Essays on film, culture, politics, aging, and the interior life. Written from wherever the journey has taken her.
Ryan Coogler's film is the topic of the moment — an aesthetic roadmap for enduring these trying times. One of the many things I love about this film is its perfect timing. What's happening to the country has us on an emotional knife edge. Now here comes something ancient and powerful...
Read the essay →Notable African American expats include Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, W.E.B. Du Bois and Barbara Chase-Riboud. The tradition of leaving in order to fully arrive is long and worthy.
Years ago, I experienced a bout of depression that sent me on the hunt for a therapist. I found one — but I was not telling her the real truth. Something prevented me from opening up.
"Finance is the gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger." On Reverend Jamal Bryant's 40-day fast from Target and the long history of economic resistance.
This Ain't Yo Mama's Civil Rights Movement — a slogan that misunderstands exactly what made the nonviolent resistance of the 1950s and '60s so devastatingly effective.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wore cascading cowrie shells at the second Trump inauguration — not a jabot, but a warrior's breastplate. She was armored up.
The Apollo Theater's annual Martin Luther King commemoration took its theme from a conversation with Dr. King — what it means to live inside a burning house.
What if you dared to step away from everything familiar? When I first arrived in Morocco, I didn't know what to expect. I was stepping into something completely new.