⋆˚࿔ i was born to join in love ⋆˚

Dr. Alexa Canady was the first black woman to become a neurosurgeon in 1981. She also co-invented a device to treat fluid buildup in the brain.

"THE BLACKER THE BERRY, THE SWEETER THE DYKE" photo by bettye lane, june 1973 - new york

I meant to finish this before Pride Month, but better late than never! Drawing overtly romantic things is very, very unfamiliar to me, but it was interesting trying something new.

Also, thank you so, so much for the love shown to my previous comic! I'm a little flabbergasted, to be quite honest!

i will say that all the cooking instructions for veggies are pretty much the same (season with salt + pepper and roast on the top oven rack at 425F), but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

that being said, it also introduced me to methods i wasn’t at all expecting. i would have never thought to use cream cheese in my meat sauce, and now all my friends are constantly asking me to make my special rigatoni.

"Cream sauce base" = make a roux, add milk according to how much cream sauce base you're supposed to have (ex: 4 oz cream sauce base = 4 oz milk)

"1 packet stock concentrate" = either one tablespoon Better than Bullion or, if you want to be really accurate, Savory Choice Broth Concentrate packets are available on Amazon and allegedly that's what they use

"Italian Heat Spice"/"Blackening Spice"/"Fry Seasoning"/etc.: I promise you someone on Reddit has figured out what spices they use and in what proportions for each mix, if it's not just a straight up branded mix (like McCormick Grill Mates Brown Sugar Bourbon spice mix)

"Roasted Garlic Herb Butter" (and other compound butters, like truffle butter) = they're literally Epicurean branded butters, they do not hide this, you can buy them online

"Sweet Soy Glaze"/"Ponzu sauce"/"Hoisin sauce" = literally Kikkoman brand condiments: they don't hide that, either

“In the late 1600s, officials there legally mandated that every white man between sixteen and sixty join the militia, and legally empowered every white person to arrest, punish, and return runaways. White civilians were not only encouraged to monitor and control Black people, but were *required* to do so—sometimes under the threat of being fined. The government criminalized people for *not* policing.”

—Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists

Directly compare this to the current culture in predominantly US American spaces of constant surveillance of transfemmes to punish us the moment we slip up, once we prove we aren’t “one of the good ones”. It’s a direct evolution of this same colonial expectation to the point it’s done “naturally” even when not directly expected after generations of it being part of the US’s social contract.