomfortable truth: everything is a trigger for someone. There are things you cannot tell just by looking at someone. We all have history. Yo...
I’ve decided that I will not allow my body to dictate my existence, at least, not entirely. I will not hide from the world.
It’s hard not to feel humorless, as a woman and a feminist, to recognize misogyny in so many forms, some great and some small, and know you’re not imagining things.
It's okay if most of your friends are guys, but if you champion this as a commentary on the nature of female friendships, soul search a little.
It took you twelve years to see that being good had gotten your piano teacher everywhere and you nowhere at all. So you decide, for the first time in your life, that you aren’t going to be one of the...
In the self-defense class, our teacher taught us that if we couldn't imagine doing something- cracking an assailant in the head with a stapler, opening up a can of pepper spray on an attacker, digging...
In our culture, we talk a lot about change and growing up, but man, we don’t talk nearly enough about how difficult it is.
In all seriousness, Scrabble was invented by a man named Alfred Mosher Butts.
I went back to school, and my classmates admired my new body, offered me compliments, wanted to hang out with me. That was the first time I realized that weight loss, thinness really, was social curre...
I took it for granted that this is what all families did—come together and become an island unto themselves, the kitchen table the sun around which we revolved.
I ran through these streets and thought, This is a Haiti I have never seen or known. It was a Haiti no one should have to know. I
I knew I was in love with The Hunger Games when I did not want to get off the treadmill
I have presence, I am told. I take up space. I intimidate. I do not want to take up space. I want to go unnoticed. I want to hide. I want to disappear until I gain control of my body.
I belong with these things, they are mine, so I do not stay long.
I am always holding on to the hope of tomorrow.
Every Friday afternoon Brad invites me to join him and his frat buddies for a game of basketball at the Y. Every Friday I remind Brad I don’t know how to play basketball. This confuses him. Someday I’...
Bottomless. Fearless. This is the reputation I developed in my social circle. One of those things was true.
Black women are rarely allowed their femininity.