We hold all people to unspoken rules about who and how they should be, how they should think, and what they should say. We say we hate stereotypes but take issue when people deviate from those stereot...
To read narrowly and shallowly is to read from a place of ignorance, and women writers can’t fix that ignorance no matter what kind of books we write or how those books are marketed. This
There are books written by women. There are books written by men. Somehow, though, it is only books by women, or books about certain topics, that require this special women’s fiction designation, part...
The next morning, I had a dry headache and my mouth was a horrible, lonely place.
It is strange, and perhaps sad, that medical doctors came up with this terminology when they are charged with first doing no harm.
I lost my voice but I had words.
Girl children are not safe in a world where there are men. They need to learn to be strong. There
We were three hours from Chicago, so my blackness was less of a curiosity, more of a threat. And there were the black students on campus, the nerve of them, daring to pursue higher education. In the l...
This is where we should start focusing this conversation: how men (as readers, critics, and editors) can start to bear the responsibility for becoming better, broader readers.
There were a great many people in my own life who saw my body before they ever saw or considered me.
I no longer want to believe these problems are too complex for us to make sense of them.
Qui tacet consentire videtur is Latin for Silence gives consent.
Later, I am still awake because I’m not very good at sleeping and I’m achy so I’m feeling tender toward him. Instead of nudging him awake, telling him to go home, I watch him sleep.
If white writers can’t do better than to compare a cockroach to black skin, perhaps they should leave the writing of difference in more capable hands.
Cooking reminds me that I am capable of taking care of myself and worthy of taking care of and nourishing myself.
And still, when I am with my family, when we become that island unto ourselves, I allow myself to be a part of them. I am trying to forgive and make up for lost time, to close the distances I put betw...
Long walks on the beach are the supposed holy grail of a romantic evening. The beach becomes a kind of utopia - the place where all our dreams come true.
We put a lot of responsibility on popular culture, particularly when some pop artifact somehow distinguishes itself as not terrible.
The problem with movements is that, all too often, they are associated only with the most visible figures, the people with the biggest platforms and the loudest, most provocative voices. But feminism...
Food was the only place of solace. Alone, in my apartment, I could soothe myself with food. Food didn’t judge me or demand anything from me. When I ate, I did not have to be anything but myself.