The Well

y’all please come get some laughs!!!

came across this voice memo recorded on March 25th 2020.  

please leave a comment!!!!  

By: Brittany Barbee

You were the love I never knew I needed. I wasn’t aware of who you were, where you were in the world or anything. I was asleep as you were being planted into my story and into my life. 

I woke up, was I dreaming? dreaming? I was nudged. I was introduced to you. How you ask? Nudge. “Hey babe, do you still want a dog?” “Well yeah...” asking a bit confused like. “Well we are getting one tomorrow!” “WAIT, WHAT?!” screaming with excitement and confusion. 

You were my first dog. My first time experiencing a love like this. 

The next day all I could do was talk about how I was so excited to finally meet you! I told everybody around me and showed them pictures of you. As soon as we got off of work, we drove a hour to get you and I was so NERVOUS (you were my FIRST dog) but excited! As we pulled up we saw you hiding underneath a van. In the shadows. My gah. Like me often times. 

Once, we were able to get you from underneath the van we started our journey back home. I held you in my arms and on my lap the entire time. You were two months old and a lovely light brown in color. Your paws had white spots on them and your breath was HAWT. lol Much love but it was kicking. 

As soon as we got back to Durham I went to the nearest pet store and excitedly spent $75.00 in a matter of minutes. I wanted to give you a welcome bath, food, toys and a nice bed. I never had done this before but I wanted it to be right. 

I was so attentive to you and from that moment on you and I were one. I just wanted to let you know that I love you extremely and I’m so grateful our paths crossed. You are going to ALWAYS be in my mind and heart. 

Much love always and forever, 

By William Page 

Hoodoo by Ronald L. Smith

I recently added a bunch of middle grade speculative fiction by Black authors to my list because 1. I’ll never outgrow good middle grade fiction and 2. I want to be able to give better recs to young Black readers. The blurb told me that the main character’s name is actually Hoodoo (Hatcher). Wasn’t expecting that. It also alludes to a central conflict between Hoodoo and a sinister stranger with “black magic,” a characterization that Courtney Reid-Eaton long ago brought to my attention as problematic (equating blackness or darkness with evil). Still, I haven’t come across many middle grade books dealing with Black folk magic, and I’m interested in seeing what the author does with it.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Has been on my radar for a while. I’ve heard it described as a collection of feminist retellings of “traditional” fairytales and myths, which I can definitely get down with. It does make me think about conversations we’ve had during the course of the DDP re: subverting the “canon” vs. forgetting it/making a new one.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead

I can’t overstate my love for this person. The Underground Railroad blew my mind. The Nickel Boys was great in a completely different, often more subtle way. His oeuvre makes a case for him as the most versatile writer writing. I also had a chance to hear him give a talk once, and can personally attest to his wit and humor. I’d never read this one, and reached for it as a relevant quarantine/pandemic read (i.e. it takes place in the aftermath of a pandemic that has turned most people into zombies). Unfortunately, though, the beginning didn’t grab me, and I eventually put it down. This has happened with books that I’ve later come back to and loved (most notably One Hundred Years of Solitude), so I’m hopeful that this just wasn’t the right time.

Forest of a Thousand Daemons: A Hunter’s Saga by D. O. Fagunwa

Marlon James put me on during an episode of his podcast with his editor, Jake Morrissey (“Marlon and Jake Read Dead People”). He sighted it as one of the works that influenced his Black, queer, epic, epic, epic fantasy masterpiece, Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Fagunwa’s novel is considered the first ever written in Yoruba, and it predated fantasy “classics” like Lord of the Rings. It’s strictly episodic in form, and I most enjoyed the rich depictions of the mythological beings inhabiting the forest.

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste

Same as with Hoodoo, I want to read this partially because I want to be able to recommend more Black, speculative works to young Black readers! The blurb told me that it’s a retelling of a classic Haitian folktale, “The Magic Orange Tree,” which I’m not familiar with. Rather, I was drawn by the title, which reminded me of the mako jumbie that makes a brief but memorable appearance in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber. Haillee Mason also recently introduced me to moko jumbies. So, I guess I’ve been thinking a fair amount about jumbies.

Meji: Book One by Milon Davis

Milton Davis writes what Charles Saunders coined “sword-and-soul,” or sword-and-sorcery (a fantasy subgenre) centering African histories, cultures, traditions, mythologies, etc. (Davis wrote a short sword-and-soul primer that can be found at https://www.miltonjdavis.com/post/a-sword-and-soul-primer.) Sword-and-sorcery/soul isn’t typically my go-to speculative subgenre, but I’m excited to give it a try.

Let’s Play White by Chesya Burke

I just started reading this collection of stories. The first, “Walter and the Three-Legged King” (which surprised me with the collection’s titular phrase[?]), was just okay to me. The second, “Purse,” was really short and disturbing (not a bad thing). The third, “I Make People Do Bad Things,” was a well-rendered, somewhat morbid period piece (definitely Harlem, seemingly sometime in the early part of the 20th century, though I don’t think it’s stated explicitly) with several big characters. The fourth, “The Unremembered,” was very tender and fed my interest in explorations of legacy and inheritance. All were undoubtedly unique in concept. I’m looking forward to the rest.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

I don’t read a ton of brand-new releases by author’s I’m not already somewhat familiar with, but this one drew me for whatever reason. I saw it described as a story about a group of travelling, queer librarians in an unambiguously fascist, dystopian, near-future American West. The story moves pretty quickly (with lots of action), and I found myself wishing it was longer. Still, the author develops the two main characters well and I was at times audibly rooting for them. The depiction of the various forms that resistance can take and the ways in which community underpins it all felt very relevant.

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

Land, who owns the bookshop where I work, brought me this advance copy from the American Booksellers Association’s 2020 Winter Institute. I didn’t get around to it for a few months, and therefore didn’t realize that he got her to sign it to me :) It (the book) was chilling primarily because of how plausible it felt thanks to our country’s long history of race-based medical experimentation and violence.

The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is one of the O.G.s of Black Caribbean speculative fiction. I have a bunch of her novels (including the aforementioned Midnight Robber), but had never heard of this. The blurb doesn’t give much away regarding the mechanism of the main character’s power, and that makes me really curious about it. The power to find lost things sounds ideal, but it’ll clearly be much more complicated than that.

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

I don’t post much on IG, but The City We Became brought me out of the woodwork. Since I already wrote that, I’ve copied it below.

By Anthony Patterson

The Coronavirus, COVID-19, or as black people have coined as “the Rona”, has dramatically shifted the lives of every American. A pandemic in 2020 seems so unfathomable for most of us, especially millennials. More specifically, young black people, myself included, are scratching our heads while trying to figure out what social distancing really means, what does a quarantine look like, and how long this will last. It sucks. The weather is nice, yet, there’s “Stay At Home” ordinances across the country. North Carolina’s spring is here: 70 degree days, pollen, and the scent of flowering dogwood trees. Fortunately, a “Stay At Home” ordinance does not restrict us from getting some fresh air. So, last week, I went for a walk around the neighborhood.

On my walk, I saw my younger cousins at the basketball court. We spoke, and I asked how long they would be around. They told me not too much longer so I ran back to the house to grab my Polaroid SX-70.

These shots, to me, exemplify yet another way that black people navigate through stormy weather. After listening to John Biewen’s Scene On Radio podcast about the New Deal, I reexamined and recontextualized my photos. Just as Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, and Gordon Parks documented the Great Depression for the FSA, I documented our current quarantined crisis. How are people coping? What is actually going on?

Those photographers and I share the same documentary impulse, yet a different world view. Unlike their portraits of despair and victimhood, my photos present a sense of faith. Yeah, sure, one of my cousins is wearing a shirt that reads “I can do all things through Christ”, but that ain’t what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the faith that keeps us grounded, that settles our minds and uplifts us, to believe that trouble doesn't last always. I’m talking about the faith that will not be shaken, even with the ‘Rona floating among us; the faith that brings normality on shaky grounds. This is the joy of blackness.

Again, as opposed to exhibiting the strenuous conditions of those living in poverty, or a demographic on the receiving end of racism, I am more aligned with the ethos of Roy DeCarava and his fellows in the Kamoinge Workshop. During the 60’s their aim was to showcase the humanity of blackness through photographs depicting everyday life. Their aim was to not make a spectacle, to not search for pity, to not victimize, but rather to show us BEING.

By Saba Taj

This series of 28 mixed media collages was made for The Calla Campaign, an initiative led by the Center for Global Women’s Health Technologies at Duke University in collaboration with the Center for Documentary Studies and the Health Humanities Lab. This campaign aims to bridge inequities in sexual and reproductive healthcare through technology, storytelling, and art. Learn more about the campaign at www.thecallacampaign.com. 

Displayed as a group, this work tells the story of a 28 day menstrual cycle, and the format references a package of birth control pills. The titles of each piece are part of a single poem; the imagery and words inspired directly by the physical transformations that can happen throughout a cycle. There is oozing and tenderness. The cervix softens and opens, hardens and closes. The ovum acts as an archive, a keeper of blood memory and of prophecies.

A gift to those who contemplate the wonders of cycles and marvels of gateways

By Saba Taj

consecrated

fingers pluck

an oozing bloom from the follicle

and spin stones

into pearls of yolk and archive.

a prophecy dew-dropped through softly parted lips

may become plethora

or disband into a slur of potential.

mapped into the spaces between our molecules

strands of blood ciphers

unravel into moments of lush,

of thickening,  

of catching air beneath fresh sheets.

this body has its own gravities.

this body is tender and soaking wet inside.

this body is a keeper of time

and secrets.

alive,

cyclic,

inevitable.

this passage is adorned

with the muscle memory of eels and orchids.

slipping through this gateway between worlds,

there is blood.

an iteration ripened into clot

leaving silhouettes of pressed flowers

imprinted on panty-lines

By Brittany Barbee

My favorite pastime outside of reading is flipping through my camera roll. As of now, March 11, 2020, I have 10,856 photos and 819 videos. Before anyone says anything, I know that is A LOT! But the reason why I have so many is because I am a hoarder of memories. Photography seizes the moment, the memory.

I find myself spending endless amounts of time scrolling and scrolling through my photographic memories. As I scroll, I’m reminded of weight transformations, my style, hair growth, pictures of my dog, Liberation, aka Libby, friendships and relationships. While looking, I always search inside myself to see has there been any growth since that memory? Either minor or major.

Earlier today I came across three pictures of my mom, dad, and I. Honestly, I think these are the only pictures I’ve ever seen with all three of us.

Little backstory: at the age of seven (year 2000) my dad committed a crime that resulted in him spending fourteen years in prison. Which then left my mom to be a single parent. I don’t think she ever truly forgave him because of the way she treated me. It’s like I got H-E-L-L because of HIS actions, and since we’re being honest, I have a very hard time connecting with her because of it.  

But getting back to these three pictures, the moment that I saw them I found myself wondering, when was this? I looked like I was either two or three, in the year 1995 or 1996. Both of my parents looked so happy and full of joy! One picture even shows my father giving my mom a kiss while I’m on her lap, with my mom grinning from ear to ear, happy to receive.

The love and joy that we shared in these three photos is no longer existent.

I don’t remember the last time that I talked to my dad. The last time we were in each other’s presence was February 27, 2017, when he treated my brother and me to dinner. I know that because of my camera roll. He was released from prison in 2014. I was twenty-one years old. Of course, we both wanted to work on our relationship and catch up for lost time—but the connection wasn’t there. He came out thinking that I was still this seven-year-old, along with the now lifelong side effects of him pleading insane and being forced to take prescription drugs because of it. Why did he plea insanity? Unfortunately, to take a shorter sentence. While he was in prison, I visited him once and probably wrote fifteen letters total. He was my BEST FRIEND and I was a daddy’s girl. So imagine me losing him. I couldn’t talk to him or write letters because it wasn’t the same. For the longest time I resented him. How could he?! In that moment he was extremely selfish, not thinking of his own future or his children’s future— I have a younger sister who was at/around one year old when he committed the crime; I have no contact with her but would love to one day. So I was pissed, hurt, and disappointed. When he got out, he began pressing me about me having kids so that he could be a grandfather. BRUH! Get to know ME first. The little girl he once knew has seen some things, been through some things, and KNOW some things. Like him, I am NOT the same.

Moving on … my mother’s and my relationship has always been a roller coaster since my dad went to prison. As mentioned before, I’m not sure if she truly forgave him, because from seven years old until I graduated from high school, she verbally abused me. So bad that now as a twenty-six-year-old words mean everything to me, but at the same time I don’t trust them. I find myself contemplating, “Is this person using words to hurt or love me?,” even if it appears as “love” at first.

So I’ve never found myself fully opening up to my mom. N-E-V-E-R. Every single time I find myself wanting to or for a snippet, she quickly reminds me that was a bad choice. To top it off, since I’ve been an adult, she no longer verbally abuses me, she uses me as an emotional dumpster, more so in the last five years. She unfortunately has no friends and therefore has blurred our mother-daughter relationship with being best friends. But like she used to tell me, “I ain’t one of your little friends.” Even though we don’t have an emotional connection, I respect and love her. If it boils down to it, I WILL kill over her, she knows that, and have been taking advantage of my love for her. She knows. This past Sunday I had the courage to say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. I told her and her boyfriend of thirteen years to leave me out of their drama entirely, along with my reasons of not liking her boyfriend. I finished with, “I said what I said. I mean what I said, and I will abide by what I said.” That led to both of them crying, playing victim, “not understanding where this came from,” and potentially me and my mom not speaking for some time. Shrugs. Happened before and I’m sure it will happen again. The mom I know now does NOT have the love, joy, and happiness that my mom had in ’95’, ’96. That pains me.

So stumbling across these pictures made me sit and process all of this. How three people were so happy, and looking back, knowing that life came and fucked ’em all. Most days, if not every day, I feel like I don’t have any parents. Which is another feeling I struggle with, because I know there are so many who may have lost a parent to x,y,z. But the people who created me do not resemble the parents I want or need—for reasons that I have no control over.

Sometimes, I just wish the three of us could all go back to the ’90s, when life was simple and sweet. Where my parents seemed happy (I don’t know, obviously I was young), and where I KNEW without any doubt that I was loved. Regardless. By both parents. But we can’t go back, and if I’m being honest with myself, I wouldn’t want to. I know that I would not be as strong as I am now. For that, I am FOREVER GRATEFUL.

By Audria LB

At the request of Fati Abubakar, I would like to share some of my embodied commitments, and some things that I have learned lately.

The idea of an embodied commitment is that it is not simply enough to make the commitment and be committed, you must BE the commitment. That means everything that you are and everything that you do is a commitment to your goals. As you might sense, an embodied commitment is not made lightly, but with intention; it also helps to speak it aloud as many times as is necessary for it to really make space in your body.

And so, without further ado, here are my commitments. These are merely a jumping-off point, merely examples to show you how you might incorporate embodied commitments into your own life. As follows:

·         I am a commitment to trusting myself more: not just my mind, but also my body and spirit/intuition.

·         I am a commitment to gracefully accepting when I am wrong.

·         I am a commitment to asking for the help I need when I need it.

·         Just because I ask for something doesn’t mean that I’m automatically going to receive it. And I am not stupid or wrong for asking for help if I don’t receive it. A need is a need is a need.

By Haillee Mason

Harlem was a garden in the glory of a springtime renaissance. Jazz crept from the windows of pulsating brownstone buildings, snaked its way through the alleys, and planted itself deep in the cracks of the city’s sidewalk. The air was dense with the pollinated musk of the saxophone and the city quaked with the anticipation of climax. Bouquets of black folks congregated from all four corners of the country—with their spines contorted under the gravity of their dreams—and melted together in this city. Harlem had the type of soil that welcomed their roots. They looked to Harlem for renewal. They longed to be intimate with renaissance. They came searching, pieces of themselves, surrendered to their tricolored pain, and ached to be turned into mosaic.

❃ ❃ ❃

Audre Elissant sat erect in a window seat. Her hair was a polished mess of onyx curls, pinned into an elegant bun at the nape of her neck. Her makeup was minimal: a stain of red on her heart-shaped lips, a whisper of salmon blush on the cliffs of her cheekbones, and enough mascara to make the lightning strike of emerald—in her otherwise hazel eyes—dance. Her skin, the color of toasted oats, was as flawless as it was naked. She locked her legs at the ankle. Her expression was stoic and her paintbrush fingers were clasped tightly around a small silver locket. She heard that a look of eagerness or vulnerability summoned danger in this city, but her eyes betrayed their vow of impassivity and blazed with thrill. She gaped at the brown buildings and black people.  Her eyes eagerly devoured the exhibition of life before her. She was enchanted.

On the ride from Louisiana, she tried to doodle a bit, but all she could sketch were the faces of her mother and father, both of which were etched in disappointment and both of which she left back home. Gladly. She loved home and her parents, but not nearly as much as she loved herself.

She had to get away from her parents and away from Estelle, Louisiana. There was nothing there for her—no breath for her dreams to inspire. Audre Elissant wasn’t by any chance a small town girl. Sure, her veins pulsated with Louisiana blood, but her skin crawled for New York City living. Just recently graduating from high school, she had makeshift plans of pursuing a nursing degree. These plans leisurely began to evolve into her decision to chase art and give herself to her frantic love for its painted form.

Audre refused to say it out loud but, she was an artist—down to the medley of her veins. Her fingers seemed always bowed in preparation to embrace a pencil or paintbrush. Humanity in its most vulnerable forms, that was her muse, so she captured moments of pain, extreme joy, or more often than not, bewilderment. Thus, her paintings were of scenes consisting of lost teeth, her church services, or the arguments between her mother and father.

But more than anything else, Audre wanted to escape the dawdling “chug” that was associated with Southern living. No one was going anywhere at a reasonable speed but time was passing them by just the same! Coming from Louisiana, especially Estelle, she was all too familiar with the benevolent racism, privileges, and easiness her light skin and Creole blood had afforded her and her mother. Now she wasn’t one of those naïve Negroes who believed that racism dissipates the further away you moved from the Mason-Dixon Line, but she believed that there must be some place who listened to her because she was clever and aspiring and not because she burnt easily in the sun.

“This is necessary,” she thought to herself.  

Her hands were too damp with sweat to hold the pencil. There were a thousand thoughts ricocheting from the walls of her mind.

“Is this even something a young woman would wear to Harlem?” she asked herself. “Lord, help! I should have picked up one of those maps at the station!” “Are these shoes appropriate?”

           Her thoughts were cuttingly disturbed by three men, dressed as if just leaving work, loudly, but playfully arguing about whose wife’s fried chicken was the best. Each of them had some form of gold in their mouths, unbolted by their generous laughter.

A balloon of nerves swelled in her throat, and, her own stomach growling, Audre readjusted herself in the hardened leather seats. She dismissed it and swallowed, attributing the nerves to the bus driver’s reckless driving. She took a dusted lilac handkerchief, monogrammed with her initials, and gently dabbed away the beads of sweat adorning her forehead.

The bus wobbled as it disputed with the potholes which had boldly made a home in the road. A brown coffee bean of a baby began bawling, emerging jumbled and alarmed from its nap. The mother, purple bags weighing down her delicate face, detachedly gave the infant several pats on its swaddled back while staring out the window. The windows began to fog, the arid heat on the bus incompatible with Harlem chill.

As her bus laboriously approached the Greyhound Station, spent from its two-day trip from Louisiana, the sun balanced itself on the tops of the buildings and set the streets on fire. The bus slowed into the station, its brakes shrieking under its girth.  Audre gathered her mountain of luggage and clumsily exited the bus. She let the Harlem sidewalk kiss her for the first time. Its lips felt familiar on the soles of her feet. Of course it didn’t hold the same familiarity of Estelle, Louisiana, the arms of which she owed her existence, but it felt comfortable. It felt as if she had always had a home in the cracks of this city.

Audre Elissant had never been in such a place like Harlem. As the city moaned, an autumn breeze escaped its mouth and wrapped its arms around her shoulders. She shivered and adjusted the mink shrug around her bust then began to walk down the sidewalk. Her dreams didn’t seem that far after all.

Harlem, to her, was both a muse and a platform. Audre could imagine herself creating magnificent art because of the fire that this city breathed in her belly. She realized that she needed this place, both as a source of inspiration and growth. Unlike her parents, Harlem cradled and exhilarated creativity and Audre wanted her creative force to be the thing that grew her. Harlem also offered her the platform on which her art could be celebrated by audiences. Of course she wanted to be recognized, but it was more than that to her. Her art was a catalyst for change and conversation; for examining society and unifying.

A Poem by Saba Taj

evacuation

the earth administers a passive morality, as consequence to human “intelligence” and their deadly assumption that survival is contingent on control. they controlled themselves into galactic fugitives.

Her chorus rings out as the rich flee the warm, wet belly of planet. a poetic verse of molten, revolving center. She sings a warning, a prophecy: Be axis

Be orbit

Be entropy.

extinction

a spaceship a metastases

a new site for human malignancy.

muscles locking from looped attempts at domination, they suicide.

bodies archive of noxious desire,

infectious capital.

evolution

those left on the ground to die, unravel into embryonic potential. wombs of

seabed

volcanic ash

plastic bag

tree root

dust.

inherited traumas calcify into ovum. chromosomal maps of pain

fertilized by ancient knowledge

in mating rituals of quivers, yawns, weeping --

the wordless language of empathies.

centuries buried cicada

nourished by rhizomatic placenta

awaken from barzakh

eyes humbled. of beast, of virgin.

empancipation

we become

into each other.

we become into clay. we become into the space between. post-body, we unname god, surrender to spinning outward from center,

submit, at long last, to the motions of stasis,

By Saba Taj

In of beast | of virgin I imagine a future where the oppressed inherit the earth. Generations ago, the powerful fled by way of spaceship, leaving the rest to die and calling it “the end of the world.” But the world did not end. Those left behind transformed in their earthbound existence, evolving with a changing planet through a rapid process of unbecoming and hybridization. The boundaries between species, gender, bodies and environment collapsed, giving way to an interconnected and collaborative network of life forms. These chimeric life forms, or beasts of the earth, are the focus of this series. They are the embodiment of the in-between, of existing in motion -- uncontrolled, uncolonized, and with endless adaptive possibilities.

This narrative is inspired in part by Islamic cosmologies and speculative fiction, both of which harness magical realism to imagine miraculous possibilities in the face of struggle.  More specifically, of beast | of virgin non-linearly describes an apocalypse or “end of the world,” asserting that there is no end, only transformation. The "beast of the earth" (دابة الأرض Dabbat al-Ardḍ, 27:82),  is described in the Quran and hadith as one of the signs of the coming of the Last Day.  A hybrid creature that "encompasses so many animal forms in paradoxical and fantastical ways, symbolizes a 'universal nature' that bears, as it were, all wordly realities within it; it is a manifestation of that intermediate world...between bodies and spirits where certain kinds of opposites can exist together" (Nasr, The Study Quran).  This interpretation of the beast speaks to its expression of queerness and liminality; an intermediary that destroys and transcends binaries.

“Virgin” in this work describes the beasts as uncolonized and unbound. Grotesque in South Asian bridal gowns, many of the figures challenge the expectation of a passive woman, instead reframing the “virgin bride” as an immaculate agendered creature full of monstrous potential. This naming also references the Abrahamic religious figure Maryam (Mary), the quintessential mother.

Homies @ the park grilling

By William Page

The thought of working with my grandma’s planners and photos has come to feel really daunting. It’s just a lot of stuff, and my inclination to want to process it all at once has, ironically, kept me from really doing much of anything. I’m also realizing I don’t have any particular vision about how it might go or what might come from it or what I’m really even doing, and I’m trying to remind myself that it’s okay and that maybe just spending time with her stuff is all it’s really about and that I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself. It’s hard, though.

Something else I’ve been thinking about: How would my grandma even feel about her stuff potentially being a part of a project and/or on the internet like this? How do I get consent to collaborate (I’d definitely think of it in that way) with someone who’s an ancestor, who I don’t know how to talk to? Is the blessing of her closest relatives (I guess my grandpa, mom, and aunt, who all seem pretty excited about this) enough?

Anyways, I did finally decide to pick up a random year’s planner (1977 caught my eye) and some (unrelated) photos. I scanned a few. Though I’m still working through the above questions, a few are included below.

She kept track of her work hours, with totals at the end of most weeks (to make sure she was being paid correctly, I assume). The paperboy note is hilarious because I know she was big mad. She kept all of her receipts and wasn’t about being caught slipping.

I love this because of the role yards sales played in my relationship with her. So many fun childhood memories of yard sales, flea market situations, etc.

By Courtney Reid-Eaton

I hope for a world where every child is a wanted child; that all kinds of contraceptives and information is over the counter, free and a basic tenet of our rights as women. We need safe, attainable health care for all reproductive health choices we make.…Our bodies [our lives] do not belong to the courts.

—Merrydeath, excerpted from their introduction to the zine, Mine (Number One) Anthology of Women’s Choices (2002)

My abortion stories

When I was eleven, my mother told me that she and my father were not married when I was born; and for a period, her (very important) uncles shunned us. Being a child, I didn’t understand why she was sharing this or what it meant; until I did.  

I learned the word “bastard.” I learned the word “illegitimate;” thought about these words a lot. Decided that they didn’t have anything to do with me—the child—those words were about what adults did. The adults were wrong, not the child.  What were the words for the adults?

Clearly this condition of wrongness—shame—was a problem for my mother.  I was a problem for my mother.  I learned I should never do what she had done; shame my family by making a “bastard,” an “illegitimate” child.  I loved the song “Love Child” by Diana Ross and the Supremes, though; I sang it loud, ‘cause I knew it was about me, my story.  

When I was thirteen, I told a friend I would never have sex without being married; two years later, I was sexually active; five years later (using a diaphragm) I was pregnant.

I went to a lab, left a sample, and went home. I waited for a phone call; it might have taken two days. I was pregnant. I was pregnant, and maybe in Love. I was pregnant. I had a well-paying job. I was pregnant. I had a place of my own to live. I was pregnant. I was an adult (my mother had not been). I was pregnant…it was February 1980.

He “couldn’t imagine his life without children,” but not now. I couldn’t have a bastard, an illegitimate child, a shame (like I was); unmarried, I couldn’t do that to my mother; to my family. We weren’t ready.

It took us a week to agree to an abortion.

I made an appointment. He went with me and waited. It was estimated that the fetus had been gestating for eight weeks. I chose general anesthesia because I didn’t want to know what was happening. I wanted to wake up and have it all be over. When I woke up, I cried and cried. I sat with other women in the recovery room; Black, Brown, white…some were single, some married; some were first timers, one was having the procedure for the fourth time; some of us were sad, some relieved; some were alone, some of us had people waiting to care for us. He was waiting for me. We went to an East Side deli and had Reubens. He bought me a purple iris. We decided to live together. I slept for a long time.

To carry a pregnancy to term is a path of hope, seeded with desire. Hope for a life of greater love; security, stability… desire for pleasure, happiness, intimacy, legacy. It should be about dreaming and committing to the future. A person can choose to commit to an unplanned pregnancy; I did not.

Two years later, it happened again. March 31, 1982. I won money in an Academy Awards pool, his team—UNC—won the NCAA Championship, I told him I was pregnant, again. I was pregnant again and I was having an abortion—again. My family. His family. His career. We didn’t negotiate. We weren’t ready.

I made an appointment, April 11. I don’t remember the time; sometime in the morning. I took a cab, alone. The clinic I went to only performed abortions under local anesthesia. I had to be awake. I would have to consciously experience the procedure. At the time, it crossed my mind that it might be some kind of cosmic comeuppance, but I was resolute. It was estimated that the fetus had been gestating for eleven weeks—I was precariously close to the end of a first trimester pregnancy—they considered whether or not to proceed with the procedure…I was resolute; I wanted it to be over. They told me what was happening, step by step. My eyes were closed. I kept breathing. I didn’t want to cry; I was resolute. When it was done, I sat with some other women in the recovery room; one cried and cried. I comforted her. I dressed and left. It was snowing. I walked to Chinatown and bought my wedding band—we’d agreed to get married in May.

It’s been forty years since my first abortion. I often reflect on how different my life would have been if I had taken that first pregnancy to term. I doubt that my partner and I would have stayed together. It would have been hard for us to grow into each other the way we have while parenting a child we weren’t ready to fully commit to, love and care for. I can imagine his resentments and mine; I didn’t want that for my child or myself or him. My mother and grandmother would have been broken-hearted, both having married men who’d impregnated them outside of marriage; neither had been happy mothers or even particularly maternal. My grandmother’s marriage survived, my mother’s did not. My (now) in-laws might have assumed I tricked or trapped my spouse…they might have held it against me…they may never have come to love me as they now do. Most importantly, it is doubtful that I would have become mother to the two fine people I birthed and raised and chose and wanted…

My children, Hunter and IonaPearl (now adults), are great loves of my life and they are sure of it. Before they came into the world, I committed to (to the best of my ability) doing whatever it took, giving whatever they needed, centering them, learning from them…that’s the way I wanted to mother. That’s the path I chose, when I was ready.

I share my stories because I do not believe abortion should be a taboo subject for discussion. I have been pregnant four times, and having carried two of those pregnancies to term; having had another entity reshaping my body, controlling my eating habits, affecting my senses, jeopardizing my health and my life—I cannot imagine doing so for a child I was not prepared or did not have the capacity to care for. I could not gestate a child to give away and never know; risk offering them to someone who might not treat them well. That’s me, my body, my life. What about YOU?

I am grateful to the Center for Civil Liberties and Public Policy at Hampshire College for their annual Reproductive Justice Conference, which (when I attended) included abortion speak-outs. I’m grateful to Melissa Madera, who turned her research and Abortion Diaries podcast into the exhibition, artifacts: abortion stories and histories, on view at the Center for Documentary Studies until May 31, and which inspired this essay.

By Audria LB

My gateway drug into veganism was Morningstar Farms veggie bacon. I had a vegetarian boyfriend at the time who had me try it, and frankly… it was kinda good. In the years that have passed since that relationship ended, and especially since July 2019, I’ve gotten turned off to the texture, flavor, smell of meat. And now I’m a fake vegan.

So that Morningstar Farms veggie bacon I mentioned earlier? It’s not actually vegan, cuz it uses milk and eggs. Neither are their burgers, chicken nuggets, breakfast sausage. What’s a girl gotta do to get some meat-free meat around here?

The reason that I went vegan was because my stomach was killing me. I was living with my parents, I had been replacing the meat in my diet with veggie burgers, and the only time I’d eat something not plant-based was when my parents would buy dinner. Eventually my stomach had had enough, and I stopped eating meat entirely (mostly). I went vegetarian for a month, chowing down on Domino’s pan pizza and stuffed cheesy bread, but my stomach stayed upset…so I cut out the dairy, too. Sometimes, I’d get nostalgic, right? Pepperoni pizza looking good af, lunch buffet flank steak calling gently to me. I kept eating Domino’s tho.

When I leave Durham on a road trip, whether to my parents’ in Greenville or to see friends in Columbia or D.C., I cheat on my diet. Do you know how difficult it can be to find a completely plant-based meal when you’re on the road? It’s a lot better these days with sofritas, impossible whoppers, tofu, Beyond Meat. But before that? I’d have to resign myself to dairy and an upset stomach.

By Amber Delgado 

I rarely binge watch television shows, I try my hardest to avoid it. I go to the movie theater pretty regularly—the ease of entering a specific viewing space to consume a story where I know I’ll receive a beginning, middle, and end typically within a two- and half-hour time span (to include trailers) is efficient for my busy millennial lifestyle. With the advancement of streaming services within the past decade, television series are getting better, more “diverse,” more abundant, and simultaneously longer in episode length and shorter in number of episodes within a series. I avoid binge watching for two reasons, the first being due to the capitalist society I’ve been brought up in; it makes me feel like a lazy, worthless blob of a human being to have sat or laid still for hours on end looking at a screen. How dare I spend that much time being unproductive? The second is that these shows, the good ones at least, are so damn tempting to binge they practically require it. The next episode button counting down in the right-hand corner basically taunting you as the music of the quick credits plays in the background. A black screen with white text pops up and you’re stuck with that immediacy to decide: should I continue being a worthless blob or finally go to the gym? Because I can at times have an addictive personality, I always go in for the kill when I occasionally find a show that I enjoy.

I hadn’t heard much about the new Hulu adaptation of High Fidelity starring Zoe Kravitz until about a week ago, through Instagram. I believe someone I follow shared in their Instagram story a promotional photo that Zoe Kravitz took for the show. Due to my years long crush on Zoe, I looked further into what exactly this show was about. I had never heard or seen the original film High Fidelity, adapted from the novel by Nick Hornby. So I was interested to check it out, and on Saturday night after returning from the gym and starting some laundry, I decided to attempt to watch only a couple of episodes.

In the opening scene of the first episode Zoe Kravit’s’ character Rob, is breaking the fourth wall in tears about the breakup with her boyfriend Mac. It really draws you in. (I personally haven’t seen much Zoe Kravitz has acted in. I’m aware of her most recent role in Big Little Lies, but was never too interested in giving that a watch; take that with a grain of salt because again, I’m not watching much television generally compared to the average person). The acting in this scene, and also how stunning Kravitz is, instantly pulls you into the series. Rob replaces the main character played by John Cusack in the original film adaptation. While I was watching the show, I found myself Googling more about both the novel and the film, and scanning reviews for more context regarding the show.

Little to no surprise, I read multiple headlines claiming how groundbreaking it is to have Zoe Kravitz replacing a white male lead. What was surprising for me however, is how in the ten episodes, the character Rob—played by Kravitz, a Black woman—rarely acknowledges her identity and rarely has dialogue with other characters in the show. I enjoyed High Fidelity for its incredible costume design; lighthearted moments; the comedic champion who carries the show, breakthrough actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph (who has one of my favorite character introductions in television history);and its nostalgic and fun soundtrack. Where the series falls flat for me is unfortunately through the writing of the main character, Rob. I want so badly to like her and root for her; I see a lot myself in how she shows up (or doesn’t) in relationships. I enjoy newer series giving complexity to female leads in terms of romantic relationships. Being shown the representation that women don’t always have their shit together, we can be confused, we can seek multiple partners, we can hurt people and don’t always conform to the predetermined, hetero-patriarchal assignment of care-giving nurturers, we can crave sexual relationships and pleasure without seeking long term commitments.

This review is me wading through something I’ve constantly been thinking about. A couple of months ago, while having a conversation with a friend of mine who is a cis-het white filmmaker, we discussed him writing in characters that are people of color within his scripts. And got into disagreement about representational writing and universality. He was arguing that there are certain stories and emotions that transcend race and identity. And also, that not all television and film consisting of Black and Brown characters have to directly be attached to their identity, they can just be “everyday people with everyday stories doing ordinary things.” This is what the writing of High Fidelity feels like to me. I suspect a predominately white writers’ room casting a Black woman lead character in replace of this story about a white man who owns a used record store.

My discomfort around Rob’s character are in the writing; I’m not arguing for a monolithic representation of Blackness and Black womanhood or a script that consistently states that Kravitz is a Black woman. I don’t think that Rob isn’t written “Black” enough for me to enjoy. Moreover, I feel when Black characters in television and film are written through the lens of universality, so much context of living life as a Black person is lost. That type of representation is one we cannot afford to lay to rest when Black people can never “put down” their Blackness and while white supremacy remains entrenched within the foundation this country was built upon. White people need to understand that Blackness can never be detached from our everyday lives, both white people who are consuming media and culture and those creating it who want to have a fun diversity party.

The myth of universality serves white supremacy, white people having the historical advantage of defining rules and building institutions. I can’t help but associate a yearning for universality with objectivity. The argument of make this “neutral enough so everyone can enjoy it” undeniably has historically served and prioritized whiteness. This always brings me back to the amazing Toni Morrison quote which I feel directly addresses the myth of universality:

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean.”

Rob lives in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and a majority of people she dates and hangs out with are white people, with the exception of her brother and her co-worker and friend, Cherise, who she seems to have a complicated relationship with. I think this show is able to literally write off Rob’s Blackness, due to Zoe Kravitz being a lighter skinned, almost racially ambiguous Black person…which has long been in discussion within how Black people are represented in media. Major production houses and casting companies are most comfortable seeking Black actors who confirm the loose curl pattern, light skin preference. Even Zendaya has acknowledged her awareness of her career being due to how she looks, and how she looks being preferred by the industry. What does it say that in the year 2020 we have the nerve to celebrate representation when so many of the Black actors getting work have all these same physical attributes? Where is the diversity, really?

Lastly, like in the film and the book, Rob goes through her top five worst breakups of all time, and seeks to contact them as a means for understanding why her relationships are failing. As she goes through this list, four out of five partners are white people. I myself, being biracial and growing up middle class, understand firsthand how their specific experiences can lead to a Black person ending up in predominately white spaces. However, these contexts are never presented for Rob in the story of her character; the series treats, as natural, that a Black woman just happens to have always had a bunch of white people in her life…and that needs no explanation as to how? This is particularly hard to take in throughout the series as she consistently disrespects, undermines, and ignores her only Black woman friend and employee, Cherise. At times, outside of her Black most recent ex-boyfriend, Mac, I questioned if Rob really cared to have any Black people in her life, which wouldn’t be difficult to do living in New York City. Why were the writers content with making those decisions? It was enough to have a Black woman lead and one Black supporting character—the diversity box is checked and then the rest of this cast can be mostly white.

Rob feels so flat to me; there was potential in this remake but it feels the writers were striving for the clout of having a Black female lead without actually writing a Black female lead. I’ve also had a similar feeling about the 2019 film Waves, starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. and directed and written by a white man. When watching the trailer for Waves, I felt like I had no idea what it was about, and after a Google search and seeing that the film was written and directed by a white man with a predominately Black cast, I instantly lost interest. I did follow through on seeing it out of curiosity, and for me it was my least favorite film of 2019.

By Audria LB

“red lipstick & blistex” is my answer to the complicated question, “Where are you from?” “Blood” doesn’t always mean the same thing as “kin,” and as someone who is biracial, queer, and Trans, I have the privilege of being able to choose who MY people are. Juxtaposed with memories of my grandmother, “red lipstick & blistex” illustrates, claims, declares, and affirms who it is that I am.