The Awkward Nerdy Black Princess

For All Mankind (TV series)

Krystal Nicole Marshall, known professionally as Krys Marshall, is an African-American actress. She portrays NASA astronaut Danielle Poole in the Apple TV+ series For All Mankind.

House of Slaughter #2 (2021)  / BOOM! Studios            

“Discover the inner workings of the mysterious House of Slaughter in this new horror series exploring the secret history of the Order that forged Erica Slaughter into the monster hunter she is today “

Story Tate Brombal, James Tynion IV,  Art Chris Shehan

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Nubia and the Amazons #6 (2022) 

Story: Vita Ayala, Art: Alitha Martinez,  Covers Alitha Martinez, Juliet Nneka

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Dear Black Girl: Letters From Your Sisters on Stepping Into Your Power (2021)

In Dear Black Girl, Winfrey Harris organizes a selection of these letters, providing “a balm for the wounds of anti-black-girlness” and modeling how black women can nurture future generations. Each chapter ends with a prompt encouraging girls to write a letter to themselves, teaching the art of self-love and self-nurturing. Winfrey Harris’s The Sisters Are Alright explores how black women must often fight and stumble their way into alrightness after adulthood.

Dear Black Girl continues this work by delivering pro-black, feminist, LGBTQ+ positive, and body positive messages for black women-to-be–and for the girl who still lives inside every black woman who still needs reminding sometimes that she is alright.

by Tamara Winfrey Harris  

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Tamara Winfrey Harris is the author of The Sisters Are Alright, which won several awards, including the Harlem Book Fair’s Phillis Wheatley Award. Her work also appears in the books The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery and The Lemonade Reader: Beyoncé, Black Feminism and Spirituality, as well as in publications such as the New York Times, Cosmopolitan, New York Magazine, Ebony, the American Prospect, and Ms. magazine. She is also vice president of community leadership and effective philanthropy at the Central Indiana Community Foundation.

The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women (2021)

Most of us grew up with images of African women that were purely anthropological–bright displays of exotica where the deeper personhood seemed tucked away. Or they were chronicles of war and poverty–“poverty porn.” But now, curator Catherine E. McKinley draws on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photos to present a visual history spanning a hundred-year arc (1870–1970) of what is among the earliest photography on the continent. These images tell a different story of African women: how deeply cosmopolitan and modern they are in their style; how they were able to reclaim the tools of the colonial oppression that threatened their selfhood and livelihoods.

Featuring works by celebrated African masters, African studios of local legend, and anonymous artists, The African Lookbook captures the dignity, playfulness, austerity, grandeur, and fantasy-making of African women across centuries. McKinley also features photos by Europeans–most starkly, striking nudes–revealing the relationships between white men and the Black female sitters where, at best, a grave power imbalance lies. It’s a bittersweet truth that when there is exploitation there can also be profound resistance expressed in unexpected ways–even if it’s only in gazing back. These photos tell the story of how the sewing machine and the camera became powerful tools for women’s self-expression, revealing a truly glorious display of everyday beauty.

by Catherine E. McKinley

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Catherine E. McKinley is a curator and writer whose books include the critically acclaimed Indigo, a journey along the ancient indigo trade routes in West Africa, and The Book of Sarahs, a memoir about growing up Black and Jewish in the 1960s–80s. She’s taught creative nonfiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. The McKinley Collection, featured here, is a personal archive representing African photographies from 1870 to the present. She lives in New York City.